Husband. Dad to 5. Student Ministry Pastor. Follower of Jesus. Yatta yatta.

WELCOME TO YOUTH MINISTRY

This year we’re trying something new and we put our small groups all in the same space on campus.  We have a dinner and hang out time with volleyball and basketball for 40 minutes from 6:30 to 7:10ish pm.  We come in for a 20 minute large group co-ed time to set up the topic of discussion.  Then we head to gender specific small groups for the remaining hour till 8:30pm in various places on campus.

Tonight, we were talking about money and stuff.  So to start us off thinking about what you would buy if you had the money, we asked 2 questions in our large group.

  1. what did you have for lunch today?
  2. what was the last fast food item restaurant you went to? 
Then we showed this video just for fun.
And to follow it up, we told them to tell someone at their table this:  
Before anyone else could speak, some guy tells his group in the split second moments of silence before anyone else can speak up… quickly and confidently he says “SEX” loud enough for the entire room to hear.  
CLASSIC.
Note to self: “Dude, you’re getting old. You should have seen that one a mile away.”

I then had to clarify.  Um… “maybe think of stuff you might buy in a legit store, not on a street corner.” 🙂

Welcome to youth ministry.  

Comments

  1. I love how fast you back-pedaled. Great moment of levity.

  2. Maybe this explains why parents restrict their kids from youth group… Just kidding. I get it. We did an open mic night last night, where I always feel like I’m asking for trouble.

    Incidentally, how is the format working for your groups?

  3. Mike,

    I once had a student doing announcements get frustrated that no one was listening and tell his peers to just shut the &*%$! up. I could go on. But I won’t. Maybe people should ban their teens from my presence. Ha ha!

    As for the group format.. it’s working awesome. one of the things we were trying to create is a group identity. We have 2 sunday services and our small groups met in homes and on campus. As a result, we had very little group identity. This is really helping and both groups are getting enough individual time to feel connected and enough large group to feel part of a bigger thing. We also save them from having to be teachers and they can just be primarily shepherds, which is really good too. There are drawbacks to this format, but for us, they are outweighed currently by the benefits.

    Brian

  4. You crack me up! I love it! At least the kids are being real with you guys. Better to know what they are thinking then to wonder.

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