Engagement

This is in response to my professor Moses Mendoza's post "Is Jr. High Ministry the Most Important?"(Moses Mendoza's blog). Be very honest with yourself and answer this question. In mixed youth ministries (Jr. & Sr. High together) is there an intentional focus and direction towards both Jr. Hi & Sr. Hi? Or are we putting all of our emphasis, strategy, energy, and passion into the majority? The truth is when we put the focus of our ministry into one majority of students, we are losing the attention of the minority before we ever have it. Not all churches have the size, and luxury of splitting a youth ministry into Jr. High, and Sr. High. For those of us that don't have that luxury what do we do?

In my experience the majority tends to predominately be Sr. Highers, leaving the Jr. Highers as the minority. I think we can all agree that Jr. High, and Sr. High are two very, very different worlds. I mean between 8th and 9th grade I made the jump from 8th grade (sweatsuits of one color, smelling like B.O., and not doing my hair), to 9th grade (Hollister everything!!). How does it make any sense to focus your services to one particular group or another? It doesn't. As Jr. High students are usually the minority, lets take a look at how to target them. I would love to take a look at how to best engage Jr. High students in all areas of the service, but I am going to focus on how we should help them engage into praise & worship.

I think we can recall being in kids church and doing actions to all of the songs (Lord I Lift Your Name on High?). Why stop after kids church and "O Magnify the Lord"? Now I am not saying that we need to have concrete hand motions for every word of every song. What I am saying is that when you have fast up beat songs, hand motions, or dance moves (performed by leaders on stage with the band) it helps everyone, no matter what their age, engage, and put energy into the song. Something else that does is gives them something to do other than just stand and sing. 2 Samuel 6:14 says that David danced before the Lord, why shouldn't we do the same? So that works well for a number of fast songs, but what do we do when we get to the slow, reflective songs? First of all don't try to take your students to a deeper place of worship than they are truly able to comprehend. What I mean is that there are a lot of wonderful, beautiful worship songs out there, but the truth is that a Jr. High student will more than likely not understand the meaning of it, or will simply find it too boring to simply stand and sing along to. Second, I think we should keep those "leaders" up there not necessarily doing choreographed actions, but giving the students an example of worshiping to a song without an instrument, or a microphone. What better way to lead worship than to give a direct image of a regular person truly worshiping. Will that keep all of the hyperactive Jr. High boys' attention for an entire worship set? Maybe not, but it is most definitely a start.

What are some of your Ideas?

Welcome