Student Ministries ever evolving

We've made a hard decision to halt the weekly Sunday evening meeting for Junior High and Senior High students. They're not coming. Well, precious few, anyway. Considering the amount of time needed to plan and prepare for a two-hour session, the dwindling trend has frustrated all leaders.

Are we throwing in the towel? No. Just admitting that the changes we tried this year still aren't addressing the needs (known and unknown) of the kids and their families. So I talked with the SH leader and asked him if he'd be terribly upset if we stopped "banging our heads on the wall" and pulled the plug on the current program. Nope, no problem.

When I served in Connecticut, kids travels up to 20-30 minutes to get to church for meetings. NO brainer. But up here, that kind of travel means you pass through a mountain notch, or several towns. Roads lack street lights and guard rails. Moose and deer amble at will across roads at the most inopportune times.

So now we're trying to think more radically. Why does our ministry meetings have to convene at the church? Does the venue scare off non-church kids in the community? What about the meetings prevents kids from inviting their friends? How can we encourage and build small groups in the various towns? How can we build on the strengths of the leaders we do have, rather than try to fit them into a ministry paradigm that looks good on paper, but has delivered woefully inadequate results? I should note we've tried for the 18 months I've been here to solicit and encourage people to give youth ministry a try. I've extended open invitations; specifically asked individuals to pray and get back to me. Nada. No one.

Almost all the parents who adamantly claimed, when I arrived, that we had to get the youth ministry off life-support, did not commit to support the ministry in practical terms: making sure their kids showed up!

We'll meet next Sunday, then take three weeks off (Palm Sunday, Easter and the church's quarterly business meeting). Then we'll meet one final time for this year (April 30). I've scheduled a parents' roundtable discussion for May 7 and plan to invite all parents.

Perhaps we can finally build a family-based support ministry that reaching teens and helps their parents in raising them.