Subscribe to the NetworkDon’t bother w youth programming
Stephanie on June 15th, 2010
If ur not doing a youth mission project, don't bother doing anything else
this summer with ur kids. Yes, that's how strongly I feel about it.
We're all from small churches so no excuse there. None of us have a big budget;
again no excuse. No time? Geez. Give up a move night or a softball game or two.
U can make the time.
Here's why: none of what we do makes sense without the impact serving gives our
kids. Its where the rubber meets the road of our message. More Spirit internal
work is done in one day of serving than a month's worth of ur messages. Imagine
the impact if u strung several serving days together.
Got no money? Find a close church that will let u crash in their fellowship hall
and can line up work at their elderly members' homes. Buy and cook ur own food. Grab a great study from SYM and make it ur theme. I bet this
will cost less than $50 each for a coupla days.
Got some money? Try Week of Hope. They're at around $200 for a week, with it
all done for u. Community service type stuff. www.weekofhope.com
Got a little more money? I've done them all and Group Workcamps is THE best!
U and ur group just "plug in and play." Well, work. They're why I'm still serving
with them for a few weeks each summer for the last 16 years. The best there is.
Whatever u decide, just do something missional and don't make it wimpy. Kick it
up and move out in a new direction. Please post ur mission results so we can read
what God is doing among us!
Stephanie Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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There’s definitely something to be said for focus. Limiting your summer involvements to a handful of things sounds wise, but the summer is long… would you really cut out everything else except the 1-week event? What if some of your students couldn’t be involved? Would they feel excluded? Is that a problem?
RayDeck3, thanks for posting!
I don’t think I said to cancel all other programming…I’m a real proponent for making your first calendar priority in the summer be mission programming. In small churches, we can tend to shy away from mission trips because they may seem too big or hard to pull off. I just returned yesterday from a Group Workcamps mission trip and out of the 7 groups at the camps, 5 of them brought 10 kids or less. We had a FABULOUS week together. You could visibly see Christ grow and emerge from students. It was awesome!
In fact, follow up programming is a must! Schedule a mission trip reunion, invite all the church to see the pix and share the God Sightings from the week. God is amazing!