How Often Do You Meet?

As a youth worker, I've always felt the struggle between the actual amount of time I get to spend teaching and working with youth and the amounts of time they spend doing other things that are required of their time such as school, school sports, choir, band, drill team, cheerleading, one act play, UIL events, Academic Decathlon, sleeping, chores, hanging out with friends, going to the movies, etc., etc. Naturally, I've always thought that an easy way to combat this was to give students more opportunities to meet for Bible study throughout the week and through more events and activities on weekends. Many churches meet only once a week, but I've always tried to meet on Sunday and Wednesday nights--Sundays for small groups and Wednesday for a combined group meeting. At each meeting we have about 30 minutes of hang-out time (refreshments, video games, table games, Christian music videos playing on the TVs), then about 15-20 minutes of worship, then we have Bible study (everyone together or split into small groups). After Bible study is over, we have about 30 minutes more of hang-out time. We also have Sunday School, however, that has never been an outreach-oriented time. That is mainly attended by the kids whose parents are members of the church and are attending a class of their own and our church services.

Today, though, I was emailing back and forth with one of our youth workers discussing some of the issues in our youth program. Although he was very supportive of our twice-a-week meetings, he seemed open to the possibility that having more than one meeting a week (besides Sunday School) may actually be a deterrent for some kids who feel like if they can't make all of them, then why should they come to any of them? I've always thought if they couldn't make one, they could always make the other, so in my mind, more meetings was a good concept. However, the more I think about it, I think he may be on to something.

So, I'm posing this question to you, my peers in youth ministry. How often does your group meet? What format(s) are those meetings. Do you have any outdoor recreation? Give me your thoughts on how your group responds to your scheduled meetings and leave them in the form of a comment to this blog. Your input is valued and appreciated.

Getting Lost in the Numbers

Over the past few weeks I've been pretty discouraged about our attendance numbers at our youth group meetings. I know this is not good or healthy, and part of it has been due to a burden for some of my kids who have fallen by the wayside. I want to see my kids at church, so being disappointed about low attendance is not necessarily a bad thing. However, through several blogs and online devotionals (one is at http://www.timschmoyer.com/), God has been reminding me that I shouldn't get caught up in the numbers game.

For whatever reason, kids who once regularly attended our group meetings have decided not to come any more. It may be due to new school activities, a change in family situation, new interest in another church's programs, a new group of friends at school, or any number of circumstances beyond MY control. Despite my coaxing and keeping in touch with these students through myspace, email, text messages, visits with parents and just about every other means, I have been unable to get these students to return. So, the reminder God has been sending me is to focus on the kids who ARE here. This doesn't mean we should give up on the ones who are no longer regulars in the group, but in the meetings, instead of saying "where is everybody?", we should focus on what a good group we have, even if it's just a handful.

This has really changed my perspective. One of the things I did with my newfound inspiration was that I went and printed a lot of the photos I've taken of our kids and filled collage picture frames with them. Then I had several of our group shots from various events posterized and hung them in the youth building. This has really compounded itself because as I've put more pictures up of the group, I've gotten more excited about them, and they've gotten more excited about our facility and the things we've done. And guess who were also in the pictures...some of our kids we've lost that serve as a reminder to me and the ones who are still here to reach out to them. It's been a simple, but great tool for us! This weekend we will be putting new paint on our old drab youth building, making it a cool place where the kids can hang out. Good things are happening because I changed my focus to the kids who are here!