We canceled the rock show…
I am a next+gen pastor, leading ministries from cradle to college. My background, and bulk of ministry experience is with teenagers. Our church has a sort of buffet line of ministries. We have pursued a great deal of programming to reach different types of families. Our youth ministry is built around a city wide youth outreach and small groups meeting in homes based on school zoning. For the past nine years we have effectively pulled hundreds of teenagers into our church on Wednesday night. From all outward appearances we were “successful.” So you can imagine my surprise when our youth pastor suggested we cancel the Wednesday night service.
We typically take Friday’s off, so when Stuart, our youth pastor, called and asked to meet for coffee i knew he had something serious to talk about. I bought the coffee and he started to talk, “it’s just not working anymore. I think we should cancel Wednesday nights.” By not working I was wondering if he meant the consistent growth, solid volunteer team, or the production excellence? As we talked he explained while from the outside everything looked great we were not being effective in reaching teenagers with the gospel. As we unpacked the present reality we realized there were in fact some major holes in the Wednesday night service, and the actual philosophy behind our large group gathering. 600 kids in one service makes a youth pastor feel good, but is it actually effective?
We canceled the rock show and don’t plan on looking back. After it was all said and done our Senior Pastor walked up to us and said, “well, Stu, you just canceled one of the largest youth services in the city. feel good?” Maybe we lost our minds, but I think we may be finally figuring this thing out.
Amen! I’m more into building Kingdoms than rock shows! Great example of faith.
Scott,
So what’s your plan now that it’s canceled?
I went to your class at ORANGE and was encouraged by your message. I work with Jr. High and lead our Family Ministry Team. I’ve been doing student ministry for 14 years and have a few questions for you if you wouldn’t mind the dialogue:
- I imagine the big event did have some holes. What were they? What do you plan on doing? I imagine your problems weren’t necessarily unique and what you’ve found could help me as we continue to evaluate our events – especially the “BIG” “youth group” time.
- What are you doing in terms of “family ministry” and connecting with parents at the Jr. High and then High School level. I think the Orange people have nailed it at the children’s ministry level: FX Experience events, “God Time” Cards, etc. However, things seem to get wishy-washy at the post-elementary age level. Are you guys doing anything at the student ministry level that connects and engages parents?
If you have some free time, feel free to email me back at dhenderson@sunnybrookcc.org and let me know any of your thoughts.
Drew Henderson