Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The Things We Don't Talk About

As I look at the areas of struggle for Middle School (and High School) students, and the areas of silence for the church, I am seeing a disturbing amount of overlap.
  • cutting/self-injurious behavior
  • self-image/personal identity
  • sex
  • pornography
  • dating
  • drugs and alcohol
  • homosexuality (currently realizing)
I look at that list and I look at my teaching list, and a weird feeling of disconnect hits me. I think of the last year of sermons I've heard in the main service, and I take another blow of dissatisfaction. It seems like the solutions we as the Church have come up with to these problems are to teach on them once a year and move on. Are we trying to combat the never-breaking messages of the media, peers, and celebrities with a 3-week series?

I've decided to change my approach to teaching on these issues. I will touch on pornography, cutting, drugs and alcohol, and more in every lesson I teach. I will work them into small group discussion questions. I will make these specific issues part of my vocabulary more than the usual Christian jargon of "discipleship," "saved," "pressing in," and other weird Sunday school sayings.

The Middle School students that are part of this ministry will know what the Bible says about these issues: not because of a once-and-done series, but because of the regular, purposeful discussion of the way these issues relate to God, our worship of him, and how he has designed and desires us to live.

This will not be easy. I want to work both smarter and harder to make this meaningful, not repetitive; relevant, not dogmatic; convicting, not churching; encouraging, not hindering.

Will you help me?

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

The 2-year Cycle

Longevity pays off anywhere you work, but especially in Middle School Ministry.

For the past five years I've been bumbling through lessons and series, going back and forth between creating my own and adapting bought series, all the while trying to develop a solid two-year cycle of teaching. After five years, I finally repeated a series. And it was fantastic. Here are some reasons I love teaching off of a well-built two-year cycle in Middle School Ministry.

I have a plan. If a parent asks me what's going to be taught, I can give them the outline for 2 years. When I think of a topic that should be taught, I can visually see the best time of the year to put that into the cycle. I very rarely suffer from the "What am I going to teach next week?" syndrome.

My lessons get better each time. Instead of focusing on WHAT to teach, I can focus more on HOW to communicate it. I don't have to figure out the 3 points from this passage, I just have to refine and tweak it to make those 3 points stick better.

Great ideas stay great. So many times I come up with a "great ideas" that flops, simply because all my time was spent writing lessons. When teaching in a Middle School cycle, the lessons remain priority, but more time is freed up to make that great idea come out great for the students.

It takes a long time to know what Middle School students need to hear, and it takes longer to put it together in some semblance of order. But once you get there, you'll thank yourself for hanging in there. And even though your students will likely never thank you, you're making the time for them that much better.