UthMin Lunch with the Big 3

On Friday last week during the Orange ’13 Conference in Atlanta, UthMin.net hosted a lunch where “the Big 3” (as I like to call them) sat down and discussed Middle School Ministry with about 80 lucky golden ticket winners.

Here are some of the notes I took during that gathering.

What is going well in your Ministry?

• Tom Shefchunas (Northpoint guy) – Camps are going really well… Camp t-shirts are a huge win for kids to get going
• Scott Rubin (Willow Creek guy) – Raised the bar on leaders and supporting them better. Meeting 30 min early before a meeting is a great leader moment time to prepare them for the night
• Kurt Johnston (Saddleback Guy) – de-siloing the youth ministry…begin to help them feel more apart of the larger congregation…1 weekend a month they have “worship together” weekends.

What are some tangible ways to value leaders:

• Each of them agreed that “tangible” is different per church.  What is tangible to you is not tangible to another church.  That means that you have to know your leaders and what they need.
• Connect them to relationships…to you and to others
• You have to understand your leaders and help them feel appreciated and valued
• During camp, provide a leader room where they can veg and recoup
• Give them responsibility that only they can do

How do you Recruit Middle School Volunteers

1. Talk to Children’s Minister and see if there are some who are willing to move up for the long term health of student…that way relationships long longer and people can continue to build into them.
2. Ask middle school students to recruit adults to serve them It’s better to have bigger groups than bad leaders

I wish we had more time to discuss this but the question came up of how can we be better about Integrating Special Needs students.  Bottom line was that they all agreed that we need to accept them and find ways to get adults plugged in with them.  One suggestion was to get help from adults who work with special needs students in other environments to get them more engaged in the church (both the volunteer and the student).

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