Can you be too big or too small for student ministry?That is a great question. I have a ton of thoughts on this but, before I write about them, I wanted to hear what you had to say.
Check out THIS article in Outreach Magazine. Being a middle school guy I found Andy’s answer to the second question interesting.
We had a training the other day by some top execs at Chic-fil-a. They had visited a bunch of great organizations in order to observe and learn from all of them. The three they talked to us about were the Boston Red Sox, Zappos, and Travel Counsellors.
All were impressive companies. All made me think about how to be more effective.
But…I’ve got to say…one comment is still rattling around in my head.
The owner of Zappos says
“Never put results over relationships”
I totally agreed.
Makes complete sense.
Sounds like something I would say.
In ministry it makes total sense…right?
And then he blew my mind.
I don’t know where this comes from…Sometimes it’s a question about the business books on my reading list.
Sometimes after a discussion about strategy, people ask… “but where does prayer come in?”
Very few people, if any, have ever framed it this way but it seems they want to ask me…
Over the years I have developed an answer to that question.
Let me not beat around the bush here. Let me be direct. If you can’t handle it..stop reading. If you can, you have to promise to keep reading till the end!
Here it is…ready?
There…I said it. Make you mad?
I have gotten into more arguments than you can imagine about this topic. I have also run into more road blocks to progress for student and childrens ministry because of this than any other.
I’m tired of arguing about it. So, if you’ll bear with me…let me go about my reasoning in a different way.
But…in order to do this…you have to put that last statement behind you and clear your mind.
You ready? No?…Go get a cup of coffee and walk this off.
Ready now? OK…here we go.
Well…we just go back from camp.
It was incredible. We do a weekend camp called Boot Camp for our 6th graders. Our goal is to introduce the kids and leaders to how we do Xtreme as well as to give the groups a jump start on community. The building blocks of relationship are shared quality experiences and we pack a bunch of those into one awesome weekend.
I wanted to share a couple of things about what I saw and see if I can convince you to think about your ministry and how you do it.
