22

January

2010

Teenagers Never Cease to Amaze Me!

Posted in : Insight, Student Ministry, culture, messages, spiritual life

One of our Student Ministry values is “Ministry Ownership”.  This is very important in my experience in ministry to combat the consumer mentality that plagues the culture and the church (especially younger generations).  Practically, what this means is making sure that we (staff and adult volunteers) are not doing all the ministry FOR the students, allowing them to get the idea that they show up at the church and are ministered TO.  So we have students involved in planning teams, weekly programming teams, service teams, worship teams, tech/video teams, greeting teams and more.  This to me is one of the big differences between what I call a “youth group” or a “student ministry”.  The focus is on the ministry that we do together.

A few weeks back we did a Sunday morning where we asked the students to do everything…I and others on the team gave guidance before the morning, but during it I sat in the back and was astounded by God working through teenagers.  I even asked myself, “why do I come each week, they can do this!”  I was challenged and greatly encouraged by this morning!  The worship team, Matt, Anni, & Elliot, and all the support crew truly honored God.

So take a few minutes, click on the play button at the bottom of this post (or click here to go to the podcast section of the blog) it is TOTALLY worth it.  (apologies, as we did not capture the first part of Matt’s message)

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