The Word

Junior High Ministry Rocks!

I would love to say that and then just leave you alone for the rest of the day, but I have a little bit more I want to share with you today.

Over the past 2 and 1/2 years we have been really trying to narrow our focus at our church.  We took the Reveal study in 2009 and realized that we really need to focus our group on Bible engagement.  So, we did that.  In all areas from Children’s to Junior High to High School to Adults, we focused on Bible engagement.

For many people including our junior high students this meant that they tried a year long Bible reading plan.  We offered many different options from reading the entire Bible, reading the New Testament, and even reading a book at a time.

We got great results in the entire church, but in junior high ministry the results astounded me.  I found that the year long plans were not effective at all. But If I would assign weekly reading, our students responded great.

I would provide certain chapters to read daily and have a goal for each week.  Over Christmas break one year, our students read the books of John, Romans and Ephesians.  They loved it.  It created conversations about scripture.  Questions started popping up and they would answer them for each other.  It was the perfect small group discussion starter.  Also, many of our other students were being challenged to  try it out as well because all of their friends were doing it.  It was positive peer pressure at its best.

This past weekend I took my students to CIY Believe and the it was call the Word Tour.

This was by far one of the best messages from the Believe team.  They created an amazing atmosphere for Biblee engagement.  They always create a great worship experience and have great speakers, but this year I don’t think the focus was on anything other than connecting students with the Word.  This start in John 1:1-2.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.

and then they moved on with John 1:14

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

This brought the students to the realization that engaging with the Bible is a way of communicating with God and building a relationship with His son, Jesus.

At believe they showed us a history of the Bible and even had video footage from places in the Bible.

I believe for our junior high ministry this couldn’t have come at a better time to drive our students to Scripture.  We must make sure that we aren’t presenting only what we want to talk about, but we need to let the Word of God Speak!