The following post was written by Jeff Pratt, Director of FUGE Camps
Check it out:
Eric Geiger, Jeff Borton: Simple Student Ministry (Click for link)
It’s the beginning of a new year. Your pastor has called a leadership team meeting and you are responsible to provide your calendar of activities for the upcoming year. You rush to your computer hoping that you saved the calendar from the last two years. You pull up a blank 2015 calendar and begin placing random events on dates in hopes that it will keep students coming to church. You are exhausted by the end of the day, not from placing dates on a calendar, but realizing that you will spend the next twelve months providing social events for students that may not have anything to do with evangelism or discipleship.
We have all found ourselves in this place. Feeling the pressure to produce activity while it is void of any type of spiritual movement. We all want to do the right thing when it comes to our students but we really do not know how to think strategically about student ministry. I would strongly encourage you to read Simple Student Ministry by Dr. Eric Geiger and Jeff Borton. They lay out great instruction on how to begin to think strategically about your student ministry.
- “Maintaining programs. Planning events. Begging students to attend a conference because someone overestimated how many students would attend and the deposit is nonrefundable and nontransferable. Is this what God intends for student ministry? Is this what you are called to do?
All of us that have served in student ministry want to do the right thing and make sure that we are providing the right opportunities for students to grow in Christ, but many times we find ourselves trapped by the programs of the previous regime.
- “A student ministry with a strategic process intentionally moves students to a place where they own their faith. Instead of merely attending programs, students become leaders and learn how to develop themselves spiritually.”
If you are looking for a fresh start to your student ministry this year and you are tired of doing the same thing year over year and expecting different results, then read Simple Student Ministry. It will teach you how to create a strategy for your ministry context and show you how to lead students to own their faith.
