It's Friday night and that can only mean one thing in Texas......high school football. Rowlett vs. Sachse is the big game tonight. I loves me some high school football.
I was talking with Jay and Bob today (Jay being our associate student pastor, and Bob Bickford, our assoc. pastor) about some concerns that had been expressed by some of our junior high students and a few of their parents. Our junior high students begin meeting on Wednesday nights this week, and there are a few students who have still not grasped the concept of why this is happening. The decision to make this move was made by our entire staff after a lot of discussion and prayer. Here are the three major reasons we decided to make this move.
1. To connect students to the rest of the church. When I took this job in May we basically had two churches within one building. The students met in the back of the church and did their thing, and the rest of the church operated with very little student involvement at all. Our staff expressed a desire to have the students become a more integral part of our body, and not a separate entity in and of itself. I think this is so important in developing leaders within the student ministry, and within the church. Students are not the church of tomorrow, they are the church of right now. I also feel that if the church is expected to support the student ministry, then the student ministry should be expected to support the church. We have taken some major steps toward making our services more applicable to a younger audience and not just built for adults.
2. To provide students the opportunity to serve in other ministries at Springcreek..... When we presented the new schedule to our church body one of the things we asked of our members was to attend a service and serve during a service. With four services (one Saturday night, 3 Sunday mornings) it is crucial for our people to serve in various ministries. The same is true for our students. We have students that have signed up to teach and lead worship for our children's ministry, to help with audio and video, to serve on our red carpet team, and many other ministry areas. Developing young leaders and servants is where the church in general has fallen short. There is nothing more refreshing than serving others, and our students will benefit greatly by serving others and giving of themselves to help others. Our students have so much to offer, and most are just waiting for someone to ask them to help.
3. To allow us as student ministers to have a service specifically for junior high students and one for high school students. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize the differences in junior high and senior high students. There is just a need to teach these students in separate services. There will be times that we do things together, but the weekly teaching and hanging out needs to be done separately. After deciding on two separate services, we decided that senior high would be better on Sunday nights due to the huge number of activities and stuff in high school. Junior high students were given Wednesday nights, because very few junior high extracurricular activities occur on Wednesday nights. We realize homework, and family stuff may take place, but we want to make "The Merge" something these students will not want to miss and make a part of their weekly schedule.
Well....I hope this clarifies some of the questions that have been raised. I would encourage any or our junior high families to make this a part of their weekly schedule and commit to making this ministry a very powerful part of the ministry of Springcreek Community Church. We've got a lot of great things planned for our students and we want you to be a part of the great things going on here.
Thanks for your time....I'm out....
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