Prayers and Ideas..

I have been serving at the church where I am currently at for a little over a year now. The whole time here I have been fighting a specific mindset amongst our students. That attitude is: “We have always been and will always be a small church.” Our students honestly have no idea what student ministry looks like in most other churches. Here is an example of this. This year in February we had a Disciple Now Weekend. I know, not the latest or hottest idea to his student ministry. I even recall DNOW’s being lame when I was still in high school. But our kids had never heard of it. They had no idea what I was talking about when I started promoting the event. All they have ever known is one youth conference per year and short 15 minute devotions on Wednesday nights. They honestly have no clue that other churches do more than this. And if they do by chance know that, they assume we are too small of a church to do anything different.

Well, I have decided to put an end to this way of thinking amongst our students. I’ve been doing this gradually throughout the past year by adding events and making our Bible study times more intense and focused. But this week I am taking the plunge. We are starting worship on Wednesday nights. WHOA!!! Do you feel the gravity that statement carries? Seriously, I am going to ask all 15-20 of them to stand and sing along before we enter our study time this week.

I know many of you have been doing this forever but this is a brand new concept for our students. We are adding a brand new element that is hopefully going to enhance our Wednesday night gathering. I know I can’t rush into this. We are going to start out slow. And as a good friend once told me “when you’re in the bush you’ve got to use what you have.” So I am going to lead worship. It’s not ideal and my goal was to wait until we found someone to step up and take this role whether they be student or adult leader. But the fact is, it’s time. And God hasn’t revealed that person to us yet. I already lead worship on Sunday mornings at church so it is a context our students are familiar seeing me in. I know this sounds like we are way behind the times but this is seriously a huge step for our student ministry.

So, this Wednesday I covet your prayers! Pray that it isn’t awkward and pray that our students understand that they are getting the opportunity to worship their heavenly Father. I want to hear your ideas on this too? Have you introduced worship to a student group before? How did it go? What worked and what didn’t? I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on how to make this successful and meaningful. I’ll be posting a debrief blog on Thursday to let all of our faithful readers know how it went!