"Out of the Pew Thinking" Preteen Style!

Have you ever thought of how Jesus often ministered to His people? Numerous times throughout the Bible I see how Jesus sought out His sheep. Like the woman at the well,
Jesus pursued her heart and met her where she was at. 

This is such an important lesson for us to effectively minister to preteens! We must find a way to meet the preteens in their environment, to discover their unique passions and minister to them there!

I spoke with the worship minister at the country's fastest growing church (still surprises me that it's here in Lubbock!)  and asked him about how they grow their church into the culture of these new believers without becoming a part of the sinful culture. He said to me,

"we are willing to do anything short of sin to get these people in."

Now I firmly believe God has different purposes for different churches and different ministries, but I can't help but feel that sometimes our ministry needs to get up and step out of the pew, pass the gleaming white steeple and step onto a playground, a sidewalk, and maybe even a gravel path....

This past summer after seeing how many of our preteens loved running, I decided to start a new preteen event called "The Preteen Mile"

Each Saturday morning I woke up early, laced up my running shoes, clutched my Bible in hand, and anxiously awaited the 4-7 preteens that came prepared for a mile-long run followed by a short devotional and  then another mile-long run afterward. 

My intention was to challenge the preteens to run with all their heart, and to trust in God not just when they felt their strength weakening but with every step. Not only did the preteens get to experience God's strength and loyalty in their times they felt weakest, but whenever one of our preteens began to feel exhausted from running and finished after the others, they certainly did not run toward a quiet finish line. All of their peers were cheering and encouraging them to finish the run! 

It was absolutely incredible to see the preteens pray for God's help and then see how their attitude changed as their hearts received the blessings of our Lord. I loved the summer months that I was able to have the time to serve our preteens outside the church, doing something they love! 

This is what I am talking about, listen to your preteens, all of them! Find out what types of activities they are involved in and pray to God for Him to give you the opportunity to minister to your students there! 

The impact of God's love outside the church walls is powerful. 

Ideas for Ministry Outside the Church

• So maybe you have lots of preteens who dance, then have a dance workshop where you practice choreographing dances to Christian songs, and take a break to study the lyrics! 
• Perhaps you have lots of athletes, come up with a way to make a soccer team, or a pick-up football team. Get parents involved and have fun! 
• What about lots of artists?? Draw, paint, create visual illustrations of Biblical stories! Have a gallery night to showcase their work to parents too. 
• Singers? Start a choir! Sing Christian songs and study the lyrics, watch as the preteens realize that many of their favorite songs are filled with Scripture! 

I could go on and on!! Please let me know if you are looking for ideas, and I will do my best to help get you started. You just gotta choose to be used! 

Be Blessed! 

Jesus on Facebook for Christmas!

I wanted to add another post similar to the post about Jesus on Twitter. This is another video that is very similar in format and style. I think it does a wonderful job of presenting the story of Christ's birth on Earth.
Check it out!

I love the way this video really connects all the characters in the Bible during Jesus' birth. I hope this video is both an encouragement for you and a resource for your ministry!

Be Blessed!

Jesus on Twitter this Easter?

I wish I could have found this video just a few days sooner! I would have loved to get the word out and shared it with you to show to your ministry! But maybe now since Easter was only yesterday, it is still relevant! And personally, when you're talking about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that is ALWAYS relevant!

This short video is super cool to me! I love how it showcases the Gospel in a unique and engaging medium. I showed this to our preteens on Easter and we had a short discussion about it too!

I hope you enjoyed the video as much as I did! I definitely feel like it is a powerful resource that could be used for numerous lessons. 

Christ is Risen....Risen Indeed! 

Be Blessed! 

Does the Easter Bunny go to Sunday School?

Today is Good Friday, which means Easter is only a few days away! It is remarkable to me how quickly Easter came up, I still remember seeing all the fast food restaurants changing their marquees to advertise their fish sandwiches!

With one of the most anticipated days in the church calendar coming up, I am certain many of us involved in ministry are asking ourselves

What should I do to get preteens excited for Easter?

This is a simple question with a not so simple answer. Some of you may use cool lights, fog machines, beautiful productions or skits, maybe even some form of magic tricks. All of these methods for teaching are of course useful and exciting! But I wonder how Jesus would have taught preteens...

Easter in our preteen ministry is always a challenge for me. I spend hours upon hours in prayer, asking God what He desires for me to do. Last year was definitely a stretch for me, but it was a powerful leap of faith as God called for me to lead a short worship with our preteens (and I am by no means a singer!). It was so amazing to see our preteens enraptured by the overwhelming joy of Christ. 

My simple petition to you, is that you take a pause in the middle of all of your planning and designing, and consider God's will in it all. I am not trying to say whether or not you should use a strobe light, or a laser show, an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. I am trying to say, have you asked God what He wants to do? 

Yet not as I will, but as you will

May you and your ministry be blessed this Easter weekend as you pursue heavenly things and equip your preteens with the awesome saving truth of the Gospel and Jesus' Resurrection. 

Be Blessed!

How to Transition Preteens to Youth

I love working together with other ministries in our church. It always reminds me of how we are all one body serving our Lord to do His will. Does your ministry ever work with other ministries in your church?

Last year, I was thinking about how so many of our preteens talked about their fears for leaving 5th grade and moving into 6th grade. They were all so worried about this transition from our preteen ministry into the older Youth Ministry, as well as all of the additional changes they had heard about.

I started talking with our youth ministry intern and after praying about it for awhile we decided to create an event only for our preteens moving on into the youth ministry.

It has been such a powerful resource. This transitional event for our preteens allows the youth ministry leaders to get to meet with their future students and begin establishing relationships before they are seeing them on Sunday mornings, and youth retreats. In fact, last year we hosted this event for the first time and we had a great response! We invited the current members of the youth ministry to come with the intent of being welcoming and inviting the future teens.

We played tons of team-building games, and played silly charades-style games that allowed the students to showcase their talents and act silly in front of everyone. The youth ministry intern told me that it was incredibly effective to have all of the preteens already familiar with the layout, leaders and other students before our "Promotion Sunday."

When the youth ministry leaves for their week-long summer camp, they usually focus on building relationships with the new students, but now they already have the foundation and they work on strengthening and truly getting to the heart of the new youth students!

I hope you get the opportunity to help your preteens cross the bridge into Youth Ministry
because it really is an awesome thing to see these kids feel accepted and excited about continuing their journey in discipleship with Jesus Christ. 

Are there any things your ministry does to help your preteens feel at ease with the transition into Youth Ministry?

Be Blessed!

Should You Use Music for Preteens?

In the title I posed the question should you use music for preteens? I firmly believe the answer is YES! 

Music is such a powerful resource. It creates an engaging environment, and with Christian music, you can subtly reach preteens' ears.

Sunday mornings from 9:15am until about 9:35am we have a kind of free time in our ministry. All the preteens are still arriving, and the others are playing various games like Giant Checkers or Wii. While everyone is busy playing games and catching up with their friends, I always have music playing in the background. It really creates a fun atmosphere with messages reinforcing Biblical Scripture.

I absolutely love using Pandora, the internet radio service. It's basically a radio-based program that creates a never-ending playlist of songs based on a genre you specify! You can pick a song, artist or album and Pandora will play music similar to the original genre selected. You have the option of "liking" or "disliking" each song. If you click dislike, then that song will never be played again.

It is free, but it will pause to play ads every now and then. I decided to purchase a year long subscription for $30 and I completely believe it is worth it!

The station I use the most for our preteens is "We Shine Radio" (made from the song We Shine by StellarKart) mixed with Group 1 Crew. It only plays Christian music and it's fun, upbeat and engaging for our preteens.

Also, a friend suggested I try Spotify as well. I am still learning about this internet radio service, but so far I really like it as well. His name is Nick Bremmer, you should check out his blog about Preteen Ministry.

Click here for Nick's Blog 

If you are looking for an idea to immediately spice up your Preteen Ministry, I would highly suggest incorporating music that is not only relevant to your preteens, but is Gospel-centered.

Challenge Your Preteens

In your preteen ministry, you probably have at least one boy or girl who is just out-of-the park amazing. I'm talking about, the preteen who seems to know more scripture than you, and gets in trouble at home for staying up too late reading their Bible.

I love all my preteens and when you have this preteen in your ministry you feel supremely blessed! They can follow directions, sit quietly, and listen. 

But they are every bit as in need of your guidance and God's truth as the "troubled" preteen talking in the back of the room. 

In my experience I have seen a pattern of preteens being forgotten about. In a trend similar to a bell curve. The "trouble-makers" are neglected when leaders are short on patience, and on the opposite end the few students who excel are often neglected in an entirely different way: they are bored. 

It's time we seek ways to challenge all of our preteens! God stretches us that we may grow in His strength, and your preteens need to be stretched so they can learn to rely on God rather than their strength alone! 

In AWANA (our Wednesday night program, check out the organization's website Here) we have an amazingly dedicated preteen named Zach. He loves learning about God and learning as much scripture as possible. With a month left in the semester, Zach, has completely finished all of the scripture memorization curriculum available at the 5th grade level (He's pretty much ready for seminary now!) What this means is that on Wednesday night he no longer has any new verses to learn in the AWANA program at our church (we stop AWANA at 5th and have a separate middle school ministry).

So here is what I have decided to do...

After praying about this for awhile, I asked Zach 

if he would like the opportunity to teach the class of 15 other preteens during the "Council Time." This is usually when I teach a lesson I have prepared during the week, and I felt it would be the perfect way to challenge Zach's knowledge of scripture. It is one thing to memorize verses, and another thing entirely to apply their truth and teach others! 

He was incredibly excited at the opportunity to teach, and I have since been helping guide him toward God's will for his lesson. Zach recently chose to teach on Acts 16:29-31. I am super excited to see what God has planned for Zach's lesson, and I am so glad God led me to offer Zach this opportunity. 

I pray you seek ways to challenge your preteens and present them with more and more opportunities to serve the Lord. 

Be Blessed!