the ys middle school ministry summit took place at spring hill camp in evart, michigan, in mid-september. 45 paid junior high or middle school-only youth workers attended. these are the mostly unedited notes:
brainstorming topics for discussion:
Managing other paid staff (interns, assistants, etc.)
Volunteer Leaders (managing, recruiting and training, etc.)
Leadership Transitions – staffing and team dynamics
Core curriculum – What to teach while you have them
How to remain theologically minded in teaching without making it boring
Helping kids connect to real faith
Cultural and Developmental trends (new stuff we are aware of)
Delegating ministry
Creative Elements – essential or additions
Silos/HS Transition
Summer Programming/Offsite programming
Volunteer communication and recruitment
Transitioning pre-teen to Jr. High
Developing a pre-teen ministry
Training student leaders/student leadership team
Working at a church where you don’t agree with the doctrine or ministry philosophy
Jr. High Mission Trips/International Trips
What does it look like for Jr. Highers to be missional?
Balance of programming/doing less
Serving Families/Family Systems
Return on Investment
Connecting with kids who don’t want to be there
Dealing with Apathy
How to maintain our own spiritual health in Ministry
How do you make a Sunday Morning Ministry Effective
Tradition/Sacred Cows
Increasing Volunteer’s Commitment Level
Working with Older volunteers and parent volunteers, investing in them, training them, and discipling them.
Earning the right to be heard with volunteers, church leaders, and parents
balancing the demands of the role
How you engage the parents of Jr. High kids so it doesn’t become a drop-off ministry.
teaching parents how to build into their students spiritual formation.
Student-to-Student accountability
How to approach theology/doctrine with Jr. Highers/ teaching theology.
How to produce validity and legitimacy for your ministry within the larger church context.
Youth Ministry models/strategy
List of resources, websites, books, etc. (Recommended Resources)
How to help parents understand the spiritual development of Jr. Highers.
How to make the Big Program Relational
How to do follow up with a large group
Sex – how do we deal with it, teach on it, etc.
Ministering to Boys
voting surfaced the following topics to the top:
Significant leaders
Equipping and Managing Volunteers
Core Curriculum
Use of Creative Elements
Ministering to boys
Summer Programming/Offsite programming
Follow-up
Training Student Leaders
Jr. High Mission Trips
Serving Families/Family Systems
Wow! what a time and the networking was the best of the whole summit. Thx again Marko for putting this all together.
Marko,
Pull this together next year. I hope to make it next time!
do you do this every year? Is it for your staff, or is it open to all junior high directors… What y’all talked about is an extensive list, and almost all of them are things that I am learning or trying to deal with being a new middle school director…
j ellis: this was our first one (we promoted it on this blog, the ys website, and the ys weekly email — sorry you missed all that!). it was not our staff (i was the only ys person there) — it was an open event. we’ll likely do it again, but don’t know if it will be every year or every other.