Suncreststudentlife’s Weblog

This Sunday is a pretty big day for Student Life Ministries.  It’s Teen Sunday, and I know for a fact that Jared is a little stressed about it seeing as he has to preach.  Not only that, but I’m pretty sure he leaves in a few minutes for St. Louis, for a Cardinals game with his boy Gibson then some family time Saturday morning with his parents followed by a mad dash back to St. John for Chris Hall’s bachelor party only to land back home late and exhausted before catching a few hours sleep to wake up before the sunrise Sunday morning.  Not exactly the calm relaxing prep time one would dream of before the responsibility of engaging hundreds of people for a message on Christ.  Sometimes things are less than ideal.

I use that statement a lot.  The wording is always just a little bit different, but in the end the message is still the same.  For me it’s often an excuse to be less than perfect.  Let me indulge you with some past examples.  My lesson for Team56 didn’t go as well as I hoped… well that’s because the age and demographic of the students is not within my ideal skill set.  The mailer I sent out didn’t quite have that wow effect I desired… well that’s because I had to create it in Publisher which is not the ideal program.  “John Doe” asked me a question about something important… but I was tired and had other things on my mind and some of my relationships weren’t where I wanted them to be, and well… it just wasn’t the ideal time to talk about it.  So I didn’t.

I thought about this, maybe you have too.  It has led me to only one logical conclusion thus far.  The issue isn’t that things are less than ideal.  The issue is I am less than ideal.  It kinda has a distinct feeling of less than adequate doesn’t it?

We are all  creatures of habit and we get thrown for a loop when we change things up.  It is one of the reasons people have such an adverse reaction to change.  Even though it is hard on me, I absolutely love change.  There is an excitement in the air when new patterns are being developed. If the change is the right change, I know that something great will come out of it even if it is weird for me to change my Thursday morning sermon writing time at Starbucks to Monday, I know it is totally worth it!

Questions for thought…

How do you respond to change?

Do you lead with an open mind?

If you are a person that fears change and has a hard time with it, take an hour or two and read this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-Amazing/dp/0091816971/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251132483&sr=8-1

This has been an exciting time of year in youth ministry; students are filled with nervous energy because school is starting.  At this point, most students are either back in school or will be soon.  It is also a season of transitions as some students go to middle school or high school for the first time.  We are also making some transitions in the Suncrest Student Ministries this fall. Our first change is the addition of some new programming.

A couple of years back we decided that we need to do something special for our 5^th and 6^th grade students. Our reasons for doing so are that most 5^th grade students are ready to be done with “children’s ministry” and tend to lose interest in our Team Go programming for that age group, and most 6^th grade students are overwhelmed by our Student Life Ministries programming. So, with that in mind, we created Team56, a special ministry just for 5^th and 6^th graders. Team 56 kicked off on Friday night with the amazingly fun Jell-o Olympics. We had a great turn out, and had tons of fun. Everyone ended up covered in Jell-o with big smiles. The Jell-o Olympics also built great momentum for the Team 56 Class that that met for the first time on Sunday morning with a crowd of very excited 5^th and 6^th grade students!

This fall we have a new line up in Student Life Ministries.  We have moved Student Life Worship to Tuesday nights. The new lineup is:

6:30        Doors Open

7:00        Worship Begins

7:45        Community Groups

8:30        Parents pick up students

We experimented with this format last spring and found that when students worship they are much more engaged during their community groups.  Tuesday night was great, and I have found that students love the idea of a worship service to give them a little boost during their crazy weeks.

Taking the place of Student Life Worship is Student Life Connect.  Student Life Connect takes place on Sunday mornings during the 9:30 and 11:00 services at West Campus and during the 9:30 service at East Campus.  Student Life Connect is designed to help students connect with each other and with Christ.  Sunday, I got to sit back and watch students sitting around tables talking with each other about the lesson, and working through their faith by talking about it with their friends.

This Friday we have an exciting night planned.  We are going to have a jell-o Olympics.  It is going to fun and crazy.  Make sure you wear cloths that can get messy.  We will provide trash bags for students to wear like a poncho so that they don’t make parents cars messy.  The Olympics last from 7 PM to 8:30 PM.