It’s early in the morning…well, not that early unless you are in youth ministry… and I couldn’t really sleep last night. I was all ready to go to bed, all ready to fall asleep, but then one of those thoughts, that never leave your head entered my mind. I thought about the new program we are launching at Nativity for 5th and 6th graders we are calling Ascent and how much of an uphill battle it’s going to be to launch this program. Below, are the three problems that emerged in my mind last night:
1. Ascent’s lack of designated space. Now it will have a lot of the building when it takes place; however, the most amount of time we will have to set-up the room will be 30 minutes…not bad, but you have to take in account we are moving around furniture and sliding walls. You also have to consider that if a program starts at X, people will always show up at 5-10 before X.
2. Leaders, especially male adults. It’s difficult enough to get motivated middle school leaders, but to get ones for pre-teens is a whole new challenge. I’m really only looking for 4 adults and 4 teenagers (upper class men) which I can name but am not sure if they will be committed. Once again launching a program can be rough.
3. The right components. I know this isn’t the hardest problem, it’s just about designating the right amount of time to the subject. The messages only have to be about 5 -10 minutes long, we want to incorporate music, so that’s another 5 -10 minutes, but then we want to give them plenty of small group time which we would hope to be 40 minutes. However, adding a game for large group or a video is just as important.
But before we come up with answers for the previous three issues it’s important to figure out what’s the programs mission, where we want to take the pre-teens, what values are important and what an ideal leader looks like. That shouldn’t be too hard….right?