I was reminded of the importance of jr. high ministry again tonight. Let me preface this by saying, until about 9 months ago I'd worked almost excusively with jr. high students. I love them and I believe it's one of the most important yet under-emphasized ministries in many churches. With that said, I've gotten used to high school students over the last few months.

Tonight we had a prayer/worship night with several other area youth ministries. We run our high school and jr. high programs completely separately although most of these churches did not. So we had some jr. highers with us tonight. I was leading a session on connecting with God through journaling and I had some pretty punky kids in there. They kept yelling random comments and one of them kept wanting to show me this picture of a buffalo he painted.

I walked out of there not thinking, "Those kids are idiots." But I walked out of there thinking, "Man, I'm glad we've created a place where jr. highers can be jr. highers and are taught about God in a jr. high friendly way. Where the leaders embrace the jr. high energy and don't try to fight it." The reality is tonight was not aimed at jr. high students. It was aimed at high school students. And the reality is much youth ministry is not aimed at jr. high students. It is aimed at high school students and jr. highers may happen to be there.

I may not directly work with jr. highers anymore, but no matter what my job title may be I will always be a vocal supporter of effective jr. high ministry.

This entry was posted by Mike Lovato, on Wednesday, May 17, 2006. You can leave your response.