Student Ministry Tomorrow Today

I lead our staff into a discussion in staff meeting yesterday on “how well do we know teenagers?” Sure we know “student ministry” we can talk it all day, but what about the students in the ministry?

We went through each year of a student’s life in our ministry and talked about things they deal with. What do we see, not what does a book say but what do we see. We then look at how does that fit our ministry. I will write at the end of this post some question we had from this practice:

*7th
1. Who am I (Basic Identity)
2. What am I
3. Acceptance
4. Puberty
5. Self-esteem/Self-image
6. Family/Academics
7. Opening up to the media
8. Porn

8th
1. Identity
2. Liking opposite Sex
3. Breaking away from parents
4. Trust
5. Confidence Imbalance
6. Acceptance
7. Porn

9th
1. Independence
2. Peer Pressures
3. Dating
4. Deciding what your legacy is going to be/chance to remake yourself
5. New group of friends
6. Acceptance
7. Family
8. Relationships
9. Sex
10. Party Scene/Alcohol

*10th
1. Peer Pressures
2. Dating
3. Parents
4. Driving
5. SEXXX
6. Pressure more intense
7. Responsibility
8. Sexual Identity
9. You are who you are
10. Drugs

11th
1. Peer Pressures
2. Time Management
3. Preparing for
4. Hard Academic Year
5. College/Future
6. Social Network
7. Independence/Autonomy
8. Relationships

12th
1. The next step/Fear of the Future/Loss of Confidence
2. Peer Pressure
3. Time Management
4. “Over it” vs. “Milking it”
5. Legacy Defined

· How can we use this to train parents and our volunteers?
· How can we better minister to individual grades of students?
· We also need to learn about students’ cognitive development from 9th-12th grade.
· How do you staff to reach students?
· Who fits where on the team to make the greatest impact?