Campfire Stories

Embracing Small Church Ministry

For the first time Sunday I truly embraced the small church ministry that I am active in right now. It has been a challenge coming from the large ministry paradigm - Forest Home, Bel Air Pres, and Peak 3 - and shifting to a small group setting. Most of the skills that I have learned are no longer applicable. Instead of seventy kids and $12,000 in a budget, I now have seven kids and a $1200 budget. Program does not work. No more worship band, loud PA's, or church vans. Instead I have been challenged with building a healthy ministry almost from scratch.

So I've been learning. I've made a transiton from administrator to small group leader. I have been more focused on building relationships with the students rather than developing solid programs. I have become a discussion facilitator rather than a teacher or preacher. And it has been challenging. Especially coming from a paradigm where the larger church wants nothing to do with your program except a weekly report on how numbers are doing.

This Sunday I truly embraced in my heart this style of ministry. I had always known the things that you can do with a small group that you can't do with a large group and vice versa, but when the youth ministry world is filled with resources for "groups sized twenty to 200!", it makes you feel very insignificant when you're excited about having ten.

I challenged the students with this fact on Sunday: "80% of high school students who claim to be christians will no longer make that claim after college." Pretty crazy. And instead of me talking about this and how crazy it is and how it happens, we discussed it as a group. The students explored the problem for themselves. But the coolest part was this: the students opened up. They were vulnerable. They didn't give the classic Sunday School answers that they thought I wanted to hear. They shared their hearts, their struggles, doubts, and worries, things that I have never seen in a large group setting before. Yay God - it has been totally encouraging.

posted by Devo @ 3:41 PM |