Middle School Ministry Moment #1

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
You can have the greatest ideas, games, programs and messages in the world but if you aren’t speaking their “language” you might as well be talking in a foreign language. This was the light bulb thought I had following a recent breakfast with two of our all-star Junior High volunteers at NMC. It wasn’t a light bulb moment because I hadn’t her this concept before but rather because I realized I’m not sure I know today’s Middle School students the way that I need to in order to ministry to them effectively.

Having stepped away from day-to-day involvement in our Middle School Ministry for this past school year to take on some other roles within Student Ministries has left me desiring to go back to the drawing board on this whole thing of “knowing my audience” as I prepare to re-enter middle school ministry more on a full-time basis beginning this summer. I’m definitely noticing that the older I get (I’m now 32), the easier it is to become out-of-touch with today’s students.

Here are a couple of books I’m planning to read this summer as I seek to better understand today’s Middle School students and what makes them tick.

(1) Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online by Anastasia Goodstein
(2) “The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries about the Teenage Brain Tell Us about Our Kids” by Barbara Strauch