Last Spring we decided that we were going to do something a little different over the summer. We wanted to see what would happen if we did something just for a group of people we felt like we often times overlooked. Our middle schoolers. (In the last year… most of our numeric growth has come in this age group even though we weren’t "aiming" to specifically grow in that age group.)
What we came up with was something called Middle Madness. It met off site all summer on the "off-Wednesday" from Light Force. And I would consider this a big hit. Here are some highlights…
- Students came! Only the very first one had a small amount of students. Most of them had between 8-12 students.
- Students brought friends. Always a good sign.
- It was fun. We played some wild games, some tame games, but we had a lot of fun overall.
- Lots of good conversations. Seems like a small thing, but I loved having the chance to talk to the middle schoolers of Light Force without the big pushie high schoolers fighting for attention. This was huge!
All of this points to a couple of central "things learned." First, I am glad we are going to a small group model. Our middle schoolers need to be heard and need to be challenged. Second, I am glad we did this on so many fronts… it’s my hope that we will continue to value middle schoolers enough to zero in our efforts on them.
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