I liked Kurt’s recent article on youthministry.com about helping students make the transition from junior to senior high. Here’s a clip, head there for the rest of the great article. This is the season we’re diving into in the coming weeks!

If you’ve read much, talked much or listened much about youth ministry lately, you are certainly aware of the growing concern over the vast number of students who walk away from church during, or shortly after, their high school years. I’ll let people way smarter than me try to figure out the myriad of factors contributing to that particular dilemma. Because I work with younger teens, an equally troubling trend is one that I think about at the close of every school year: The number of junior high students who don’t transition well into the high school ministry or shortly after, their high school years.

Without a strategic transition plan, youth groups set themselves up to loose students before they even enter the high school program. And, in my opinion, a rough transition may contribute to students never feeling truly connected to the high school group which makes it easier to walk away later on (I have absolutely no hard data to back that up….it’s just a ‘gut feeling’. Like I said, people way smarter than me can try to figure it out!). So, with your 8th graders only a few weeks away from moving into high school, I’d like to offer a two-step strategy to help the transition go as smoothly as possible. My strategy: Reach down and Push up.

JG