We just finished up a weekend teaching series called You Own the Weekend where students from various high schools planned and executed our weekend service. You can read the “weekend in review” for each here, here and here. The heartbeat is two-fold: 1) get students involved in the weekend service and serving in a ministry, and 2) make sure an invitation of some sort hits every student from that school that week. Here are 3 of the big picture learnings I had coming off the series:

There’s a direct connection between student ownership and friendship evangelism.
Without a doubt this brought me the biggest excitement – when students build it, they will come. I can’t count the number of times I heard someone say “I was brought by…” or “I wanted to see my friend…” We always emphasize friendship evangelism to our entry-level program, and I know it does happen on a regular basis. But this blew ‘normal’ away.

There are pastors in your crowd.
One of the favorite moments of the series was when a student who attends every week got up and shared his testimony. There are star kids who were born and raised to take the stage and teach and I’m super proud of them as pastors. But I’m also excited about the invisible students who showed up during the series. Unexpected people pitched in, decorated or took the stage to share in the message. This series served as a great reminder that some of your best pastors are probably already sitting in youth group.

Students should own every weekend.
Here’s an obvious ministry-changing takeaway – why doesn’t this happen every week? To some degree, that’s a question I want to answer with action. We are doing another You Own the Weekend series this Spring (teaching calendar here) but I want to see this momentum spread through every series we do. I want student teachers, student editors, student pastors every weekend. This is a game changer for us!

JG