Helpful Thoughts for Your Youth Group’s Fall Kickoff

on August 26th, 2010

DC is on a roll this week – he just posted some great thoughts about how to have a great Fall kickoff. Hopefully something in there will stir up an idea and trigger something cool as you prepare for the launch. Here’s an excerpt, more thoughts if you head over to his place:

  • Push Momentum generators. This is a great time to push what your focus for the fall/school year will be or whatever builds momentum in your group.  Our students love each other so we push Small Groups HARD the first three weeks.

  • Have all your ducks in a row. I think this is more important in high school than in middle school (we all know middle schoolers love things more when the ducks are NOT in a row, haha).  In my experience some high schoolers are looking for a reason to discount the church as “not relevant to their life” or “just a knock-off of pop culture” and if there is a lack of excellence this opens that door for them…NOT TO MENTION GOD DESERVES OUR BEST!  (Also note: You have to define excellence for your context, don’t judge it off of another church, it must be contextualized.)
  • Meet the minimum expectations THEN EXCEED THEM. This one sounds odd at first but most students come to our ministries with a bare minimum expectation of what could/should happen.  Some minimum expectations are things like:  We will read/open/hear about the Bible, Jesus’ name will probably be used, someone will pray, there might be music, someone will likely talk to us, I’ll have opportunities to spend with my friends. So we try to meet those bare minimums every week (because they’re good ones) AND THEN completely exceed them by trying to constant “redefine church/youth group”.  This is especially important considering during the launch phase there are usually lots of new students. (Comment if you want me to write more on this topic).

JG


View More: , , , , ,

Comments (4)

Chris Lehane at 7:55am August 27

Josh, I think it’d be great to talk more about this. You should share more!!

Mark at 9:31am August 3

I’m with them, keep it coming. !