Preparation Pays

If every person who was asked to consider volunteering for middle school ministry answered honestly with their hesitations or objections, I'd bet you'd find a majority of them believe they simply couldn't "handle" that particular age group, so that'll be a definite "pass" from them. Thank you, very much.

Whether it's their moodiness, their weird interests, their loudness and obnoxiousness, or their questionable hygiene and pungent aroma, most adults view pre and early teens as unsavory creatures. God bless them. But if you arm yourself with the truth behind these unpleasant realities, you might just find out something worse: you actually start to love these kids!

Even with close to 8 years of experience, I'm not always fully prepared for what middle school ministry will bring. But I can tell you the training I've received has been extremely useful! I wouldn't have known how to view these students or the circumstances they face regularly without it. God gives me the heart to look past the rough exterior to see the potential, but others who have studied longer and endured with the same passion have given me tools to be a better youth leader.

You can't expect to appropriately handle a situation without proper training where a student brings a friend to youth group for the first time and in small group the new girl immediately asks, "Do you go to heaven if you commit suicide?" It'd be a bit like asking someone who's only just gone down the bunny hill to take the lift back up and hit the black diamond slope on their next run.

And I'm going to guess it's also because it's not exactly a selling point for the youth pastor when they're recruiting volunteers.

"Hey, you'll need lots of extra hours of training, and you'll probably still mess up with handling tough student issues, but you still wanna serve in our ministry?!"

Or what do you do when you have a group of girls mention that boys in their class who they thought were going to be their friends instead grab their rear ends?

And, just as skillfully as you handle those extremely delicate situations, you then have to navigate your way through 10-15 minutes of rambling about a certain teacher who nobody likes, or how hard it was to lose their cat when they were 8, how nervous they are about an upcoming speech competition, and why their older brother is so annoying.

Here's the secret, though: these things aren't just throw-aways. These matter in the lives of 11 and 12 year-old girls. We forget that as adults. And we sell ourselves short in our ability to be detectives.

We don't take the time or believe we can ask the right questions which will take these trivial topics and make them mean more. Or so we handle the big issues with the grace they need! As small group leaders, we don't prepare enough to listen and ask the leading questions. I learned how important this is from my friends Ashley Bohinc and Crystal Chaing in their book, The Art of Group Talk: Teenage Girls.

I can't expect my memory or my experience to always be the best fall-back when it comes to effective small group conversations. Teenagers lives change so dramatically from one year to the next. From one month to the next! I have to do the work of keeping up and preparing, because eventually it does pay off.

You challenge girls to engage the Bible and prayer for over half the year and make a promise that you will join them in learning where to find answers ... and they finally actually take you up on it.

You take a hour and go to a Color Guard competition of your students, who disappears from Sunday nights for a while, but you keep pursuing her and she's the one who ends up bringing that friend I was telling you about!

You simply listen in small group at camp significantly more than you speak, you pray ... and one of your students experiences God's tug on her heart. She gets home and immediately tells you she's ready to be baptized.

That's when your preparation pays.

That's when you realize all that you "couldn't handle" was worth pushing past fears and giving to God. That's when you find your calling and your heart for students.