Saturday, August 12, 2006

Weekend Thoughts

I have been thinking this over a ton...but have been sort of unable to make any changes...at least as things are now.

I would love to change the face of our weekend ministry. I really think amazing things could happen if we had the volunteers.

Right now, as it has been for a while, the emphasis of the weekend is on the program. The weekend revolves around what happens on stage and a "successful" weekend is based on how smooth and exciting each piece is.

This is great. Obviously, there is no way the weekend will completely stop focusing on the stage elements...but what about the crowd?

There are an average of 250 students at our services. What about them? Will they remember the messages? Probably not. Will they remember the games? Maybe, some of them. Will they remember the volunteer who knew their name and greeted them each weekend...knew when they weren't around...was able to ask about the important life issues? More than likely.

We, as a JH team, cannot know each student by name. We cannot keep track of each individual student. We cannot ask each one how his or her life is going. We aren't expected to do so for the 600 students in our weekly small group program, so why should we be expected to do so during a weekend?

We need volunteers. We need lots of them. Otherwise our ministry to the weekend students will remain just okay.

I don't know if I'm okay with it staying that way.

4 comments:

Josh Peters said...

amen. i'm excited to see this line of thinking played out! also, i'm glad you are blogging about ministry.

Unknown said...

relational ministry is the key ... but we do tend to focus on everything but that, so true. JG

Gerry Rojas said...

This is part of the reason I moved out of Wildside and into HSM.

E.Money said...

well said, allison. :)