@Orchidaceae 27 December 2020 edited

So What Do You Cut, What Do You Keep? And The Variability of Early Adolescence

Even though we understand and appreciate the characteristics of an effective junior high ministry program, we still have the problem of deciding what to do. We know that we will have to plan a certain number of meetings and activities, but how many, what kind, who with and when? Two things are certain: (1) there will never be a shortage of things to do, and (2) there's no way you can do everything. One of the problems with going to youth ministry conferences is that you usuall come home with a very long"to do" list. Every seminar leader gives you a list of great ideas that he or she believes is absolutely essential for effective youth ministry. As wonderful as these ideas are, the reality is- if you try to do them all, you'll end up exhausted and your kids will end up at somebody else's junior high group. If you want to make good decisions about your junior high ministry program, the following steps may prove to be helpful: *****Develop a philosophy of junior high ministry that will guide***** *****everything you do.***** Some people refer to this as developing a vision statement or a mission statement. The main idea here is to know why you are doing what you do. You may want to base your philosophy on a key verse of Scripture, such as Luke 2:52, Colossians 1:28, or Ephesians 4:11-13. You might adopt a philosophy or mission statement like, "Following the pattern of Jesus in Luke 2:52, the junior high ministry of [our church| is committed to providing both the people and the programs to help students grow strong in four key areas of life: the physical, the intellectual, the social, and the spiritual." With a single, simple philosophy such as this, you can evaluate everything you do in light ot it. Decisions regarding programs and activities can be based on to what extent it contributes to or detracts from the mission or philosophy statement. *****Set some priorities.***** Even with a philosophy or mission statement, there will still be a need You to prioritize. Some things are simply more important than others. You ll need to decide lor yourself (or with your junior high minisury team) where you chere your prioriues are. You may want to give evangelism and reach the highest priority. But what about community building' Worship? Discipleship? Mission and service? Wlhile all of these are qually important, most junior high ministries (indeed most churches) find it impossible to commít the same amount of time and resources to all of them. You will need to set some priorities, based on the needs of your junior highers, the giltedness of the leaders, and where you feel God is leading. After reading this , you may catch the vision for beginning a ministry to parents, or developing a mentoring program. If you want to give these a high priority, you will probably need to let a few other things go. In addition you will need to set some personal priorities. You may have family or career responsibilities that will impact what you are able to do. In my own ministry, I have tried to remember a bit of wisdom I heard many years ago: "You must be first a person, then a partner, then a parent, and lastly a professional, whatever your profession might be." That means I must take care of myself first (especially in my spiritual life), then my marriage, then my children, then the ministry that God has called me to do. With an understanding of priorities such as these, you will be able to make better decisions about how you use your time and energy. *****Set some goals.***** Once you have decided what the important things are, you can set some goals. Some may be long range; others can be short range. For example, if one of your priorities is to involve your students in mission and service, then a long-range goal might be to conduct at least one mission project per year. A short-term goal might be to have the specific details of the project for the coming year decided by a certain date--that is, what the project will be, when it will be done, etc. This process of goal setting can be done with every area of ministry that you have made a priority. Make some specific plans. Next comes the planning stage, at which time you decide how you will accomplish the goals you have set. You can begin to fill in the calendar with specific program elements. Once you have a general plan. you can involve your junior highers in the planning of the specific details. I have found that early adolescents really do enjoy being part of a leadership team and helping out with the planning of their group activities. This will give them a degree of ownership of the program and help them to develop their leadership skills. A word of caution, however. Junior highers are rarely capable of deciding what needs to be done. They have a rather limited view of their own needs and are better off serving in an apprenticeship role- learning how to think creatively, what it takes to make things happen, how to get things done, etc. Junior highers need to be given some responsibility a little at a time. Whatever responsibilities we give kids, we want them to be successful. This will build their confidence and develop the skills they need to take on more responsibility next time. Remember that junior highers should only help with the details of the programs that you have already decided to do. If you allow junior highers to decide what the programs or activities will be, they will more than likely choose only fun things (10 trips to Disneyland), or things they have done before (because that's all they are familiar with). That's why ir's best for you as the adult leader to decide what will be done, and then allow the junior highers to help make it happen. ***The Variability of Early adolescence*** Throughout this article I make quite a few generalizations about junior highers, which Is a very dangerous thing to do whenever you are talking about people. It's especially hazardous when talking about junior highers, since no two junior highers are alike. In fact, the preceding sentence is about the only generalization that can be made about junior highers with any real accuracy. A key word to remember when dealing with this age group is variability. Junior highers vary tremendously from one person to the next. To know that a young person is 13 is to know virtually nothing important about that person, except perhaps his grade in school.' Most 13-year-olds are in the eighth grade. Other than that, there isn't much you can say about that young person with any accuracy. She could be a fast developer, a slow developer, or somewhere in between. Joan Lipsitz has noted that it is not unusual to find a six-year difference in biological age between slowly developing boys and rapidly developing girls in the same classroom. This observation is based on the fact that it is normal for there to be a four-year spread in the average age of the onset of puberty. Add to that the fact that it is normal for girls to be about two years ahead of boys. This means that there could be a six-year developmental difference between a late-blooming 13-year-old boy and an early-developing 13-year-old girl. Most of us who have worked with junior highers for any length of time have seen this phenomenon firsthand. There in your eighth grade Sunday school class is a girl who looks old enough to be dating college guys (and she could be). And sitting right behind her is a freckle-faced boy with a high-pitched voice who looks about nine years old. Which one is the real eighth-grader? Which of these young people do you choose your eighth-grade Sunday school curriculum for? These are questions that will continue to plague those who work with this age 8roup and unfortunately there are no simple answers. "And here we are considering only biological age," adds Lipsitz. "There is such extreme logical age... may be the i most misleading social organizer that we variability among individuals who are changing not only physically, but sO socially, emotionally, and intellectually, that the label of chrono- have adopted."" This is one of the reasons it is important that you do not look at your junior high group as a "group." Instead, you must see them as Jason, Michelle, Christen, Geoffrey, Jennifer, and Nick. Your group is a collection of persons who are all at different places in their develop- ment and who have different needs at different times. We will be saying a lot more in this book about the importance of relationships, but as you can see, the need for a personal, one-on-one kind of ministry becomes obvious when you consider the variability of this age group. Additionally we may need to find better ways to group junior highers than by age or grade in school. There is much debate over the appropriateness of grouping sixth-graders with seventh- and eighth- graders in middle school programs. Do sixth-graders belong with older kids or with younger? What about ninth-graders? Where do they belong? Some junior high ministries have experimented with grouping kids according to maturity level. Others have tried grouping kids according to interest, using a variety of electives and other activities from which kids could choose. Some churches allow kids to simply choose the group they feel most comfortable in. It is doubtful that there exists a simple, clear-cut method that takes the variability of this age group into consideration and works for everyone. One thing is clear: The junior high worker who is concerned about individual kids will do a better job meeting their needs than the one who is more concerned about groups. Nevertheless there are somne things that can be said about junior high kids in general, and in this book I won't hesitate to say them. While we cannot say that all kids are the same, we can say that the majority o young people between the ages of 1l and 14 do have many developmental characteristics and needs in common. But don't try to put the kids you work with in a box. Some kids will be way ahead of schedue others far behind, and some kids will skip certain stages altogether. @Orchidaceae