New Things

The Point is doing something new this year! As 2021 came to an end, I realized I still needed to plan for the 2022 Spring Calendar for Jr. and Sr. High Students. I have wrestled a long time with the routines of youth ministry . . . Wednesday night youth group, summer mission trips, bowling nights, etc. are great, but they just feel so . . . done.

Lacking any real passion for the planning process, I did what every great leader does . . . I delegated it to the youth! Seriously. I prepared several sessions of calendar planning, but with a twist. We decided to try a “Spirit-led Scheduling Session”.

Here’s how it went:

1. We spent 2 minutes in silence, just listening for anything God wanted to say. At the end of the two minutes we wrote down the things we heard, saw, felt, or sensed during that time. This just got us into the place of hearing God.
2. I handed out some “Prompt Cards” that included traditional youth group activities as well as some new ideas that had come out of previous conversations. Each student had a handful of cards like Game Nights, Retreats, Youth Group Meetings, Mission Trips, and Road Trips. We spent a few minutes praying over those cards and writing any ideas, feelings, or impressions we received about them.
3. We spent several minutes sharing about the things we heard from God regarding these ideas (and any new ones that came up).
4. We specifically asked Holy Spirit to give us a month, day, time , or season related to the cards we had in our hands. Then we taped those cards to calendars I had put up around the room.

The results of this experiment were profound! The Holy Spirit gave several people the idea for a breakfast meeting once a month for all youth. It was called Breakfast with The Point. Four different people taped a card up on the first Tuesday of every month. They didn’t talk about it with each other, they just followed the Spirit and it all came together.

There were other neat things the Holy Spirit showed us, but it boiled down to 2 basic themes:

1. God wants us to have more adventures with Him and each other – but maybe fewer “meetings”.
2. God wants us to actively give away the things He gives us!

The Jr. and Sr. High ministry put together a calendar for January through May based on the leading of the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t look quite like any other calendar I’ve done. Some things are the same, but even those have a freshness or newness to them.

Doing something NEW is important. Routines are circular, they are all about doing the same things to get the same results. New Things are about growth and change. And God loves to do new things!

See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19