Pursuit: An Emerging Preteen Ministry

One of the things I am excited about now is leading Pursuit, a preteen ministry we’ve sort of launched at the Northshore Vineyard. As I take baby steps to launch the ministry, I am reminded of how different it is leading within the context of a small church verses a large church. If you’re a preteen leader in a small church, this post will give you some great insights on how to approach reaching students in your unique context.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with my story, here is a quick recap. 14 years ago I launched a preteen ministry with a handful of students and small group of volunteers. It grew quickly into a large preteen ministry with a lot of volunteers. I spent about 80% of my time as a Children’s Pastor at the New Orleans Vineyard focused on our 4th-6th grade ministry – Club 456. I was on staff there for 10 years. After a few years, I was leading in the context of a large, rapidly growing church. It was fun. Then, I took a year and a half off of ministry. Needed time to recap and spend with family. Went into sales to pay the bills. Next, our family of five moved from New Orleans (never had lived anywhere else) to San Diego and I took a job in La Jolla as a Children’s Director. Much of my time and energy was focused on X-Zone, a preteen ministry of 4th/5th graders. It was much smaller than Club 456. We had about 20-30 students attending. Next, I moved on to Seven San Diego church as a part-time Children’s Pastor. PreteenMinistry.net at that time was my primary source of income. One of the things I did there was to launch a preteen ministry and identify a husband and wife  team to lead, Brian & Porshe’, to lead it. My role at Seven SD was different than in the past because my primary job was to raise up leaders, including Brian & Porshe’. After 3 years in San Diego, our family moved back to New Orleans (in June of 2012) and I went full-time with PreteeenMinistry.net.

We now live just north of New Orleans in a small town called Mandeville – a new place for us. We reconnected with old friends. And one of the guys I worked with at the New Orleans Vineyard (he was the worship pastor) had planted a church near our new home in Mandeville – The Northshore Vineyard. Over the last 6 months, we’ve gotten settled in our new home and I’ve been volunteering at the Northshore Vineyard as co-coordinator of 1st-6th grade with a focus on 4th-6th grade.

Why the long story? Simple. It’s been awhile since I’ve actually been in the trenches working directly with preteens. And ti’s been awhile since that group of preteens was small (5-8). And it’s been a really long time since I’ve been in a small church. Since we are a church plant only about 2 years old, we are a church of just over 100 in attendance. Coming from a background of three different large churches, I’m realizing the small church and/or church plant environment is completely different.

If you are a church plant or small church, this post is for you. Here’s what I am learning in the process of launching Pursuit.

Make a move now – design a ministry for preteens.
The immediate need when I arrived was to split the elementary ages – 1st-3rd & 4th-6th grade. Our primary goal was to get some volunteers to help with that process. No official launch. No cool room design or even a name associated with either ages. We just split up the kids and get some volunteers. Sometimes we think a ton of preparation and vision needs to go into launching a preteen ministry. I don’t think that is always necessary. Sometimes you just need to break up the age groups and go on from there. This brings up another issues. I’ve heard it said before that numbers justify an age separation when it comes to preteens and younger aged kids. I disagree. We have about 15 total kids 1st-6th grade. And we ran into the same problem that many of you experience – the older kids were disengaged. It doesn’t matter how many preteens are in your children’s ministry. You best reach them when you design a ministry that is specific to them and their developmental needs. For smaller churches that is as simple as making a decision to split up the age groups.

Room design is the next step.
After splitting up ages and recruiting leaders, the next step is to make your meeting space preteen friendly. Last night my own two boys, Joey & Ethan, helped to design the Pursuit logo you see above. Very excited about it. It will help create an identity within the group and move us to the next step – room design. Our room looks horrible. It’s a tiny room with bad lighting, stained carpet and blank boring walls. We’ve got a small table, couch and a few bean bags. That’s it. Now that we have a logo, the idea is to make it into a big banner we hang on the wall and paint the walls purple and blue matching the logo colors. Then, maybe get a cool rug to match and cover up the stained carpet. Room design is really important to preteens. It gives them a space to call home. A place they can identify with and be themselves within. A place they can do life together with God in the picture. Another thought – you don’t need to wait for the room to be perfect to move in. Meeting in a horrible room is better than grouping preteens with younger kids. Also, since our group is small, we can get most of them to participate in the room design. Our plan is to have a day soon where we paint the room together. Going to be fun.

As I move forward with leading Pursuit, I plan to keep writing posts about our progress. Sharing my thoughts with all of you. I hope to take a before and after picture of our new room as well. Excited!