Sunday Night in The Loft

Well. . . .  we weren't in The Loft.

A few years ago we looked to "un-busy" our calendar of activities and events and focus on our weekly youth group gathering.  With extra curricular activities, sports, rec league, drama (as in play practice), jobs, homework, students are plenty busy and they don't need more busyness, in fact some of them probably need to slow down.  I think our culture is producing this need to keep busy feeling, I don't know what to call it.  This is just my humble, yet professional, opinion.


This doesn't mean we don't do special events and activities but they are few and far between and when we do the event has a purpose beyond let's just have a fun outing.

This week our church is housing our homeless community for the week.  Our guests arrive Sunday evening and stay through till Sunday morning.   We feed them a hot breakfast, pack a lunch, and feed them a nice dinner.

So rather than try to juggle around the space we decided to meet elsewhere with the youth.  So we did.  We went bowling!  I know it doesn't sound super spiritual and yes we didn't open the Bible at the bowling center, but ministry happened:

• We interacted with more students than we have in a few months.
• Students brought friends who don't go to church, we had several guests.  The guests had fun and will hopefully return this Sunday.
• Leaders were able to spend some time with a handful of students as each lane had adult leaders involved.
• Meaningful conversations took place.  Ministry happened.
• It mixed up the "usual".  We did something different at our normal meeting time.
• Students were excited to be there and it was a chance to plug the Super Bowl party for this Sunday.
• A huge amount of cheese fries were consumed and pizzas.

Look for opportunities to break away from the "usual" and design it in such a way that students interact with each other and even more importantly with the adult leaders who are investing in their lives.  You never know, a kid may go play laser tag as an introduction to your youth ministry and end up coming to know Jesus Christ.