Last week, I received quite a shock when I attended our church's worship service. I walked in during one of the songs, and I couldn't believe what I saw: middle school student who's in our student worship band playing bass guitar with the church's regular worship band. When I thought it couldn't get any worse, when I confronted the middle school student about it afterward, she told me that she was thinking about joining the church worship band permanently. She said the other band members were really nice to her, and that she had started having coffee with one of the female vocalists every week before rehearsal. Apparently they hit it off because the student's parents are going through a divorce, and the same thing happened to the vocalist when she was in middle school.
As you can imagine, I was furious with our worship pastor. I mean, doesn't he know that middle school and high school students are off limits? Those are MY students, and they belong in the student ministry, not with the rest of the church. What should I do?
Sincerely,
Frustrated in Fresno
Frustrated:
I can understand why you're so upset. Some people don't understand that the only place that a teenager's faith can grow is in the student ministry wing of your church. Hopefully, this will be simply an isolated issue for your church. For your part, here are some things you can do to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again:
- Keep your students as separated from the rest of your church as possible. Ideally, you'll have a student ministry building that's across the parking lot from your church's sanctuary. You can also stress to your students that since they go to youth group, they don't need to go to your church's worship service.
- Keep your leadership team as young as possible. The last thing you want is to encourage your students to hang out with people from older generations. Keep telling students that older people are out-of-date, and they won't be tempted to hang out with adults in your church who aren't leaders in your youth ministry.
- Make it clear that the only way they can grow spiritually is to go to as much stuff in your youth ministry as possible. That way, whenever there's a choice between being a part of your ministry and doing something with a different department of your church (like playing in the church's worship band), they'll be more likely to choose your youth ministry.
Sincerely,
Youth Pastor
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