Category: Youth Pastoring

We are one of the few churches that does Vacation Bible School from kids all the way up to Seniors. It makes for an interesting week, where I as the children's pastor don't really get near the kid VBS because I am spending all of my time in the Youth VBS. We sort of run them as two separate events that just happen to be going on at once, but it is neat to have a place for older siblings when the young ones are coming to VBS. Anyway, a week with students is both really fun and also really tiring. The keep spending time together and as such get more and more annoyed at each other and I keep teaching, but after 5 nights it is easy to tune…

Today was one of those staple youth group events, the trip to the amusement park. This is something I have been doing for pretty much all 20 years of ministry, and really don't quite understand how it fits in with the overall vision, but it is fun. In many ways the amusement park trip is a leftover from the days when parents expected the church to entertain their kids and come up with activities and such, sort of like a social club. But in some ways it is a unique opportunity for kids to invite their friends, and for me as a youth minister to get to see new people. The problem is there is very little chance for interaction and there is an almost 0 chance that the gospel…