Questions about our Breaks

I'm going to start a new kind of post on a regular basis. Common Questions that are asked about the Student Ministry at CPC. We had our parent move up meeting on Sunday and our parents asked some great, but common questions. A question I often hear is why we take breaks or don't have youth ministry going on when we are at a conference or at a camp? We take a two week break at the begining of June, the begining of September and the weeks of Christmas and New Year. We take these breaks for several reasons. We take a break during June because we have so many graduations and grad parties that we don't have a lot of programming time. We are also preparing for our summer theme, getting our teachings together for the summer as well as the room design. We do the same thing during the September break, except for all the graduations. Instead we are getting ready for the all church retreat, getting kids in Life Groups and just plain kicking off the fall. I really want our staff to be a quality staff that is trained to help students to the best of their ability. So when we go to a conference, we usually take the youth staff with us. With no youth staff, it makes it difficult to run a ministry. The same goes with camp. When we take the kids to camp, we are usually taking most of the students as well as the staff. I also believe that our students are old enough to be attending church with their families. I really believe that students need to learn to worship will all the generations of the church. They too are part of the body of Christ. It's important for students to know that as well as letting the church body know that we have students that attend "big church." Personally, I'm in youth ministry for the long haul. Many of our volunteer leaders are also in youth ministry for the long haul. It's healthy for all of us to take a break. That is how we stay in youth ministry for the long haul. Our volunteers put a lot of hours in each year. We added it up one year and it was like 400 hours and that didn't include going to student events or out for a soda. These folks have their own families as well and they take time away from their own family to spend time, nuture, counsel and hang out with your students.