God has blessed me with the opportunity to run a ministry that I truly love being a part of. I feel humbled when I think about it. I want to do what God asks me to do. That being said, I have realized that the Bridge ministry that God has trusted me with is missing the target of what we were trying to accomplish. That's not to say it is a failure, far from it. But the goal from the beginning was to acclimate the 5th and 6th graders into middle school ministries and for them to get to know the adult leaders we have.
Initially I think we were on the right track. The middle school leaders we had were a part of it and the 5th grade leaders were too. As we have evolved into our own ministry though I think that we have become a bridge (pun intended) to a deserted island. We have separated ourselves from the core group of the middle school kids and leaders that we wanted to familiarize the Bridge kids with.
God has opened my eyes to this. There isn't a quick fix. There is a way to do this but it will help in many ways but also present a few new challenges. First, I think that the Bridge should be folded back into Surge. If we have the 5th-8th graders together for parts of Surge Live Wire on Friday nights it would allow the kids to know the adult leaders that are there. It will also let them mingle with the 7th and 8th graders so as they get older they know some of these other kids. It will help the Bridge by having more adult help. Andrew and I can combine our efforts and only need to plan the specific parts where we would separate the kids into 5-6th and 7-8th. Secondly, I think there should still be some Bridge only events to help get some kids that are afraid of church to feel comfortable coming to a less formal event. This is kind of the way things were in the beginning and it worked.
One of the main challenges would be space. With the addition of 20-30 kids (maybe much more) it would require us to need meeting space for core groups. There would also need to be a decision made on how to handle group games. We would want to add the 5th and 6th graders into the mix without them getting killed by eighth graders! We would need more adult leaders also. I think we could easily solve these problems but it would have to be addressed.
Another benefit would be that we would only have one night to need volunteers. For Student Ministries we are spreading ourselves thin for getting help 3 nights a week. In addition, we would also let adult leaders move up with a group of kids from 5th through 8th grade building a much better relationship. There really isn't a down side to this and it would allow us as a ministry to accomplish what God has put in our hearts to do.
Steve
