pre-teens, tweens and the rest...
0 Comments Published by Steven Anderson on Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 9:01 AM.
I've always tried to fight labels as much as possible... Who am I kidding, our culture is about labeling things. Throughout the 90's everyone had to come up with the most PC labels and for the most part these pretty much took. This is something that I'm incredibly happy about because no minister wants their title to be "minister to immature, stinky, body changing, trying to find out where they fit, sometimes super energetic and sometimes way to cool kids." Then someone would probably take that and make it into some sort of acronym because that is what we do as churches.
As it relates to my ministry I was having a conversation last week with some leaders about pre-teens and tweens. We were both discussing how we don't like to think of our students as pre-teens and tweens, we both agreed that in our ministry they would be called middle schoolers.
There were two things that I thought about since that conversation. I was asking myself two important questions: (1) Why don't I like the terms Pre-teen and tween? (2) How are we doing (in our ministry) in preparing students to be teens?
My answer to the first question -
These seem like children's terms for kids that are in a transitional stage of life. As a middle school pastor I think that they should be labeled something cool and exciting, but I'm still thinking about that. I like what Fellowship Church in Grapevine, TX has done with naming their ministries to this age group as Merge and Surge. Those two words do justice to defining this stage in life. Merge because it is a time to grow up (not all the way) and start taking on major spiritual responsibility and Surge because once they get it God can do some amazing things in and through them.
My answer to the second question -
This is a totally new perspective for me. I've always known that students are becoming teenagers in my ministry, but I can't say that I've ever done anything super-intentionally aimed at just that specific time with someone isn't 12 anymore. Maybe it is worth the extra hour of thought and extra layer of discussion to see how we can better and more intentionally guide students and parents not just into their High School years but their teen years too.
This could be just a fresh perspective change for me, but one that I find challenging.
As it relates to my ministry I was having a conversation last week with some leaders about pre-teens and tweens. We were both discussing how we don't like to think of our students as pre-teens and tweens, we both agreed that in our ministry they would be called middle schoolers.
There were two things that I thought about since that conversation. I was asking myself two important questions: (1) Why don't I like the terms Pre-teen and tween? (2) How are we doing (in our ministry) in preparing students to be teens?
My answer to the first question -
These seem like children's terms for kids that are in a transitional stage of life. As a middle school pastor I think that they should be labeled something cool and exciting, but I'm still thinking about that. I like what Fellowship Church in Grapevine, TX has done with naming their ministries to this age group as Merge and Surge. Those two words do justice to defining this stage in life. Merge because it is a time to grow up (not all the way) and start taking on major spiritual responsibility and Surge because once they get it God can do some amazing things in and through them.
My answer to the second question -
This is a totally new perspective for me. I've always known that students are becoming teenagers in my ministry, but I can't say that I've ever done anything super-intentionally aimed at just that specific time with someone isn't 12 anymore. Maybe it is worth the extra hour of thought and extra layer of discussion to see how we can better and more intentionally guide students and parents not just into their High School years but their teen years too.
This could be just a fresh perspective change for me, but one that I find challenging.
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