Youth ministry

One of the areas that I'm weakest in is in youth ministry. I can't say that I have been particularly enamored of children in my life, nor do I have much experience with them. Because of that, one of my goals in internship is to get seriously involved with the youth ministry here at my congregation. It's a large congregation (900 members) in a small town (1500 people), with a lot of kids and youth, but not a lot going on for them. My first week I visited with 8th and 9th grade confirmation and met with the Director of Ed. to talk about the programs outside of confirmation, and it turns out that there isn't much. The congregation is overall pretty healthy and involved in the community, but this area provides an awesome opportunity for me to learn how to work with kids and design programs for kids and youth.

The first step was to assess what's here. There's confirmation for 8th and 9th grade, and some things available for younger children, but 5th-7th and 10th-12th grades have more or less been neglected. The second step has been to recruit volunteers from the congregation (check, as of yesterday), and compose a letter to the senior high youth to get an idea of what they'd be up for (composed, but not yet sent). As part of my internship I will be doing a project, and mine will be in the area of evangelism (which is less about proselytizing and more about getting out and building relationships with people outside the walls). I think the senior high youth will be a perfect opportunity to try to do this, but I'm not entirely sure what direction to take it yet. Getting a group started where people can just come and have some food and fellowship is a good start, but ultimately I want the goal to be going outside of ourselves. I also want to gear 8th grade confirmation toward understanding who we are as Christians so that when they get to 9th grade and start to really learn missional theology from my supervisor, they'll have a good grounding and can transition into learning more about discipleship in senior high. I have more solid ideas for confirmation, but the rest is pretty amorphous, and I have no idea yet what we should be doing about that 5th-7th grade group. Ten to thirteen year olds offer a pretty big developmental spread.

Do any of you out in blogger land know of any good resources for such things? Or have any thoughts? This is a massive undertaking, and I know it's going to probably take all year to really get anything off the ground, but I think I'm up for the challenge! We'll see what happens.