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Students (anyone) in church

There’s an interesting article in the newspaper about high school students dropping out of school before they graduate. If they aren’t staying in school, what makes us think they will stay in church?

One student is quoted in the article as saying “Learning should be fun.” She’s tired of learning and listening to teachers lecture from textbooks. She appreciates the teachers who “go beyond” and involve them in the learning process. We can understand that these students who are bored and not interested in classes at school aren’t going to be interested in church services and classes of the same format.

We must liven up our church services and classes and make them interesting and appealing to students (and anyone, for that matter). We must meet people on their learning levels and styles. We need to vary our teaching methods and offer a variety of ways to communicate the message.

Be creative. Involve attendees in the message.

Race fan

I was never much of a race fan growing up. I grew up most of my life in central Florida and it was too far from Daytona to really even care about racing. It wasn’t one of the most popular sports anyway.

In the most recent years, though, I’ve grown to like racing and often watch the Nascar races on tv on the weekends. We’ve lived 10 minutes from Dover International Speedway for 4 years and tonight was my first experience at a race. Someone at work had free tickets so why not?!

It wasn’t one of the biggest races, so I didn’t see my favorite M&M car or Jeff Gordon or Carl Edwards flipping over backwards out of his car, but it was an experience … an experience that I’ll remember … the excitement, the thrill, the noise, the drivers logos and trucks … quite interesting.

A new generation title

For years we’ve been titling generational people groups. We’ve had Baby Boomers (born 1943-1960), Generation X (born early 1960′s-early 1980′s), then Millennials (born late 1970′s-2000′s), sometimes called Generation Y. They are the Facebook and MySpace generation, but according to this article in the Washington Post, this generation doesn’t like titles and doesn’t really know where they fit in so some of them have titled themselves as generation Nintendo.

Churches, children’s & youth ministries, and classrooms must recognize that Millennials/Generation Y want to be interactive. We must design our worship settings around experiences in which each individual can be involved. The teacher is the facilitator and the students are the teacher-learners. The facilitator-teacher offers the curriculum and gives the directions and the students learn by doing and participating.

In churches we can teach using video and media techniques then offer interactive games to reinforce the message. These games may look like active play time but the lesson is being reinforced and taught again through interactive play. In classrooms we can offer learning centers of various forms to teach concepts and skills for children to participate in the learning process. It looks like play time but they are learning valuable skills through play.

Creating newsletters

So you have a newsletter or brochure or flyer to get out about an event, but you’ve used the same old design over and over. You want this one to be different so people will take notice and it won’t end up on the floor of the car.

Start with using a different font to grab attention … Design your own font … Fontstruct.

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