Last Sunday my church held a church-wide picnic. I know, for those of you guys in Illinois and Nebraska, having a church-wide picnic is a little early, but it works pretty well in Southern California. The Pastor (who is a bit of a sports nut) declared this our opening of baseball season and divided us into American League and National League fans. For us, mostly Dodgers fans and Angels fans. I’m sure the Angels and the Dodgers would have been mortified if they could have seen the little kids and grandmas at our church hitting at a wiffle ball, but it made us happy. I know that lots of churches . . . particularly small churches . . . have church picnics, so I’m really not telling you about this because i think it is a novel idea. I’m telling you about it because I think it illustrates a significant point about youth ministry in the small church. I think we actually had more teenagers at that picnic/wiffle ball game than we have had at our recent youth activities.

Youth ministry in the small church has this incredible opportunity of connecting teenagers with oldsters and youngsters in the church. Kids can learn to laugh and love people of all ages . . . and a lot of kids get a chance to see their parents and maybe even their pastor actually playing.

Yes, youth ministry activities . . . the kind where only kids and their adult sponsors show up . . . are valuable and play an important role in youth ministry. Don’t miss giving youth opportunities to hang out with youth from time to time. But I think we should view these church wide experiences as part of our youth ministry as well. Youth ministry is not a set of young-people only activities. Youth ministry is what a church does to help their teenagers fall in love with God and grow to mature faith in Christ. And sometimes that means seeing people older than they are up close enough to understand the roll faith plays in adult life.