In a lot of small churches, building a youth ministry starts with a handful of middle schoolers. The ministry may not take off because of the lack of interest of the younger teenagers. Getting middle schoolers to show up at Bible study, participate in a project, or even attend camp may be a challenge. So, if your group is mostly middle schoolers, how do you do real youth ministry?

I think middle schoolers are great. Okay, keep laughing, but it’s true. They love being together. Almost anything can capture their attention, though it probably won’t hold their attention for long. And they will do almost any crazy thing you can come up with. Their brains are developing rapidly. One minute, they can show amazing insight and the next they could be experimenting to see how chili powder would taste on ice cream. What could be greater than that?

So, how do you build a ministry that works for them?

1. Always expect disruptions. It may happen when one of them passes gas or it may be the distraction of someone noticing a caterpillar, but whatever you do will be disrupted. You can yell at them to pay attention if you want, but you will make a lot more progress if you will make a joke about it and then say, “As I was saying . . . “
2. Don’t expect to keep their attention for longer than 10 minutes with anything. A Bible study that changes activities–maybe even locations–five or six times in an hour will be more junior high friendly than one that invites them into an hour long discussion.
3. Don’t just tell them; show them. Middle schoolers sometimes have a hard time grasping concepts. Help them to see how those concepts fleshed out.
4. Don’t just tell them; let them try it. Middle schoolers will learn more from doing than from watching. Short video clips are great, but give them a chance to get their hands on an idea.
5. The more they laugh, the more they learn. Okay, I guess it depends on what they are laughing about, but middle school ministry that is humor-less loses points with middle schoolers quickly. Tell some funny stories. Invent some crazy games. Use exaggeration and hyperbole . . . they are just starting to really get that stuff.

The big problem with Middle school ministry that reaches middle schoolers is that it probably won’t reach much of anyone else. Since you probably have middle schoolers and high schoolers together, you are going to have a challenge. You have some choices:

1. Reach the middle schooler and build a high school ministry as they grow up. If you have a few high schoolers, ask them to lead games, tell stories, and be leaders.
2. Focus on your high schoolers and hope your middle schoolers will come because they think the high schoolers are cool. Since middle schoolers think almost any high schooler is cool, this can work. It helps a lot of your high schoolers actually talk to your middle schoolers.
3. Provide some activities where you target high schoolers and some where you target middle schoolers. This works well, but it depends on having enough leaders and enough students to make both kinds of activities work.

Regardless of which approach you take, don’t expect middle schoolers to be like their older peers. Look for ways to challenge their curiosity and feed their hunger for humor.