An optimal sized church?
Our theory is that a church should be allowed or encouraged to grow large enough to sustain a viable high school and middle school ministry. A successful student ministry requires critical mass in order to capture and keep the attention of their target audience. So the question becomes, how many adults are required to generate critical mass for a student ministry? That depends upon the demographic of a community.
If you are a twenty six year old seminary student with a couple of kids in diapers that may not sound like a great answer. But if you are a church planter with 150 people and one of your elders just informed you that her family is leaving because you don't have anything for her thirteen year old, it makes painful sense.
Parents will put up with a lot in big church if their teenagers feel connected to a student ministry.
Full post and comments here. Very interesting.
1 - Your student ministry is a huge attraction for families within the overall larger body of your community. It's not just about your students anymore. (Well, actually, it was never about your students necessarily.) So, you inherently have more responsibility, not just to minister to students, but to families. (If you are a mission team leader, you already have a natural connection with your students' families, whether you thought about it or not.)
2 - Maybe we all need to answer the question Andy asks - how many adults in your community are needed to generate critical mass for your student ministry? This critical mass can look different in the context of different communities. Notice the overall principle - contextualization. Just like in cross cultural ministry - context is important.
Its an interesting principle, especially since a lot of the discussion in the comments are things that I think people could easily say about GCC. But... healthy things grow. I could write more but I'm not going to right now.
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