Our youth ministry calendar this year has a bunch of new stuff on it. We added retreats and trips that we’d never done before, based mostly on a perception that, while regular weekly commits abound in our students’ lives, opportunities to get away overnight (or several nights) with peers are less frequent.
Each of these overnight events draws a unique community that I am certain will never be together again in exactly that configuration. Of course, that is increasingly true of the weekly gathering, too; attendance patterns no longer support a regular, repeatable community of participants week after week. This week’s community won’t be back again.
Perhaps this sounds dramatic, but it feels like a good time to start thinking of every group gathering we schedule as a one-off where we don’t assume a level of familiarity between students and we don’t expect facility with the habits and ideas we’re trying to teach.
This isn’t bad. It would be true of something brand new.
YoRocko! 