Making Small Groups Memorable

Seriously, my wife is amazing. A-MAZING. She never ceases to amaze me.

Jen has a sweet little 6^th grade girl in her small group that is having a really difficult time transitioning from 5^th grade. We have tried all kinds of things but the little girl just doesn’t connect that well. She has checked out our Sunday morning program and our Wed night small group program, but she just doesn’t want to come. Her parent’s are pretty frustrated and feel at a loss of what to do.

And, unfortunately, this girl doesn’t connect very well at school either. She had a birthday party last month and none of her “friends” showed up.

DANG! Middle school is TOUGH!

So Jen’s small group decided to do something that I just love. They threw her a surprise birthday party last night! This girl loves Garfield so Jen bought a Garfield cake and got her a Garfield book and the other 8 girls in the small group brought gifts and a couple of them arrived early to decorate the room. The girl was truly confused, since her birthday was last month! Her mom stayed the whole time which really helped her and even dad stopped by.

I’d love for this to have a youth ministry fairy tale ending! You know, this changes the girl’s life, she feels the love of Christ, she all of the sudden has all her social skills, she goes to college, becomes the first female president, and then invites Jen and I up for the inauguration and she credits it all to Jen and that bday party. Yeah….right.

This is what makes student ministry fun, small groups memorable, and the kind of love that helps us all love our neighbor a little more.