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Dang It...It's Almost Fall!

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By Kurt Johnston
7/31/2009

A couple days ago I was walking through Target when my heart suddenly sank. Hanging from the ceiling was banner after banner showing junior high-aged students in various “back to school” poses (girl holding notebook, boy standing near locker….). When I was younger, I absolutely hated the fact that back to school commercials would start showing up on television sometime around July 1st!  All these years later, and I feel like Pavlov’s dog every time I see or hear that unspeakable phrase: “Back to…..” never mind, I can’t even type it!

But certainly there has to be SOMETHING good about the fall, right? Yes

Fall is a great time to recruit new leaders for your ministry.

In fact, when it comes to junior high ministry there are some great things fall offers. Let me share a few:

• Fall is a great time to recruit new leaders for your ministry. You have parents of new junior high students, you have college-aged kids who didn’t move away to college and you have people who may be thinking, “I really should get involved in ministry when summer is over”. Plus, if your ministry is like ours fall is always one of the key times we kick off new programs and bring back some traditional ones that took a break over the summer. Because of this it’s the perfect time to recruit new leaders.
• Fall is a great time to try something new. It’s a new season and the start of a new school year which means it’s the perfect time to introduce a new idea, a new program or a new ministry experiment of some type. I emphasize the word “experiment” because that’s a wise word to use when trying something new. “Hey team, this fall we are going to try a new experiment to see how it goes. We are going to build a taco stand in the youth room and sell tacos to raise money for orphans in the Ukraine.”  When the taco stand flops because nobody likes tacos at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings and they don’t get the connection between Mexican food and Ukrainian orphans (a connection that was totally obvious to you….), you can shut the whole thing down and chalk it up to an “experiment”. Brilliant.
• Fall is a great time to get rid of sacred cows. One of the reasons I favor a highly thinned-down summer schedule (in our ministry we shut down most of our ongoing programs and replace them with summer-specific activities) is because after three months of not doing something, it’s pretty easy just to keep not doing it once the fall rolls around!

I don’t like fall. I don’t like that the days get shorter and the temperatures get colder (here in Southern California, the temperatures can get as low as 70 degrees in the fall!). And even though I no longer have to shop for school notebooks, the idea of the “back to school” campaign still makes my heart sink. But as a youth pastor, I have come to embrace it because I have to admit, there are great things that fall has to offer.

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Good article. I agree, the thought of Fall can make your heart sink, but the opportunities change that

Brett 7:08:33am on 8/26/2009

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Good article... but 70 degrees in the fall? When you're a Canadian you call that summer.

Canadian Stef 12:08:33pm on 8/25/2009

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Haha good article. It so true! Here in New Zealand the "Back to School" commercials start straight after New Years and it is such a pain especially as your're still enjoying the holiday festivities. I dread them! but thinking about it now I realise that next year it won't bother me anymore lol or will it..? It seems to have with you...

Hannah 3:08:43am on 8/24/2009

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