Beach Break Recap

Published on April 30, 2011 by Robert Heckert

It has been a few weeks since beach break and some of you may have met my two friends Blayne and Danny. I had invited them along for the obvious reasons but also because I wanted to ask them about their opinions regarding the high school youth group. Both of them had a great time, but they both noticed two aspects we could improve upon.

On the way to the beach Danny asked someone what we were going to do over the weekend. The person told him all about the fun stuff we had planned, but left out the lessons and spiritual aspects of beach break. It was an honest mistake, but Danny and I agree that if we make a bigger deal about the activities than the lessons and what we can potentially learn, people may think of HSM as a group of people who just want to have fun. I realize this is not the case but I definitely believe we should keep that in mind.

Both Danny and Blayne felt welcomed by our youth group right away, but there were two other girls that nobody talked to. Danny and Blayne went to go talk with them and it’s a bit embarrassing that the newcomers were the ones who broke the ice. I get it, meeting someone new can be awkward but we certainly need to make people feel welcome. Building relationships is biblical and I suggest you read Ephesians 4:1-15 and pay close attention to verse 12.

There has been some discussion about what the summer theme should be and how we should do this and that in order to get people interested in HSM. That’s great, but our efforts will be wasted unless we actually approach and talk to the first timers. I don’t want to condemn high school ministries, but I certainly want to make people more aware of how we can improve.