Thoughts on Depth of Teaching to Middle Schoolers

Middle School ministry as a whole gets a pretty bum wrap. Most youth pastors I know with an exception of a few prefer High School ministry over Middle School. In fact, most churches are set up where the High School pastor is the head of the Youth Min. department and the Middle School pastor is waiting to “climb the ladder”. The belief is that the hierarchy is normative and that most people want to move out of Middle School ministry.

When I asked myself why this could be and asked others why they thought this could be, one resounding answer came coming to the forefront: depth of content. I myself said when I moved to my position as Middle School pastor at ACAC: “I’m a bit sad that I won’t be able to go as deep with them as I could my High Schoolers in Nyack”.

The reality is that with most topics this is true; however, we can go deeper with Middle School students than most people think.

Middle School students now a days are dealing with things only adults dealt with approx. 50 years ago. They are faced with: gangs, sex, drugs, violence, broken homes, dead-beat dads, awful school expectations, horrible living conditions and that’s just the beginning of the list. These issues can run deep and they cause the Middle School students to grow up faster than before.

If we skirt issues with Middle School students like sex, sin and fatherless-ness with pithy, easy to understand topical talks we can seriously miss our window of opportunity with these students. We can teach: real, honest truth to these teens without watering it down like we so often do.
When I got older and learned more about the Bible I was hurt that when I was a young kid, my Sunday school teachers missed huge pieces of teaching. I found many things different than what I was taught and false…all because they wanted to water stuff down and make it “easier” to understand.

Middle School students are hungry for depth, hungry for knowledge, hungry for acceptance, hungry for discussion yet we aren’t giving them the strong food they need because we fear they won’t get it…or much worse…we can’t teach what we don’t know.

Sadly, I have noticed many a youth pastor being complacent with their studies, neglecting their Bibles and neglecting to read any other books. I am not saying I am much different but I am convinced we must all read more, study more and go deeper ourselves.

Off of that soap box…Middle Schoolers deserve deeper teaching than we’ve previously given them. I know you may scoff at this but we can teach them doctrine, we can indeed teach them the deeper truths of the Bible and…they will get it! I am convinced we as youth pastors have shortchanged Middle School ministry for too long. They are not the annoying, painful, low level group of kids so many people box them into being. They are deep, vastly intuitive teenagers who need to be challenged. As I’ve prayed about what God desires for me to do with the Middle Schoolers he has entrusted to me, this truth has hit me over and over again: going deep with them is what they need!

After all, the gods they worship can’t compare to Christ! He is the only God who can save them from their junky lives and make them new creations!