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Recently I’ve been thinking about how much of a leader’s energy goes into 30% of the people in their community. For a youth worker, that means you’re investing lots of energy into the 15% of your kids who are doing super great and the 15% of your kids who are really struggling.
But what about that middle 70%? Who’s investing in them? They aren’t as high maintenance or shiny as the other 30% but they’re probably the majority of your kids.
Maybe it’s time to look down the list of your kids and ask questions about each kid:
- How is this kid doing in their journey with God?
- How could our ministry help this kid move a bit forward?
- What adult(s) are investing in this kid?
Let’s not ignore the vast middle…
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May 26th, 2010 at 7:24 am
[...] just read an article on the Fuller Youth Ministry blog about the middle 70%. Their contention is that the thriving 15% get a lot of attention and the [...]
May 26th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Our schools struggle with this, too, especially when resources such as counseling are scarce.
May 27th, 2010 at 8:59 am
Kathy H. –
We struggled with the same issues for years. We’ve only recently begun working with the schools in our area to develop policies and procedures that address specific concerns in adolescents. With the lack of resources available we had to create our own. For example we put together teams that would research and educate the rest of the staff on specific issues like teen depression, self-injury, eating disorders, etc. and developed plans accordingly. I know this can be taxing on an already overworked staff but we pulled parents and community members into these teams to carry the load and received mostly positive responses from them as a result.
Thanks for this post Kara. It’s glorious work to reach the unreachable but we can often forget about the kids right under our own nose.
June 8th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
I’ve been thinking about this very thing from the opposite perspective recently! We’ve got a number of young people but it’s hard to build a strong group dynamic or achieve any level of discipleship with them. All of them are engaged in smaller groups and get some level of support, so we’re planning to invest heavily in the 15% who are passionate about their faith.
In a similar way to how Jesus invested in his disciples, our hope is that the group will really thrive and inspire the other 70+15% around them to get more serious about their personal faith.