The Middle 70%

May 26, 2010

Kara Powell
Kara Powell

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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:

  1. How is this kid doing in their journey with God?
  2. How could our ministry help this kid move a bit forward?
  3. What adult(s) are investing in this kid?

Let’s not ignore the vast middle…

©2010 Fuller Youth Institute

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  • Pingback: Swimwell and the Middle 70% « Like a fire

  • http://www.kchblog.com Kathy H.

    Our schools struggle with this, too, especially when resources such as counseling are scarce.

  • http://conversationsonthefringe.com Chris S.

    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.

  • http://ww.jonjolly.com Jon Jolly

    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.

  • Pingback: Swimwell and the Middle 70% | Being Ministry

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