One of my passions in student ministry is to remove the cliff–the graduation cliff. Student ministry is at it’s best when it bridges high school and adulthood. I’m done with the days of graduating students and forgetting about them. That was one of my greatest mistakes as a new youth worker. Now, I believe in equipping students for the transition to adulthood and setting them up with mentors to walk with them through the process.
One of the ways we work toward this goal is hosting a reunion event over Christmas break. Basically we’ve invited all of our 2013 graduates and their small group leaders back for an event. I’m so pumped for this event that I’ve come up with 7 reasons why you should do it too.
1. Reconnect Students and Mentors
The best reason for putting on a reunion event is to reconnect students with their mentors. Our graduates, even though they are freshmen in college, still need quality adults in their lives to mentor them. And, truthfully our adult mentors need students in their life too. Mentoring brings life to both sides. Anyone who has ever mentored a student knows this is true. You always get more out of it than you give.
Relationships are the key to growth. Rekindling the relationship between students and mentors is reason enough to do a reunion event.
2. Evaluate Your Ministry
Getting graduates together for a reunion event is a great opportunity to listen. We are very intentional about creating a curriculum for our senior class that will help them transition. Did the curriculum work? A reunion event is a chance to ask our graduates, “What surprised you? What do you wish you would have known? How could we have prepared you better?”
If many of your graduates are struggling in their faith maybe it’s time to rethink how you are doing student ministry. But, you’ll never know unless you ask students who have graduated out of your ministry.
3. Reorient Your Graduates
A reunion event is a great opportunity to speak truth to your graduates. Getting them together over Christmas is like speaking to students at Winter Retreat. They are out of their normal environment. They are more open to truth. They are evaluating their first semester choices. Take advantage of this to remind your graduates of what is important.
4. You Still Belong
It’s terribly disorienting to go off to college. Even after only one semester, your hometown feels different. Church doesn’t quite feel like home anymore. You’re not really welcome in the student ministry and your old friendships have changed. A reunion event is a great way to tell your graduates that they are still a valued member of the community. They still belong. Their small group leaders and mentors still care about them.
5. Evaluate Your Church/Ministry Recommendations
One of the things we do in our student ministry is connect each of our graduates with a church or ministry wherever they are going after high school. Our goal is that the church or ministry would connect with them before they arrive on campus.
A reunion event is a great time to ask about these recommendations. Were a few of your recommendations duds? It would be good to know. I love it when a student falls in love with a new church in their college town. That is a great feeling!
6. Encourage Your Graduates to Plug In
So maybe a few of your recommendations were duds. Or, maybe you didn’t make any recommendations. Get on it for next year!
We know how crucial community is to growth. A reunion event is a good opportunity to remind our graduates of how important community is. Encourage them to plug in. Maybe Christmas break is new opportunity to help them find a good ministry.
7. Remind Yourself of the Goal of Student Ministry
Hanging out with graduates of your student ministry will force you to grapple with the outcome of your work. It isn’t about numbers. It isn’t about great bands, environments or talks. It’s about students pursuing Jesus after leaving your ministry.
Listening to graduates talk about the joys and struggles of life after high school will help you better understand what topics you need to address while they are still in high school. It will remind you of the importance of mentors. It will remind you of how powerful inter-generational church is. It will remind you of the goal of all we do and will help you reorient your practices around these goals.
So, schedule a student ministry reunion event. There’s still time and your graduates will be bored over Christmas break anyway. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Bring together your graduates and their small group leaders. Encourage them, listen to them and reorient them. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how it went.
