Quick Questions for any Moore College Students reading this:- How do you feel serving two congregations (if you are a Student Minister)?
- Do you give weight to one gathering, and not the other?
- Would you have a preference to serve at one? Why? Why not?
- Does it change if one congregation serves one purpose, but not another (e.g. Morning Church, then Youth church?)
- Does it change if you have a family?
- Positives? Negatives?
Help me, if you can.
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Pic from Dan's Blog.
4 comments:
"I'm just trying to work out how it feels working in a church for just one day."
I hate it. Not the 'working in a church' bit, but the 'just one day' bit. I love serving my church and I struggle to find the right balance between church and making sure that I give enough time to college. (and knowing how much is enough)
As far as serving 2 congregations goes, the 2 I attend are really quite different and my part in them is different. At morning church I predominately do kids stuff and its easy for that to be a one day a week job in a sense, because there's only so much relationship building you can have with kids - child protection and all that.
At night church I don't really have an official role but there's a group of young woman I try to look after as best I can. This is harder though because there's only so much you can do on a Sunday.Honestly I feel like the biggest impact I have on them is actually in the time we spend together outside of Sunday.
In terms of the questions you asked - I probably give priority to one because its officially what i am there to do
- My preference is actually the one on one time outside of Sunday
- I'm a single woman which makes it easier for me to be flexible with meeting up with ppl outside of sunday
- Positives - only being at church one day a week helps to keep my focus on college for these 4 years
- Negatives - I think as we grow in Christian maturity its natural to want to serve more and more (hence why we are at college) and ts hard to curb that desire and to keep reminding yourself why you are
Just a few thoughts. Hope thats helpful in some way. :-)
Justin,
- I like it, although I'd prefer if all the people were in the one congregation! (actually, I've got three congregations per Sunday)
- Yep, the rector has asked that I focus on the evening with younger folk.
- No preference really in terms of my own appreciation for the style of service. I suppose though that it's easier to do certain kinds of ministry with people closer to my age. That said, the 8am service is incredible. It's growing like crazy, and the people there are wonderful. And, I'm digging the sung response liturgy! Bring back the Gloria!
(+ves): great experience, and great to mix with people of all ages and backgrounds. Again, I think it'd be preferable (for other reasons also) to have all ages in the same congregation, but that mightn't be possible the way we like to seal up the age groups into nice vacuums!
Oh, also it gives you a bit of a taste for what doing a whole day of church would be like for a minister. I preached at all 3 services last week and we exhausted by the end of it - made me appreciate my minister even more!
(-ves): you're really spread thin, and can't expect to do a whole lot. But hey, that's student ministry right? Other negatives are just that your time is usually weighted towards the younger folk - fair enough. But I wonder how that makes the older folk feel...? What would happen if a student minister was assigned to the 8am only?
Positives? Negatives?
For me, I saw the morning service as going to church with my family (wife + daughter) and then try and do some 'ministry of the pew' at morning tea. We'd go home for lunch then I'd just go myself to the evening service.
I felt I could be more intentional at night because I went by myself and most people were my age or younger.
I was briefed to focus more on Morning Church ministry but the reality was that with my family there it was not as easy than in the evening.
However, this year we're going to a church which has one morning service only. We're really looking forward to that as Sunday nights were pretty bad for my wife with a newborn. I know this is not the norm, but we'll enjoy it while we can.
If student minister's go through 3/4 years of college serving in 1 congregation how are they going to cope church life post college?
Depth of relationship is an obvious bonus to only serving in 1, but there are so many other things that can be learnt about church through serving in a variety of congregations.
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