Every April the NFL does it’s yearly draft selecting from the best college prospects so that their team could be better for the upcoming years. Listening to Mike & Mike in the Morning on ESPN Radio this morning on my way to the airport for the Orange ’11 Conference made me think, do we do a yearly Ministry Draft in our student ministry departments?
Thinking out-loud and very fresh in my mind, this is how I see we do our Ministry Draft – see if you can follow me on this:
- Each year we say good-bye to our seniors just like each NFL team says good-byes to certain players via retires, trades or free-agency.
- Also, every year, we add new people to our ministry. We do this through rising middle and high school students from elementary school and through visitors checking us out for the 1st time.
- Now, out of all those new people we take a look back, get to know them (as the NFL teams do before the draft) and then evaluate who they are and the potential they have to help us out in ministry. In a sense, rather unconsciously, we pick and choose who to invest our time in and who not to invest our time in.
- The current players (or students) are there to add life to the program and add critical components to the team, but the people we invest time into and draft with lots of potential are going to be the people we deem as the fast ships. They are the 1st round selections that are eager to grow in Christ and get the vision of reaching out to their friends. They are going to help our program grow which means more students will be able to hear about Christ which means more people will discover Christ as their Lord and savior which equals a winning season for our program.