It’s easy to see that as middle schoolers start growing into their adult selves, their brains are changing—especially when we attempt a small group discussion that includes 6th and 8th graders, for example. 

Our brains don’t stop developing til we’re in our mid-20s—so during the years between middle school and young adulthood, we are in a long process of discovering new ways of thinking and making connections between the concrete thinking of childhood to the abstract patterns of thought that makes up our adult minds.

If we tell a group of grade school children “God loves you,” most of them will take this truth at face value. Until they reach middle school. If we tell a group of middle schoolers, “God wants to change the world through you,” they will need to see HOW in order to really embrace it.

Middle schoolers are growing an urge to taste, touch and feel what they once simply accepted. Experimentation helps to bring both worlds together. Some people find the “E” word, well, frightening. And I can see why.

But I love it.

Experimenting enables students to discover their God-given gifts and passions hands-on. Which means they might just embrace them and be used by God to change the world.

Spiritual gifts inventories and other testing tools may be helpful for assessing adults’ wiring, but are of little use in middle school because they force students to assess who they are long before they’ve lived enough to discover it.

Middle schoolers need to experiment—to “try on” different ministry hats. In the process they’ll discover who God’s made them and get to affirm each other in the same process.

Almost any experience can become a lab if it sets students up to try out an area of ministry, service and interaction with people that is a potential area of gifting and passion. (For examples, see the July issue of Batteries.)

Any of these make good service projects. But what makes them great ministry labs is:

1.The commitment to teach students new things they may love doing.

2.The willingness to let students “try out” a wide variety of things they may or may not be gifted to do well—and be okay with the messiness that may ensue.

3.The intentionality of talking students through their experiences to help them find a good fit.

This month’s free download includes questions to help you develop your own equipping labs.

~Laura Wampach