When I got here a few months ago, I was kind of amazed that our Middle School program only had 20-30 students. I wasn’t suprised when I discovered why, we only offer Middle School during the 12:30 PM Sunday service. No wonder! For those of you who have made having your kids in Middle School a priority, thank you for being flexible. I know too many other paretns who wanted to but just couldn’t.
It seems like the reason for this wasn’t because Gateway didn’t want to reach out to Middle Schoolers during the other services, but because there just wasn’t any space. Not anywhere. Chad Swanzy (student pastor) and I began talking soon after I arrive to remedy this situation. Since we’re adding portable space to our existing facility, we thought that it would be best to create a permanent space for Middle School students… during all services.
So, on August 24th, the Cottage (our upstairs 5 year old room) will become the Middle School home. It was a no-brainer. It’s too big of a space for the 35-40 kids in there (in the portable, we’ll have the same amount of space, but divided into two rooms). On the other side, the Middle School program needs a larger room for their activities. Perfect!
So, this summer we’ve been holding 5th grade preview services. Chad Swanzy and his team have been taking the 5th graders out of Kids Quest and giving them a sneak peak at what Middle School would look like. So far, so good. The kids love it and we’ve been getting nothing but great feedback from our parents. We expect anywhere from 40-60 5th graders to promote to Middle School on August 24th. Did you hear that? 40-60! That’s alsmot twice the number of middle school kids attending now. In addition, our hope is that many middle school kids who only come during the 9:30 and 11:00 services will come out of the woodwork. It’s completely possible that we’ll be running 100 or so middle school students this fall!
So yes, we do love middle schoolers! We’re building a great community for them here at Gateway. If you know a middle school student who isn’t currently attending at 12:30, let them know that they can begin coming on August 24th at any service time. Also, our remaining preview services are on July 27th and August 17th.
23. July 2008 at 3:43 pm
I LOVE IT! Thanks so much Kenny and Chad for all you are doing there. My oldest will be in 5th grade next year and this is such a great blessing for families at GCC.
24. July 2008 at 2:05 pm
How exciting! I was involved with the 5th/6th group before we ran out of space. Look out. There’s a lot of kids this age out there, and they have FRIENDS!