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YOU CAN'T TEACH JUNIOR HIGHERS ANYTHING

Sandie's blue eyes bulged with fear, and her thin cheeks were paler than usual. She stared at me for a moment, then slipped out of sight over the cliff.

It had taken a week to get her to this point, but finally she was doing something she had sworn she would never try. Sandie, the frightened little sixth-grader, was rappelling. After she reached the bottom of the cliff and stopped bouncing with excitement, I asked what she thought.

"I want to go again!"

Later I asked the rest of the group what had been the best moment of camp. Most of them said it was the seventy-foot drop off the cliff. "Now I really know what trust means," one girl said. She had learned in a way no classroom could teach her.

And once again a heresy proved false. There is no truth in the saying "You can't teach junior highers anything, so just keep them busy until they are in high school."

To many people, junior high ministry is nothing more than a holding effort, a place for the church to entertain the young and the restless. ...

March
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