Student Ministry: Free Middle School Group Devotion

Our Church got together with a few other churches this past weekend and had a Middle School Retreat out at Woodland Lakes Christian Camp. One of the resources we put together for the retreat was a group devotion time for Saturday morning. 

The retreat was focused on helping students realize what an authentic faith looked like, and ways they could develop their faith. The devotion itself focused on spiritual gifts. Our goal was to help students realize one of the ways God had uniquely gifted them, and help them think about how they could use that gift for God's Glory. We also included a devotional time for group leaders to spend praying for their students. Our hope was to plant a seed in students' minds to be thinking about the rest of the day, and also to have group leaders fully engaged with their students by starting the day off praying for them.

I wanted to share the devotion with all of you. Especially those of you who are involved in Student Ministry so that you could use it, or take away some ideas from it for your students. Let me know what you think of it, or if you use it some time, how it goes. Id' also love to hear your thoughts about how this style of devotion time could be strengthened or improved. 


Feel free to use it for whatever you want:
Devotion Overview and Instructions

Hand Outs and Leader Guides
(Hand outs are to be printed front and back)

Please Pray For Our Students and Leaders This Weekend

Prayer Guide:

One of the biggest parts of anything we do in Student Ministry is Prayer. This weekend we have a great group of students and leaders heading up to Woodland Lakes Christian Camp to have a blast and go deeper in the spiritual walk with God.  Let’s all take an active role in this retreat by spending time both now and this weekend praying for our students, leaders, and the other churches attending this retreat.

In Ephesians, Paul talks a few times about praying for other believers. Here are a couple of examples:

Ephesians 1:16

I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

Ephesians 6:18

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

Here are a couple of things we can be praying about:

1. Our Students- pray that they would be attentive this weekend. That God would give them open eyes and ears, and soft hearts. We want them to be comfortable enough to talk about their faith and the questions they have. We also want them to feel challenged to share God’s love with those around them.

2. Our Leaders- they are giving up a lot of sleep and one whole weekend to invest in our students. Pray that God would bless them with whatever energy or focus they need to be present in every moment this weekend. Also be praying that they are filled up with God’s Spirit so He can overflow into the lives of the students around them.

3. The Speakers and Worship Leaders- Pray that they would lead us deeper into our commitment to Christ. That it wouldn’t be a show or a look how cool I am moment, but instead it would be a sharing of God’s truth and a celebration of all He has done for us.

4. Our Students lives after the Retreat- Pray that the things they learn and the changes they want to make last. It is hard after a retreat like this to explain what you learned or what you want to do. You go back to school and try to tell your friends about it, and its just difficult. As they get back into the swing of day to day life it’s difficult to keep things fresh with God sometimes too. Pray that God’s Spirit equips them for the journey ahead.

5. Our role as parents and leaders in students’ lives- We all have a huge role in what we just prayed about for our students. It’s hard for them to make the decisions they make at a weekend retreat stick sometimes. It is our job as parents, leaders, and friends of these students to not just encourage them in those good choices, but support them in achieving them. Pray that we would clearly see our role in that process and that we would serve in that role with a passion.

Don’t forget to thank God in advance for all the good he has done in our lives, and the good things we haven’t even realized He is going to do through us.