Does anyone do Bridger Programs?
What is a Bridger Program?
Bridger Programs are ministries that are in place to help create a bridge over into your main youth meeting where your regular Bible Teaching and worship take place.
The point of the Bridger Program is to build some relationships with students that would stay away from “churchy” things. Once the relationship has been built and these students realize that the leaders care for them are then challenged to check out a main youth ministry program such as your weekly youth group time.
I currently do a bridger program on Friday evenings where we open up our youth center and just let the students come and hang out with no bible study or worship time that usually takes place on our Wednesday night program.
It works really well and it’s a great opportunity to reach out to those students that aren’t ready yet to step into a Christian youth program. Currently this program I run every Friday evening during the winter season and I’m always finding some one new that doesn’t yet go to our weekly youth worship program so I get the wonderful opportunity of inviting these new students week after week with out putting extreme pressure on them to show up to our Wednesday gig.
It is also my goal to have those that staff our Friday night hang time to be able to build relationships with these students and even challenge them with some general thoughts like: Have you ever thought about what would happen to you if you were to die? Is there a heaven and a hell? Is there a God? What do you think about spiritual things? How did the earth come into existence?
These types of questions may seem like we would be turning students away but the reality is that most people have these types of questions anyways. A great follow up to these questions is to say something like: Would you like to check out to discover what is true by coming to one of our meetings where topics like this are shared?
There is a fine line of feeling out where each student is at because you don’t want to burn bridges either and have students not wanting to return and label your Friday night thing just another youth group night so think through how to handle what you do and make sure that your help understands what they need to do too.
Have bridger programs worked for you? What type of bridger programs do you do?
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Although I have never called them “bridger programs” before, we try to do a variety of events that bridge to our regular Wednesday Night Worship Service. I usually try to do at least one event every month. This is with our middle school kids.
Things that have worked for us in the past are: “all-night” events (we go out all night long to different places like bowling, dinner, a local gym), we had a “christmas party” this past saturday at our house at which we had a number of visitors, we sometimes have movie nights in our youth center.
Also, it might be worth noting that we do “outreach” events once a month after our worship service. For instance, we had a dodgeball tournament in October after our worship service. We publicized it in the school with our kids and we had about 20 extra kids in service that night. We also had a competition to see what school could be the tallest. The idea was to bring as many kids from your school as you could and then measure everyone to see what school was the “tallest.” We coupled that with a huge feast the week before Thanksgiving.
All in all, bridger programs have been a huge stepping stone for our ministry. Let me know what you are think. Feel free to stop by my blog at youthrebellion.org to see what we have going on. God Bless.
Great ideas Steve. I haven’t heard them called “Bridger Programs” before but I’ve used them before. They work–and they’re key to attracting that “anti-church” crowd.