Last weekend I hosted the high school (HSM) services at Saddleback Church, and this weekend I’ll did junior high (Wildside).

Last week we were in the middle of the Hooked series on temptation, so we did fun things with live goldfish and played fishing instructional videos. My favorite part was the YouTube video of an 8ft catfish. Amazing. Fields taught on how friends and accountabilty build up a defense to temptation if someone knows your life and knows your struggles. Great stuff, I taught the 4:30 service on Sunday as well, filling in so he could do a birthday dinner with his kids. Then tonight, I hosted the Price is Right for the last week of Wildside’s Back to School series, where we did various pricing games with school supplies with the huge finale of Plinko. Good times.

Couple of observations? The junior high audience is way more forgiving to the presenter, everyone laughs at everything, everyone wants to play the game and in general things can last a bit longer and no one seems to mind. Senior highers on the other hand, are completely unforgiving to the presenter, people laugh at some things but not some things you would expect, few want to play any game up front and in general the shorter the sweeter. Except for freshman, they haven’t figured out it’s cool to not play the games. Give ’em a year, they’ll figure it out. So although both weekends were successful and lots of fun, I think that the stage people in high school ministry have a much more difficult job.

I know these are some pretty groundbreaking observations, so I hope you were sitting down when you read it.

JG