Ed Trimmer Fall 2007

The middle school minister thought it was a great idea creating small covenant groups at the end of youth group where males would meet with males and females with females to talk and pray about their Christian faith walk. But the 5’10’ 180lb eight-grade boy was ready to smack the 5’ 90lb sixth grade boy across the room. He was totally fed up with the stupid comments that even his younger 10-year-old brother did not make. Chalk it up to developmental differences, normal middle school issues or something else?

In the 1970’s, when I started in youth ministry as an adult leader, less than 25% of middle
schools (then called junior high school) included sixth graders, and as a result most youth
ministries did NOT include sixth graders. Nationwide the number of sixth graders in a
middle school, as opposed to an elementary school, is now closer to 75% AND the state I
live and work in, North Carolina, is leading the nation with about 90% of its sixth graders
in middle school. This has meant that youth groups now routinely include sixth graders.
In fact, it is probably unusual today not to have sixth graders in the youth ministry BUT>
should they be in youth group?

A recent report looked at where sixth graders ought to be, elementary school or middle
school and made the startling discovery that when sixth graders are mixed with seventh
and eighth graders they have more disciplinary problems and lower test scores than sixth
graders kept in elementary school AND those problems persist through the ninth grade
NO MATTER what the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics for the sixth
graders. (See “The report entitled Should Sixth Grade be in Elementary or Middle
School”? Available at pubpol.duke.edu/research/papers)

While public policy has not yet changed (meaning we are still going to group sixth
graders with seventh and eighth graders in middle schools) many middle schools
themselves are addressing this issue by placing sixth graders in “isolated” wings of
school building. The attempt is to keep them away from the “negative influence” of the
seventh and eighth graders.

Perhaps it is time in youth group that we in the church adopt a similar strategy. Some
churches have done this by making sixth grade all about confirmation and thus keeping
them isolated from other “middle school ministry” as they focus on confirmation. While
I continue to believe that sixth grade is to early in brain development to focus on
confirmation, the concept of isolating the sixth graders with their own “ministry” may be
very useful.

Those who know my struggles with defining youth (see Youth Ministry Handbook, or
Main Event Youth Ministry and the Side Shows for examples) know I prefer the 10-19-
age grouping as a definition of youth. BUT that does not mean I would advocate for
sixth graders in the middle school youth group. Note the difference between youth
ministry and youth group. Now may be the time for a real “tween” ministry that focuses
on the sixth grader (and perhaps even the fifth grader) in terms of specialized ministry,
and even their own “youth” group. As one of the authors of the above reported stated:
“Sixth grade is an especially vulnerable time, in the sense that sixth-graders display a
strong susceptibility to peer influence.” We may do better in surrounding them with
positive influences and not seventh and eighth graders.