Quality vs. Quantity

If you're a Tim Horton's fanatic you'll notice the new sizes they've implemented.  Imagine my wife's surprise when she ordered her usual "large earl grey tea".  It seems Tim's is moving in line with its American counterparts in size, but thankfully their new quantity isn't compromising it's quality.

Too often in ministry we measure success with quantity.  How big is the church?  How many young people showed up the event?  How many gets "got saved"?  We tend to fall for the "bigger is better" idea, in large because it is something we can measure.  When you're working with lives quality can be very hard to measure, especially when working with kids.

With large numbers of kids attending events it's easy to deceive ourselves into believing that we've been successful, so I've had to be very careful with how I go about doing ministry.

To maximize the potential for quality in urban ministry we try to maintain high counsellor-child ratios.

This past weekend we had a "Winter Weekend" with the kids who attended "Music & Drama Camp" this past summer.  Most of the kids are in Foster care, Children's Aid, or enrolled in Big Brothers & Sisters.  We have kids come who are high functioning autistic, have ADD, low self esteem, and other social and behaviour issues.

I had seven counsellors come out for the weekend and only ten kids show up.  However, it ended up being an amazing weekend of ministry to these kids.  They were all so starved for attention that our high number of counsellors enabled us to give them all the attention they wanted.

We played games, took them on a hike, had an outdoor campfire and did some tobogganing.  The kids AND counsellors had a great time of laughter, love and ministry.  The kids already asked about signing up for the summer.

In talking with some of the parents there is a real want and need for a Slingshot in Brantford for these kids.  As the kids left I felt so burdened for them and their parents.  Please pray that God would find a way to make the Slingshot in Brantford work.  We had one in December but have faced some challenges.  An incredible opportunity is before us to reach some very broken children and families.