And that's how Afterschool @theCUBE was born. Props to one of our youth group students for the name theCUBE. When you see our new building, you understand why.
Here are a few thoughts about our little 6 month experiment:
- It was essential that we had our 2 paid workers. They were the glue that held the whole thing together. They knew the kids by name, and the kids knew them. Evangelism is done best through relationships. Our workers proved that this was 100% true.
- God's timing and my timing were very different (Lesson learned!). Originally, I didn't want to have theCUBE open on Fridays. I thought no one would be there. Fridays turned into our biggest day for attendance, at one time having as many as 65 kids there at once.
- Having a solid, stable volunteer corps was also essential. I'm sure they felt under-appreciated at times, but I can't say enough about how important it was to have someone present who was a little older than our paid workers. It gave parents piece of mind, our church leaders confidence in the program, and best of all, it allowed us to have more kids at theCUBE!
- I should have budgeted more money for food & drinks!
- You can't always say yes to every request. Know your limits. Know your purpose. I got asked several times to do a lock-in for the Afterschool outreach or to open up on days that there were school holidays. Those things didn't fit within our plan or purpose, so we didn't do it.... no matter how tempting it was to have great numbers at a lock-in or a day where kids didn't have school.
- Stuff breaks when it is used a lot. I'm actually surprised more things didn't break.
- If we had charged families for this program, even a small amount, I don't think it would be nearly as successful. But since we didn't try that, I don't know that for sure.
- If you build a big building and it sits empty, who are you really serving?
- For every naysayer, there were 10 people thrilled that we were reaching kids who don't know Christ. It's important to listen to concerns, but even more important to make sure you don't lose sight of Matthew 28:19-20.
- When the program started to become "successful", my first thoughts went towards how we can bring our youth group kids and our CUBE kids together. As I prayed about it more and more, I realized that wasn't really that important. Yes, Christ wants us to be one body, BUT there are lots of churches that do lots of things very differently, yet we can all resolve to the mission presented before us in the aforementioned Matthew 28:19-20 passage.


