This may not seem like a very spiritual article but it has come to me with real force in recent weeks.
Accurate record keeping is not on most youth leaders’ agendas as it is a bit of a pain taking registers of young people and there are many more exciting things to do in an evening of youth ministry. At a recent Root 66 training session (no plug intended!!), I asked the leaders to write down the names of five of their group and asked them to estimate how often each of these students came to the group. The usual response to that question is something like, ‘I suppose it’s about half the meetings this term’.
We can easily kid ourselves that young people are coming more often than we think and that what we choose to remember as 80% attendance which is nearer to 50%. I’m not suggesting we’re dishonest — it’s just not a high priority in all we do and I think it should be. Why?
