If you have a tween, then you know that they love to ask questions and respond to questions. Here are some musts for the questions that I ask to all of our 10-12 year old students. I try to make sure that we ask these three types of questions every single week in our preteen ministry.
Here we go:
Open Ended Questions
Tweens love to be cared for and we want them to know that we care. You don’t want to stall out a conversation from the startup though. Try to think about the way that you ask a tween the question you usually ask.
Instead of:
Did you have a good weekend?
you should ask:
How was your weekend?
A small shift in the way that you ask questions could open up the doors to a lot of conversation between the tween that you interact with and yourself.
A second type of question that I try to ask every weekend.
Experiential Questions
Questions that ask for the experience of a tween in your student ministry will let them know that the lives that they live matter. Here are a few that I ask every weekend:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What are some things that stuck out about your school week this week?
- What video games did you play this week? (this could cause your conversation to last awhile )
Follow Up Questions
These are the key to ministry for me. They show students that you are listening to them and that you thought about them during the week. I usually try to keep a notebook of things that our tweens said that stuck out to me. Here are a few that I think about often.
- My dad doesn’t play with me when he gets home from work. It makes me upset and sometimes angry. (Parents are divorced)
- I’m trying out for this soccer team and I’m super nervous.
- My 4 month old adopted sister is having open heart surgery.