Birthday Wishes
About 2 months ago now, we ordered some birthday postcards from VistaPrint that we could send out to our youth.
So far, it’s been a great investment. Towards the end of the month, Alicia runs a list of all the youth birthdays in our database and gives it to me. I then take about 15 minutes to write out 10-12 cards each month so that each student gets one. I’ve actually had several kids and even a few parents thank me for the card. Sometimes we get caught up in having to create big, awesome, expensive events to reach students today. While quality is important, the truth is that they get enough of that from the world. They just want to know that we care about them and they mean more to us than a check mark on an attendance sheet.
The other great thing that has come from the birthday cards is that it keeps the kids in front of me and gives me a chance to pray for them as I write the card. It’s such a small commitment of time on our side, but the dividends are huge. Sounds like a good investment to me!
As an aside, if you’d like your student to receive a card from us, please make sure we have their birthday. You can send it along in email to me, Alicia or Kathy and we’ll get it added to the system.
Filed under: Celebrations, Cornerstone, Crossroads, Why We Do It | Tagged: birthday, database, smallinvestmentsleadtobigrewards
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[...] Praying for Youth Published March 25, 2008 Cornerstone , Crossroads , Why We Do It Tags: NYMC, prayer My 3 month goal from the National Youth Ministry Conference was to develop a plan for praying for our youth on a regular basis. This would not replace the 3rd Thursday Prayer group (which, btw, actually meets this Thursday because of Maundy Thursday last week), but rather would be a supplement to it. We want to pray for the youth, but we want them to know we prayed for them as well. Toward that end, I’ve drawn up a new prayer card, similar to our birthday one: [...]