4 Tips to Making Midweek Meaningful 

If your church already has a midweek program or maybe you are considering launching one, we should ensure that our midweek program isn’t just something we do, but that it is strategically meaningful to our culture, community, and context. For the purposes of this post, we would consider midweek to mean any kids gathering other than your primary teaching time (i.e. Sunday nights – Saturday nights). Let’s take a look at 4 tips for making midweek meaningful. 

Tip #1: Know your midweek kids 

Depending on your community and church culture, your church may have more unchurched kids during a midweek program than on Sunday morning or your midweek kids may be that “core” group of kids who are already Christians. If your midweek kids are primarily unchurched, your midweek activities may need to lean more toward evangelistic conversations, but if your midweek kids are some of those core kids who are regular attenders, they may need a deeper discipleship approach. Knowing what kids attend a midweek ministry is critical to choosing a plan.   

Tip #2: Evaluate needs in light of your ministry strategy 

Every kids ministry needs some sort of vision and strategy to guide decisions in what to keep and what to drop and how to distribute our energy over the course of days, weeks, and months. Having a clear vision and strategy are like guardrails to keep everything in your ministry moving toward the goal of reaching kids with the gospel.  

Strategy also allows us to identify the needs of our ministry. As great as many curriculum resources are, a single resource cannot meet every need of every child in every ministry during a one-hour gathering on Sunday mornings. A midweek gathering increases connection points among kids, both with other kids and leaders, to help build relationships and create an environment for further gospel conversations. 

As you are considering launching or relaunching a midweek program, consider what other needs your ministry has that you are unable to effectively address on Sunday mornings. 

Tip #3: Choose a plan that fits that meets the needs of your strategy and kids  

Now that you know your midweek kids and have some needs identified that a midweek ministry could meet, it’s time to plan out a specific strategy that aligns with those findings. What are your options? Let’s discuss two. 

Option 1 – extend your Sunday teaching into midweek. With this option you may look for a “bonus hour” from the resource you are currently teaching on Sunday mornings. This may be a worship resource or a midweek-specific resource. With this plan, your midweek generally will not introduce new concepts different from the previous Sunday, but instead will reinforce those concepts in ways that reengage kids. A big “win” with this option is that there is clarity with kids as to what they are learning during any given week. 

Option 2 – use your midweek to do something completely different. In this approach, you may choose that, based on the kids you have during midweek and your strategy, it is best to teach something completely different. A big “win” with this plan is that you are able to strategically meet needs within your ministry that you may not be able to address on Sunday mornings. 

Tip #4: Select a resource that aligns with your plan 

Implementing a midweek gathering into your ministry strategy can add additional opportunities for relational and gospel connections for your kids.   Share on X

As mentioned in the options above, depending on your kids, your ministry strategy, and the approach you choose for your midweek gathering, different resources will allow you to meet different needs. 

Option 1, for example: The Gospel Project for Kids is launching a midweek resource with it’s 2021-2024 study plan. This new resource will extend the teaching from the Bible study hour to a midweek session through the lens of spiritual disciplines and discipleship groups, helping kids to reengage in a fresh way. Many curricula offer these types of “bonus hours,” such as worship or midweek, allowing you extend and expand your teaching throughout the week.  

Option 2, for example: If you have mostly unchurched kids during midweek, you might choose a short, 6-week study on the gospel plan. Or if your church is mostly “core” regular attenders and most of them are already Christians, you may choose a short study on who we are in Christ, spiritual disciplines, or missions in order to lead kids to deeper faith in Jesus. There are longer options, like TeamKID, which combines games, Bible skills, and missions over a 36-week (school year equivalent) study plan. Resources for this approach are virtually limitless.  

If you are looking for resources to fit within option 2 above, visit lifeway.com/kidsdiscipleship to see some discipleship studies Lifeway Kids offers. 

Implementing a midweek gathering into your ministry strategy can add additional opportunities for relational and gospel connections for your kids.  

What are ways you make your midweek activities meaningful? 

Jeremy Carroll  is the Lifeway Kids Ministry Publishing Manager for VBS and Discipleship resources. Before coming to Lifeway, he has been active in local church ministry for nearly 20 years in TN, TX, and AL. Jeremy earned a Master of Arts in Christian Education from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. A Middle Tennessee native, he and his family live in Murfreesboro, TN.