and tonight's lesson cost $200

So my wife and I just started a new small group series this past Sunday night with our teens.  The series looks at major themes throughout scripture and explores them through discussion, reflection, art, etc.  Last night we began with the theme of 'creation'... makes sense.  It is quite obvious that the author(s) of this lesson series put an extensive amount of time, thought, and energy into putting this lesson series together.  Another thing that is quite obvious?  He comes from a youth ministry that has some serious bank.

One of my pet peeves are people who whine a lot... so, with that said, forgive me ahead of time ;-)  In the last several years (4 or 5 I would say), the church that I serve at has not been able to give a single dime to the youth ministry in terms of budget payments.  Each year when the church board agrees upon the budget (which is based on how much money they think they will receive each year), there is an amount of money designated for youth, children, missions, etc.  However, when there is a shortage in money received, cuts are made and money never makes it to the children and youth ministry.

So as we were preparing for lesson one of a seven week series, I quickly realized that we were going to have to make some serious alterations if we were going to use the curriculum.  For week one, they suggested that the following materials be available:

-10 large unique mirrors
-a painting set and canvase for each student
-4-5  large fruit baskets
-8 different colored photocopied sheets of paper per student
-1 box of crayons per student
-1 pair of scissors per student
-1 glue stick per student
-2 boxes of pens
-1 cd of nature music
-1 large wooden chest
... and there is more.

Granted, my wife and I have become pretty good at altering and changing curriculum to adapt to our limited budget... but the first thing that came to mind after reading lesson one was, "who in the world has $200 to drop each week on purchasing supplies for their small group lesson?"  Maybe it would be a good idea to include alternatives to groups who can't spend $50 on large fruit baskets for their weekly lessons.