Author Archives: Elle Campbell

About Elle Campbell

Elle is doing Middle School Ministry at The Chapel at CrossPoint in Buffalo, New York, where she focuses mostly on creating great small group environments and leading volunteers. She blogs about youth ministry stuff at ellecampbell.org and creates and shares original youth ministry resources at stuffyoucanuse.org. She is married to Kenny and loves coffee and making things and reading as many books as possible. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Spontaneous Pillow Fights

by Elle Campbell on February 20, 2014 in Experience.

A few weeks ago, our Middle School Ministry staff stumbled on a little gem of a video (God bless the Internet): a Spontaneous Pillow Fight prank.

So, of course… we had to do it with our favorite middle schooler friends.

This is Jezzzy. (Her real name is actually Jessica, but Jezzzy is way cooler.) She is one of our game hosts and a regular on-stage personality at SHINE!, our Middle School Ministry.

When Jezzzy showed up at church a few weeks ago, we gave her two pillows and told her to get to work.

Here are some of the results…

What Middle Schoolers Want to Know About Love & Dating (Part 2)

by Elle Campbell on November 7, 2013 in Experience.

Yesterday I shared with you PART 1 of some questions that our middle schoolers (Grades 5-8) asked anonymously about love and dating. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should. Because their questions were awesome. And super interesting.

You may have noticed that many of the questions our students asked yesterday were pretty light-hearted. Silly. Naive. Childish. Cute, even. But I think you’ll see that, in this next batch of questions, the tone shifts a bit.

So let’s get into PART 2 now. Here are our middle schoolers’ questions about “serious” relationships, marriage, and divorce…

What Middle Schoolers Want to Know About Love & Dating (Part 1)

by Elle Campbell on November 6, 2013 in Experience.

If you’ve been working with middle schoolers for longer than 4 seconds, then you already know that some of the most confusing, emotional, exciting, and stressful things middle schoolers deal with are… the issues of love and dating.

Last school year, in our ministry, we planned to do a teaching series on love, dating, and relationships.

In this series, we wanted to make sure we were doing our very best to address our students’ biggest needs and questions. We had some ideas about what we thought they needed to hear about love and dating, of course, but we couldn’t help but wonder…

Are we really being helpful?

Want to Write For Us?

by Elle Campbell on September 16, 2013 in Uthmin.

Our brand spankin’ new blog is up and running and we’ve got tons of great content coming your way. Content that will help you do Middle School Ministry better. Content written for our tribe and by our tribe.

And that’s where you come in.

Why Fun Environments Matter for a Middle Schooler’s Faith

by Elle Campbell on September 10, 2013 in Experience, Small Groups.

If you know anything about me or Kenny, you probably already know that we are big fans of having tons of fun. From the time our middle schoolers walk through the doors of our church, to the time they leave, we really want them to enjoy being there.

For our ministry, having fun isn’t just an afterthought. It’s a priority and a strategy.