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A cupcake caper, an Unreal-powered mansion, and a question every youth leader wrestles with: should we separate junior high and high school? We sit down with student pastor Michelle Kruse from Summit Christian Church to unpack how age-intentional programming can transform engagement without requiring a bigger building or a bigger budget. Michelle walks us through their midweek system that alternates middle school and high school in the same space, why the teaching style shifts for each group, and how small groups, worship, and pace change when you design for real developmental stages.

We also explore the hidden engine of healthy transitions: a purposeful preteen ministry. Michelle shares how she launched a fourth and fifth grade service, then empowered a part-time couple—both teachers—to lead with Orange curriculum, accessible teaching, and consistent small groups. The result is a smoother handoff into student ministry, monthly fifth-grade previews of midweek, and camp experiences that ease anxiety. One of our favorite moments: why the car ride home with a parent might be the most important discipleship moment for preteens.

If you’re navigating limited space, limited volunteers, or mixed-age expectations, this conversation offers practical tactics you can try tomorrow: teaching twice in one night, swapping spaces, recruiting part-time leaders, and inviting high schoolers to serve in preteen or middle school to keep mentorship alive. We also get honest about quality tradeoffs, leader health, and how to read your context so you can separate where it matters most and still sustain a life-giving pace.

Subscribe, share this episode with a fellow youth leader, and leave a review with one change you’re considering for your next gathering—we’d love to hear what you’ll try first.

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BTE 5.07 Middle and High School Separate vs. Together: Part 1 with Michelle Kruse and Rob Watson

Middle and High School Separate vs. Together: Part 1 with Michelle Kruse and Rob Watson

Hi, I'm Brad Warren, and this is Beyond the Event, a youth ministry podcast presented by Christ and Youth, where we help you maintain momentum between the mountaintops. Today's guest on the show is Michelle Cruz. She is a student pastor at Summit Christian Church in Sparks, Nevada. She's going to be talking to us today about why it is important for Summit Christian Church that they have separate age-intentional programming. Next week we'll kind of have the foil to that and we'll talk about the benefits of having programming with junior high and high school together. But that's not today. Today is today. And so you'll get to hear from Michelle in just a minute before we do that. I'm joined by CIY's Superstart Programming Lead, Rob Watson. Hey Rob, how are you doing today? Doing amazing. Are you comfortable with that job title? Is that did I call you the right thing? Lead programmer? Superstart lead programmer? Yeah. I don't know. We do not do job titles well, I don't think.

No, and mine it's changed too. Even though I've had the same position, it's changed like three times.

It's like, what do I call myself? Um don't tell Jennifer this. But lips are sealed. One time I was frustrated with my job title. Not because I like wanted a higher ranking job or anything, but just I was like, this is weird. Did I just change? I just changed my email signature. Without asking. You just did it. I was like, this is my job now.

Yeah, that communication. It was when I worked for Engage because like my job title had the word event in it. And it was like, I don't know, I don't get this. Annie Hoosier. Um how are you doing, Rob? Great. The second time. How are you doing? Did I already ask you? Yeah, you did. That's awesome. It's almost like I was kidding. It's almost like I was uh dropping a hint there that nobody's asked me how I'm doing today. Hey, how are you doing, Bradley? I'm just kidding, I'm great. Um all right, we're here to talk about Superstart. When people hear this podcast, right now this this is not true, but when people hear the podcast, it will be December, which means that when people hear this podcast, next month Superstart begins. Crazy. Okay. So we're all very excited. I love a good superstar tour. Uh, we've already had Corey on the podcast. We talked about how I'm gonna be directing uh four superstarts, which I'm very, very pumped about. And uh that's gonna be great. So I want to know what is going on in the programming world of a superstar.

What do we have to look forward to this year?

Oh, it's gonna be good. Like legitimately, honestly. It's gonna be great. Uh Superstar Tour. No doubts. Go ahead. It's called The Mysterious Truth. And so we're just gonna be talking about truth. I know, but it's it's December when they hear it, so it's not it's still mysterious. It is you're right, it's still mysterious. It sounded like a spooky ooh. I just yeah, it was. I don't know. You're right. But we're we're gonna be talking about how to find truth. So uh this is actually a tour that Superstart did a decade ago, and we revamped it, we redid a lot of it, polished it, and um kind of made it more modern for today's day and age, too. But we loved what it's talking about. It just felt really timely. Uh, when we were having interviews with preteen pastors like all across the nation, uh, one of the things that came up was kids responding really well to talks about truths and QA and things like that. And so that's why we decided to do it. And I was like, hey, we have this amazing teaching uh that we've already done. So we decided to do it again and just revamp it. But it felt really pertinent just with like AI things and where where do you go when you're searching for truth? Who do you know to listen to? There's so many more opinions and ways to even get different opinions than there were even a decade ago for a preteen student that it just felt really needed and timely. So we'll be talking about uh always starting with going to God for truth. Uh so when you want one, you want to know truth about life and what you should do. So you look and listen to God for truth, you collect and connect his truths that we find in scripture um through his church, through God's people, and through experience, and then lastly, you show and tell it. So that's a superstar in a nutshell. It's gonna be awesome.

Oh, it's so good. Um last time we did Mysterious Truth, it was like clue murder mystery vibes.

Uh but you know what I'm saying. Yeah. Um in case somebody freaked out. There was not a murder mystery. We there's no murder. Um that was a bad thing for me to say, but you understand what I'm saying. Um what's what kind of world are we living in this time? It is the same. Oh fuck! So it's not murder.

And this time there will be, except this time it's personal. Uh another seal. Uh it is actually the same. It's a it's a mystery play. Someone gets cupcaked. It's age appropriate. There's no murder. They get a cupcake thrown at them mysteriously, and you gotta find out who done it, who was the cupcake. It's called the cupcake caper. Uh, and fun fact, so this is what uh this is almost the actual play, it's almost identical to what we did. We changed a couple of things here and there. Uh, this was the first superstar I took my students to as a middle school pastor. And I have this distinct memory of like being there. And uh I had I was sitting in the row with like the really popular kids. These dudes are they're sixth graders, they're kind of like just super like jock into sports, but they were also the like, all right, how long before you start disrupting everyone? I'm gonna have to take you out of session kind of thing. And I remember like Patrick gets up on stage and he's like, Hey, we're we're gonna do a mystery play. And I was like, uh, great. Looks like I won't see any of it because I'm gonna be taking this. And those kids were in it the whole time. Like, I remember looking over and seeing one of them standing up on his chair, yelling like at the stage, like, I know who did it. It was and I just had this moment where I paused and I was like, Oh my goodness, like I was completely wrong. This totally works. So a great thing to be wrong about.

It is, it's fun to come full circle and um to do that.

It is, in addition to just kind of like the skeleton of Superstar, there are always one million and one really fun elements and things, and like I couldn't believe what the stage looked like using like the Unreal Engine backdrop this year was really cool. And you know, it's hard to know what kids are gonna latch on to, but they always latch onto something. Last year it was a young, uh, a young seeming, a young coded uh Gary the Potato. Yeah.

Who was actually how old? Uh four. No, you mean in the potato? 84. He was uh 84 years old. 84. Portrayed by your son.

Who is four? That's who is four. Um the Corey teased that Gary might be coming back. Maybe. He didn't commit to it. Don't no no no no no. Save it. Hold on to that. I'll save it. Um I am curious if you have anything that you're just like pumped about that you can give us a little peek behind the curtain, a little teaser about anything fun.

Like what's getting you jazzed about this tour? That's not what we just said. Yeah, because that's already these people already know that.

Okay. Um outside of Gary, yeah, there's actually multiple things, but we have uh you mentioned the Unreal thing, but if you thought like last year's was cool, we like turned everything up. So it looks crazy. There's this there's this mansion, you will be flying in and out of rooms. That it looks I'm literally blown away. Like, I don't have words, I can't. Like they've already set it up and you've seen it on the oh my god I can't describe it because it would fall short in every way possible, even if I spent the entire podcast like, hey, here's what we're doing. Um, but I'll just tell you it will look super incredible.

I've got to have either Peyton or Brian on the podcast to just be like, How do you you I don't understand how do you do it? It's mind-boggling. Um well, I can I literally can't wait to see that. I'm so pumped. Um, they always do a magical job, and that sounds like a really fun and engaging thing to be able to use a few LED panels and turn a stage into a uh a mansion where a murder has taken place.

Where a not murder has taken place. Where a cupcaking has taken place.

A cupcaking. No. Oh, that's so fun. Um, Rob, okay, that's great. I can't wait for Superstart. You and your team always do a really good job of putting everything together. It's super age intentional. Um, and like I mean, like you said, what you experienced 10 years ago is still true, where it's like I never see fourth, fifth, and sixth graders as locked into something as when they are in a large group session at Superstart. Just it never happens. Like, I don't know how you guys do it. You continue to come up with skits and videos and you keep things moving because of the short attention spans and you play interactive games with the whole crowd, and it's just so fun, and I cannot wait. I'm so pumped. Um, so thank you for all you've done to get ready. We're ready to rock and roll. We're hitting the road here in just a few weeks. Um it is now time for Mic Dub. Mic Dub. Uh Rob, this is where Mike, aka Michael, aka producer Michael, aka Pikel, gets to talk about anything that he wants.

Woo-hoo. What if we just spent the entire mic dup with Mike going aka aka?

Actually, I stole that. I stole that from the blank check podcast, if anybody listens to that.

Um this episode And their their producer does have like 25 nicknames. And they say when when when Griffin, one of the hosts, gets going, he says them all. And it's crazy. I decided to just do four.

Yeah, and we appreciate that. Um this episode drops December 1. 15. 15. Oh, okay. Great. Cause we had some scheduling things, had to move things around. Great, great, great.

No, you're right. I just didn't switch the dates. Oh, okay. I'm sorry, I'm an idiot.

Great. That just, you know, it affects what I'm gonna say. Okay. So um here's a hypothetical situation. You find out that a month from right now, you're going to get teleported to a random location. If you are able to make it back home, you will win a million dollars. You get to find out what that random location is, and you can decide whether or not you're going to do it. You get three locations that you can choose from, okay? So if you don't like the first one, you can say, no, I want the next one. And if you don't like that one, you can say no, I want the next one. And if if you get to the third one, you have to go with the third one. There's no hearing a location and just going, I'm not gonna do it. You either agree to do it and you have to go with one of the locations you get, or you don't do it.

If you so you're dropping us by a helicopter in your own.

No, you just magically teleport. Oh, even better. And you have a month to prepare for this, but you only you only end up like teleporting with whatever you're wearing. Like you don't get to go like no backpack? Does that count?

I'm gonna say it doesn't count. Uh, so just the clothes? Mm-hmm. Do I have a phone in my pocket?

Ah nothing in your pockets. Nothing in your pocket. Can I have my insulin pump? You can have your insulin pump and however much insulin you need.

Get it together. Okay, here we go. So, do you agree to this challenge? I agree. Okay. Um, Brad, we'll start with you. I'm gonna pick a random location. That's the ocean. We're not going there. I love the ocean. That one is on land. Let me take a look to make sure I can actually read it. Just off the coast of Yemen. It's technically in the water, so we can say it doesn't count. Um, but if you're just off the coast of Yemen. I mean, like, it's probably like 20 miles.

Do I have a certain amount of time to get home? You just have to make it. Um, I'm gonna pass on that one.

You're gonna pass on that one? Yeah. Okay, let's find the next one.

Very far north in Quebec. Uh you are south of the Roggan River.

Yeah, sure. I'll do it. You want to take that one?

Alright. Hopefully you can make it home. I just want to fly fish. I think you need to find a branch. For the record, just so that everyone understands, I'm like just using a uh random random.org slash geographic dash coordinates is the website I'm using to find these these random locations. Um and on the map that's built into the website, it's like if it's a country that speaks a different language than English, it it's written in that language, so I have to open it in Google Maps. It's a whole thing. I couldn't come up with a smoother way to do this. But anyway, so Brad takes that challenge. He's gonna be very far north in the uh um, I forget what they call them. They're not regions. What do they call them? Province.

Provinces yeah, the province of um so but am I going in a month? A month from today. You have you have a month to prepare. Oh, I'm not going then. Oh, okay. I'm not going to Northern Quebec in the middle of December.

All right, then let's see what your third location's gonna be.

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