So our church is located in a very strong Christian area of Melbourne.

Within a 5-10min drive from our church are a number of churches with great youth ministries doing great things.

I believe we've got a great youth ministry doing great stuff here too, but we miss the one thing these other churches have.  LOADS of people.  Our youth group probably gets on average 10-15 on a Friday night.  A few more come on Sunday, but they don't come on Friday, and many who come on Friday don't come on Sunday.

It makes it hard to get new people, particularly youth, to stick around.  I think this is totally understandable, it's exciting to be part of a church with 40-50 or 200-300 other like-minded youth.

I'm still uncertain how to operate in this kind of climate.  When I was in Tasmania, we were one of those 'big' groups, with 30, 40 or 50 people.  There weren't that many other 'big' youth groups around.  I new numbers would win more numbers.  We didn't focus on numbers it was just exceptionally helpful in doing growing gospel ministry.

Here are some of the questions I'm thinking about often:

1. How do we be distinctive from these other groups?
2. Why do we bother existing when there are these other good groups?