New in 2016

This year has been a year of big changes in our Student Ministries. With the launch of our new vision to Build Relationships, Share Christ, and Grow Together we set out to answer the question, “What does this mean for our student ministry at this time?” We continued with our normal programs until the summer when we decided to reach out to the families of the Church to host youth gatherings throughout the summer, this allowed us as a youth ministry team to meet and begin to prepare for the first phase of changes that would be enacted in the Fall. The first change we made was we stopped hosting our traditional youth group program and in its place began both Jr and Sr High Connect Groups (in line with the Grow Together element of our vision). These connect groups are being held at the homes of some of our youth ministry students. We wanted to see our students connect with others in the group and connect with God through these groups and we have begun to see just that. We are also letting the students plan our evangelical events and have several in the works for this year (Sharing Christ). To mark our transition into this new season we also changed our ministries name from CRAZE to Encounter. We also tried something new, gathering the youth leaders, and a hand full of students to plan our conversation topics for the entire year.

Looking ahead to the new year we are going to be refining our connect groups moving more toward being intentional with out time being more consistent with incorporating worship and accountability into our time together. We will also be launching two new special events that will happen once a quarter. The first being our Fusion Events which will be fun nights out, either at the church or another location, for the purpose of Building Relationships with pre-Christians in our student’s spheres of influence.  The second special events we will be launching are our Deeper Life Nights for the Purpose of Growing Together, these will be nights dedicated to worship and showing our students the many different ways we can worship our God. We will also be taking a group of students to LIFE 2016 this summer which we are very excited about.

In our accountability groups (guys and girls separate) we will be using S.O.A.P. as an outline for our conversations. "S" stand for Scripture, this is when our groups will discuss what they have been reading throughout the week in God's Word. This will also be a time when conversations connected to that's night devotional-lesson will happen. "O" stands for Outreach, here students and leaders will be encouraged to build relationships with pre-Christians in their lives and share christ with them. "A" stands for accountability, here students will be encouraged to share their struggles and things which they want to be held accountable to. Note to parents these times will be held in confidence unless something that is shared involves harm coming to someone or we have a students permission to share with someone outside the group. "P" stands for prayer, this is when we will lift each other and what we discussed up to God in prayer together. 

More to come on the Fusion Events and Deeper life nights in the next couple weeks. Looking forward t a great year in 2016.