Update

Hey everyone... sorry it's been a little while. Seems that everyone is pretty busy and it doesn't help that I've been sick the past couple days.

A couple things...

1. We are allowing the eighth graders to attend the youth group but we need to make sure that they know there allowed to come out. Do we have their phone numbers on hand?

2. This is a rough lay-out that I figured would work for the 1st gathering this saturday

7-9pm

- Introduction: we set the tone from here and we introduce ourselves.
- Activity (I have a list of activities to choose from or if anyone has an activity to share)
- Short video (Nooma- You) Now typically I'm not looking to utilize these videos very often but in searching for a short video to play- I felt that this particular video really does a sound job in introducing some of the conversation topics we'll be introducing over the course of the summer.
- Discussion afterwards- this is where we'll listen to the teens and start to poke and prod and ask questions "How is God working in your life currently?" - "What would you like to get out of this?" - "How would you describe your Faith life?" etc.
- Activity
- Hanging out- "Fellowship"- music playing, chatting, playing games, etc

Tina and I have thought about bringing our Wii to the youth gathering but we were not sure if we had the right cables/connections to utilize it for this saturday.
I also think that we should create a sheet that has all the necessary information (Facebook link, SQY gmail account, etc.)

- that's it for now... just laying low until I have to head off to work.
I hope everyone is having a great week!
- Lance

Quick update...

Quick update...

Tomorrow we're doing an announcement in front of the church regarding the youth ministry. It will be a simple presentation about what we're looking to do and Pastor Dave will lead us into it.

That's about it...

- Lance

Update!

Been going just about all day... figured I'd drop in and communicate a couple things.

Earlier today I met with Pastor Dave and we talked about the youth ministry and I just went over with him about how our meeting went and some of the things we discussed. He put in his planner that we're having our first event on the 27th of June and I told him a bit about what our plans were regarding the layout of that evening, etc. I didn't go into great detail about particular events, curriculum, (mainly because I'm still fleshing some stuff out)

As far as addressing the church on Sunday about an announcement- he's going to talk with the leaders this week about it. As far as future activities (games, etc.) if any one has any idea's... let's start brainstorming as time moves on I'll have more details regarding specific lessons I want to introduce and we can build games around those lessons. I was thinking of putting together a "show and tell" type activity each time we meet up. This would be a chance for the students (or even us) to share with the others how God is working in our lives and this can be signified by a keepsake that means something, a talent or gift that God is using (a song, a skit, a writing, drawing, a story, etc) this would help create community and would give allowance to each individual to worship how God desires them to.

I've been coming up with a philosophy regarding Christian world-view. For example...
1. Creation + Hope 2. Fall 3. Redemption... Vocation...etc
As far as the mission of the group... well to put it in plain sight
It has been said that roughly 88% of teens that graduate high school- leave the Church at the same time! We can put that on the world all we want and point at the "worldly" reasons for this... but the reality is that the Church has to own this. We have to own this. Why is there such a great divide? It could be that we have done youth group incorrectly for quite some time and it's going to take sound teaching, authentic living, incredible love and openness with one another to turn these numbers around. I'm telling you... we're going to change the world with this. I believe that this youth group is a hinge point for a lot of other groups in the future.

We'll wait and see... but I'm also questioning the combining of the middle and high schoolers. Yet lets just see how things pan out after our first get together on the 27th.

That's it for now... I could write for some time... but I have to get going.

- Lance

First Youth Meeting

Hey guys. 

Just a question. Are we still planning on doing the youth meeting on the 13th? If we aren't I feel like we should plan another day to get together. Haha I know Zac and Lance have been trying to get together for a while but the day is drawing closer.

Just throwing out a line.

Keely

Howdy

Hey everyone!

Sorry just now getting on here- life has been pretty busy as of late.

I believe that this platform could truly work as a solid communication tool. I can only speak for myself but with everyones busy work schedules, life schedules, etc... we just need to continue to work towards better communication as most of our success will be consistant with sound communication. There are a dozen different ways to communicate idea's, announcements, plans, etc... I would just hope that we could settle on one or two things in order to avoid frustration and so that we're all on the same page.

I'm really excited about the opportunity at hand, and hopefully my eagerness, or passion towards the material doesn't push anyone away. Because I believe that we all have amazing gifts to bring to the table, I'm just very passionate about the Gospel, about teaching God's word and about bringing up these teens with an understanding of God's love and purpose for them. So please bear with me if I come across aggressively about getting things underway, and about making sure that we're communicating on a regular basis. I have in the past been a part of different groups where we had an incredible range of talent sitting in the room but the lack of putting aside adequate time for planning and having sound communication divided the room and led to us failing.

So that's that... I'm looking forward to hearing from all of you!

- Lance