Soul Quest Static

Hey everyone, please forgive me for how long it has taken for me to get back to you. Life has been incredibly busy, good but busy!

These are merely my own thoughts, not those of Pastor Dave or Connie... so please take what I write here with a grain of salt while I await the opportunity to present SQM youth for 2010 to Dave and Connie. Yet just to keep everyone in the loop...here is my outline for the future...

To represent a shift in our focus and while also moving towards growth... I want to call what we do on a weekly/bi-weekly basis Soul Quest Static. My explanation is lengthier than what I have time for right here and right now. The core principles of Static rolls out of relationship and operates/functions out of 3 pivot points.

Our goal is to....

TO CONNECT (TO LIVE)----
- to God
- to one another

-------TO GROW (TO DEVELOP)
mind/body/spirit
+mentally
+physically
+spiritually

-----TO GIVE (TO MOVE OUT and REFLECT)
- Disciples who disciple, and live out missional lives.


Imagine a tree. A tree connects to the water (God)- to the flow of life and grows strong, and healthy and whole. The growth presents fruit, produces shade and giving attributes to others and the surrounding community.

We connect to the word, to God and to one another. We grow in every area we can through connection and we then share this with our inner community, outer community and the world at large. We live out transformed, changed lives that reflect God on every corner at every turn.

How is this done?

Through connecting in both physical and cyber space. Through sermons (directed series of messages tackling tough, adrenaline filled areas of life)- utilizing topical preaching when needed, and yet also utilizing expository and textual preaching under the license of narrative relationship. Sermons are supplemented with the use of media such as film, music, etc... where it is seen as helping in the fleshing out of a message not as a replacement for the message. We operate through worship with the use of tech but hopefully with live music through the use of our youth leaders/members leading to inclusion into the community. We discuss and question and seek out God's face both alone and together. We pray and we play. We share and we give to others through planned acts of serving (Grace centers of hope, helping out those in our congregation) and unplanned God-led experiences. (treasure hunts, etc) We seek out opportunities to share the Gospel with contacts we make at the school administrative level.

This is for the time being my perceived goal and outline for the future... if our perception for the future is that we must learn to crawl before we can walk that's fine. We're not a church that is about applying a formula and becoming an organized machine that yields churched people with unchanged lives. In a similar way I have also held for some time that the problem with the church has much to do with the very fact that we're not training up others to be disciples. We have to have disciples training up disciples who continue the trend with unwavering zeal and love for God and for others. Without discipling, we only have religious people.


We're not doing religion. We're not doing "youth group" or even for the sake of argument we're not doing a program. We're living out Jesus-centric lives with love, honesty, relationship, power and authority in His name.
- Lance

Updates.

Hey Leaders...

I haven't wrote in a while but I have a few things that have been on my mind since last night.

It seems like we have been wrestling with whether or not to have a Christmas function for the youth group and at this present time it may not be the best idea. Obviously this is subject to change although we don't really have a lot of time to figure something out. If anyone has an idea for something small in December... then please make it known. I would suggest that we get together at least once in December as youth leaders and discuss the future. Perhaps we take December to really pull together our youth room and to get things prepped for January and beyond.

Now here is the heart of why I am writing this...

Last night after youth group I spent a few minutes putting together dates for next year. I'm planning for us to get together twice a month seeing that once a month has not been cutting it. Although subject to change I pulled 24 dates together for next year (which I will post here in the near future) If we're even contemplating going to Spring Hill the only weekend available that supports SH and JH is 2/12-2/14. (More on that later) Everyone is invited to go but the minimal that we need for youth leaders is 1 youth leader for every 5 kids.

With the new building we have new opportunity to really reach the youth. I'd be weary of utilizing this past 6 months as evidence for how things are going. I have been researching different issues that occur within youth groups and one of the main things that is proposed to youth leaders is to be patient. In almost everything I have read it is mentioned that youth ministry attendance typical goes up and down especially early on. Let's stay confident, and truly get behind the future of this! When it's mentioned that we'll try to do Spring Hill in the future, we need to all get behind it and get excited even if it's in front of just Corbin and Noah.

In reading about different youth groups and connecting with different youth leaders I have realized that many are seeing the death of the way youth group used to be done and how it will be done in the future. For the most part we still connect quite often with the way of the old and need to get organized and be encouraged about the future of our youth program! For the most part... the old is signified by odd little games that kids don't necessarily want to play, songs being played that they necessarily don't want to sing and awkward forced discussions that they don't want to converse about. Yet teens DO WANT authentic relationships, they want someone who will genuinely listen to them and they want the truth. These three things are most often overlooked, for years youth group has been watered down church where simple principles are taught that don't hold up under the heavy weight of the teenagers life. It's been proven that kids want to learn, and if there to encounter the world outside and grow up and be able to defend the truth... then they must be taught. Just look at the devoted nature of those who practice Judaism whereas kids who are younger than our teens have portions of the OT memorized!

I have no doubts behind the future of this program but we have to get behind it with drive and ambition. In the future I will try to connect with area bands and with our get togethers attempt to have live music, games, worship, teaching and discussion. I may only be speaking for myself here but I hope that this resonates with everyone (as your all youth leaders!) but I have a hunger for the truth, in my own personal faith journey I'm becoming increasingly sin sensitive and every time I meet with these kids I just want to tell them how much Jesus loves them and invite them to partake in what God has for them. Every time we get together I just want to preach the Gospel to our group... I truly hope this resonates with you. The window of opportunity is continuously shrinking day by day.

In the future are we looking to utilize the social networking device that Zac created? Facebook? or this blog? I believe this blog serves as private means of communication and that either we should use the facebook site or the social networking device. If we want to utilize both that's fine, I just figured that teens are more likely to visit a page that exists on a platform that they are already using. Although the social networking site looks to be useful as well. Let's just come to a conclusion here in the future.

Stay tuned... I'm going to put together some topics of conversation for the near future for everyone to review here.

Thanks!
- Lance

Late post...

Sorry I'm just now getting to this... it's been sort of a tense week.

Tonight we'll follow a similar structure to what we did last time. The scripture verse that we'll be focusing on is John 17:23... we'll do an activity or two and really just look to hang out with one another and have fellowship.

- See ya soon!
Lance

Update!

Hey Leaders!

I hope that everyone is having a good week! It of course would have been nice to get together to prep for this Saturday nights youth group but we've all been obviously busy. Thank you Keely for sending the invites/attendance RSVP's out through Facebook. I'll keep this short but I did want to mention whether or not it would be possible to utilize Wednesday nights from October and beyond for youth group. Now I know we originally talked about Saturday nights and even decided upon it but that was before some recent issues with my employment changed. I have a new boss that has told me that having Saturday nights off would be next to impossible for me going forward. Now this isn't to say that I will work every Saturday night but that I just have to leave the option open for them. I'm discouraged by this but hopefully Wednesday nights will end up working for everyone going forward. I'll see what I can do about attempting to keep Saturday nights if Wednesday nights are not available but there is a good chance that we will have to go the route of every other Wednesday night starting in October. Please comment and add what you want...

This Saturday we will talk about John 9: From Darkness into Light.

Lock-In information

Hey team! Sorry I'm getting on so late... this week has been crazy.

Real quick... and perhaps I'll add a thing or two in the morning:

If I can get some help in the following area's...

-Someone needs to get a rough estimate for how many vehicles that we're going to have for traveling to and from Paradise Park.
- Please bring board games, Wii games, movies, etc
- Funds will be limited so it would be best for us to just drop the little extra expenses like glow sticks, etc.
- Zac would it be possible for you to put together power point templates for the text messaging challenge? Just write-ups utilizing various materials... some lengthy, some not so lenghty. It can be a random sentence, scripture, movie quote... whatever.
-Team let's try to be at SQM by the latest 7:30

Please remind me if we're missing anything... it would also be good if we put in a order for the pizza mid-day tomorrow and let them know what time we'll be needing it for. How much pizza will we be needing?


Please add stuff to this and acknowledge what your able to do on this list... it's late and I'm not sure if I included all of what I intended to include.

Thanks again leaders!!
- Lance

Lock-In

Hey guys,

Just a quick question that will need to be discussed very soon if the answer is yes.

Are we having a lock-in? I know we said we needed to ask if it was alright with Dave and everything so..did we? If so we should probably plan another meeting all together during the week to discuss plan/events and what not to make sure we get ourselves and the parents ready for it. And also a date?

I just know Lance mentioned it on the FB page so just a thought.

Keely

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