6th Grade Transition Night

Each year we put on a 6th Grade Transition Night. All new 6th graders and their parents are invited to this event. The purpose is to help the 6th graders get acclimated to the youth ministry before being thrown into it on our first night when all the students are back.
Our goals for the night-
           1. Meet the students, but almost as important is to meet their parents.
           2. Have the students meet us (staff and youth leaders)
           3. Students meet each other
           4. Students meet the youth ministry- teach them about or programs, purpose and philosophy

Last night was such a great night. Many of the middle school leaders showed up and we had about 30 6th graders show up and they all brought their parents. I think the night achieved its purpose.

Here is a video we showed last night which tell the kids about some things that they get to experience this year at AO.

Samaria Missions Trip

Last week was our Samaria Mission Trip which is a missions trip to our home town and surrounding areas. Our youth ministry has a separate blog for our missions trip so please check out this blog to see what this years Samaria Trip looked like.

http://www.tumblr.com/blog/alphaomegasamaria

"Share the Rock"

In two weeks our youth ministry has an amazing opportunity to help run a sports camp called "Share the Rock" with a local College Basketball coach. This is definitely a first for our youth ministry so your prayers are coveted. We are so excited to see what God will do. Will will post picture and videos after.

What Students Need to Be Taught from their Church

I had the privilege of writing a blog post for our Church's mission blog this past week. I thought i would share it. 

What Students Need to Be Taught from their Church - Travis Walker

As we move forward with Mission Them, key values will remain the same throughout our ministries. No matter which site your family might end up attending, these things will be taught in the student ministries at Bethel.

A high view of God and His gospel

The main thing that every student should be learning from us is God’s supremacy and His love for us. Every topic, every sermon, every small group discussion, every praise and worship song should point our students back to the Gospel. If our students leave our church as moralistic deists we have failed them.

A low view of Man

Our students need great examples of humble men and women who are primarily servants. Many times we portray spiritual leaders as perfect, sinless heroes, which is dangerous. Our students need to see God as gracious and merciful in His willingness to use us even though He doesn’t need us.

A high view of “The Church”

We need to speak very highly of Christ’s Church, the global assembly of Christ’s followers. Our students should learn to love and appreciate all those who confess Christ as Lord.

A moderate view of their church

Our students should never learn that their church is the best church; that the church down the street is worse than their church. If a church is making much of Christ and His life, death and resurrection then that church is bringing glory to God.

“…so that in all things Christ might have preeminence” Col. 1:18b 

Thanks Ashley for editing it and making it to be easy to read. 

What Makes You Valuable?

We are in our discipleship series this month and our main theme is that we are being conformed into the image of Christ. (Romans 8:28-29) Our goal is to help our students stop focusing on how the world sees them and start to view themselves as God sees them. We want the students to see themselves as God's workmanship, who God is working on in order to make them into the image bearers they were created to be. We are putting the emphasis on what God is doing in us to conform to the image of His son and less on what we should do to be conformed.

To help our students think about this question, we set up a huge mirror that we found laying around in the church and set it up in the youth center and allowed the students to answer the question, "What makes you valuable?" The students took markers and wrote their answers to that questions. We then answered that question in gender specific panel discussions through out the night. It was a great night. We showed this video during the night.

AO Discipleship Series

Last week we started a 5 week series on Discipleship. We are defining discipleship as "God's process of Restoring Us to the image of His Son".


Here is a brief outline of our 5 weeks-

AO Discipleship Series- Being Made into the image of God-

(Discipleship- God’s process of “Restoring Us” to the image of His son)
Gen 1:26-27; Romans 8:28-29; 2 Cor. 3:18

·        April 19^th – Tony Sorci- Made in the Image of God, the fall, and God’s plan to restore

·        April 26^th- Panel of Youth Leaders- God restoring our Relationship with ourselves-
                                         (Self-worth- finding value in the reality that we are loved by God)-
                                         Gender specific panels

·        May 3^rd- Mike Wittig – God restoring our relationship with Himself through His Son

o   Justification, Substitutionary atonement, Imputed Righteousness

o   Bethel U commercial

·        May 10^th- Gender Specific Keynote Speakers- God restoring our relationship with Others (Taking us from being lovers of ourselves to being lovers of God and the People he created) Missions, community and the relationships

·        May 17^th-     Anthony Rettig- God restoring our relationship with his Creation (work) Conclusion- Jim Pitts

          Much of the information we are talking about is coming from a book called, "Disciple" by Bill Clem.

Nike Free -- I Would Run To You - YouTube

Nike Free -- I Would Run To You - YouTube:
Awesome Video. Came across this video. My wife and i both love to run and this made me laugh. I probably won't ever show it to the middle schoolers i work with, but it has a great message in it as well. We, the guy in the video, desperately need God to pursue us, because we fail every day at pursuing Him and his ultimate act of pursuit was the gift of His Sons life, death and Resurrection. Praise God for the Gospel.


'via Blog this'

Great Blog Post About Youth Ministry

There is so much good conversation going on right now about the future of youth ministry. I am so excited about where it seems youth ministry is going. Here is one conversation about this topic that was a huge encouragement to me.

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/02/20/give-up-the-gimmicks-youth-pastors/

CIY BELIEVE RETREAT 2012

We got back last weekend from our middle school winter retreat. This year we again went and joined "Christ in Youth" for their believe retreat. This is the 2nd year in a row we have gone to this, and it reconfirmed in my mind that this is the only winter retreat that i want our students to be apart of. This conference is both fun and theologically sound. It's high energy and deep. The ability they have to pull both of these things off is what makes CIY stand apart from any other middle school retreat i have ever been apart of. We are definitely going again next February.

Three things i learned from this conference about how to target middle school students-
1. Understand attention spans- Our students sat through 5 sessions and each session was an hour to an hour and a half long and i never heard our 34 students complain once about being bored or struggling to stay awake. The sessions used their time so well to keep the kids engaged, using music, videos, two different speakers, a comedy group, and every element focused around the same theme to point the students towards the main point.




2. Teach deep truths in a simple way- The theme of this years retreat was the importance and significance of the Word of God. Our students learned about inerrancy, reliability, and inspiration but they learned it using their vocabulary. So, my students learned that the bible is perfect, true and it is God's words. This reminded me that I can teach my students deep truths, but i need to just work hard at helping them understand theological terms.

3. Foster communication and relationships- Some camps i have been to put all the focus on the main speaker or the band or camp counselors as if they are the super stars who are a little better and more important than the youth leaders they came with. So, the students desire is to get to know and talk to them about what they learned at the retreat. CIY did an amazing job at making my volunteer youth leaders look good. Over and over again they told the students to talk with their leaders about what they are learning and even set aside time to make that happen. They really set my ministry up for success after the retreat was over. Thank you CIY.

March of the Unqualified

This week we finished our study on the book of Jonah. We concluded with the reminder that God loves us in spite of our sin and failures. We finished with a reminder of God's character and a look at Jonah's lack of character. What a great reminder.

We showed this video this week right before the message to get them thinking about this point. Great Video.

Creative Videos

Almost every Thursday night in youth group our youth ministry uses videos to help focus the students on the theme/purpose or main point of the night. We don't believe we have to have or use videos, but there is something about a well made, creative video that draws the students in. Once our team has confirmed the direction we are going for that specific youth group night our whole team takes a little bit of time to find a fitting video.

 Here is the video we showed last Thursday night. I thought it was a pretty good video which asks the question do you have a real  personal intimate relationship with Christ.

If you have come across any good videos or even sites where you find videos please leave me a comment. I would really appreciate it.