This past Friday Pastor Stef was our guest speaker at Alive and it went really well! He hosted a Q&A session with our students – everyone was able to submit questions about God, Christianity, Jesus, etc. for Stef to answer. We had a lot of goodquestions and I’ve had some great feedback about the night! We’ll definitely be asking Pastor Stef to come back in the New Year!
This week ends with a very busy Friday night at Bethany – not only is it our annual Fall Family Banquet starting at 6:30 in the gym, but it is also our costume party! After dinner, students will be dismissed upstairs for some games. The preteen ministry will be joining us at the end of the night for a ‘costume catwalk’ and prize giveaway. We will have LOTS of prizes for several different categories of costumes so be sure to arrive wearing something interesting! While we will be giving students time to change into their costumes after dinner, Pastor Stef has encouraged all of us to come to dinner in our costumes – if we do it, he’ll do it! He’s even told the church about it so hopefully we see lots of adults dressed up too! Please remember that this is a church event and scary, evil, gory/bloody or revealing costumes are not permitted. This website has TONS of great DIY costume ideas if you don’t know what to wear!
This past Sunday morning we started a series of lessons on ‘Bible Basics’ – not basics in terms of stories (Noah, Adam and Eve, etc.) which get a lot of attention in All Star Kids – but rather, basics of who wrote the Bible, how the books are organized, when the books were written, how they were chosen, and on and on. One of our goals in youth ministry is to ensure that by the time students graduate, they are able to articulate to others WHY they believe that the Bible is truth – it’s a necessary foundation for our faith in God but is often overlooked.
Tonight is also our last night of discussing evangelism in small groups. Next Monday, no small groups will be meeting. The following week, the three groups will all be starting their own topics which are TBA.
Finally, we have been looking ahead to the Christmas season and brainstorming ways that our youth and preteen ministries can be reaching out to others in service and in love. We have been showing the Advent Conspiracy video and will be basing our Christmas service projects on the principles outlined in the video (it’s a very worthwhile watch!). We have come up with 5 potential service projects, and have therefore dubbed these initiatives a ‘Christmas Service Project Blitz.’ I’m really looking forward to working with the Student Leaders and ministry volunteers to organize these events and projects. The 5 ideas we had are:
· Sponsor a community family by buying them Christmas gifts
· Organizing a blanket and outerwear drive for the homeless (this will be a competition between teens and preteens)
· Serving a meal to the homeless via the New West Salvation Army
· Visiting the Evergreen Home
· Raising $2500 to help drill a well in Africa via World Vision
Right now, we still need to work through the logistics of all of these service projects. Hopefully all of them will be possible! If you would like to help in any way please let me know. We have really been encouraging our students to think about where their money is going this Christmas season, and to remember the true reason we celebrate – Jesus.
Praying you all have a fantastic week (and looking forward to seeing those costumes on Friday!),
Amanda
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