My wife Michelle and now live in Mt. Carmel, IL where I now work as the Youth and Family Minister at the Mt. Carmel Church of Christ. I love the church body here! And I really love my role in the congregation because I able to partake in many diverse areas of ministry. My major focus of course is the youth (6-12 graders) but I have also been working on re-envisioning our children's ministry and have been able to help start our small group ministry.
Children's Ministry
Our new children's ministry will launch on the first Sunday of January with the theme S.A.N.D. Explorers. S.A.N.D is an acronym which stands for:
Searching For God In Every Area of My LifeAlways Learning More About Him
Never Putting Myself Above Others
Daily Becoming More Like Christ our King
Everything in our children's ministry and bible class program will be orientated around this theme. Our Bible class area will be called the "S.A.N.D Box" (we will soon begin repainting our classroom to make it look like a desert). We will call the kids "S.A.N.D. Explorers" during Bible class. In class the kids receive "S.A.N.D. Dollars" for displaying "S.A.N.D." in their life, reciting memory verses, bringing a friend, and so on.
Small Groups
Since the summer I have been writing teaching outlines for our small groups. Our small group lessons have been based off of the same theme that Bobby Smith (our pulpit minister) preached on on the previous Sunday. If you are interested in using any of these small group outlines let me know and I would be glad to send them to you.
We have had a lot going on with our teens lately and our group has been growing quite a bit. Our teens have been doing a great job inviting their friends to all of our teen events so we often have just as many visitors attend as we do "members". Here are some of things we have been doing with the teens lately:
- We have had the entire high school football team over for breakfast at the church building on one of their game days. For the fist time ever I used American football as an illustration.
- We have had a couple of Work Days where we helped paint an elderly lady's garage. A man from our church saw this lady painting her garage one day and stopped and offered to help. She was hesitant at first -thinking he was wanting to get payed. He helped her for some time and then the next two weeks a small group from our church returned to finish up the job. It was a great time to show this woman that the economy of the Kingdom is based off of the gift. Out God's love for us we have freely received, and thus out of our love God we freely give!
- I have been going to eat with our teens at their schools. In all, our youth group attends four different schools (two high schools and two middle schools). Each week I try to go eat at at least one of the four schools. The teens have really enjoyed this, and it has been a great way for me to better get to know them and their friends.
- I have been writing a discipleship book to study with some of our new Christians and not-yet Christians. The book teaches the basics of our faith while also teaching them what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. So far, Michelle and I are using this material to study with one person, and we have just made plans to study with two others, and have been trying to get a hold of a fourth person so that we can set up a time to study with him.
- Two Sunday's ago we led our high schoolers on a trip to Paducah, KY to see the AIMers. We had a great time spending the day together. It was also really nice to see so many of my old friends in the AIM world.
- Just this past Friday we had our first ever Fifth Quarter just for Middle Schoolers. Fifth Quarter is a party that is thrown after home football games, usually involving free food lots of fun, games and inflatables. We ended up having 60 kids attend in all! The event was a great success largely because so many from our body were passionate about serving the kids in our community. Thank you everyone who helped with this event.
- Just last week I launched a blog just for our youth and college called "Leaves in The Wind". You'll have to be sure and check it out sometime. You can click on the image above to go to the blog and see pictures from our recent activities.
5 comments:
Good to hear this man, I love catching new ideas. are you currently or will you in the future be doing anything with college age people.
awesome stuff man. its great to hear new ideas. are you doing anything with the college age group, do you incorporate them and if you do how. thats my dilemma thus far.
Hey Joe! Right now we really aren't doing a whole lot but are goint to be starting things at the local college here soon. Love you man!
Right now we really don't have that many that are in college and live here. We just had a lot go of to college this year and when they come into town they join in with the high school group. We have a very active young adult group that the college age also is involved with. I'm wanting to start things up specifically for college but haven't had the time yet.
sorry i posted twice i didnt notice that you had to approve them before they were posted.
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