Our Youth Group

Jason is the new youth pastor at our church. Our church has a children's ministry and the junior youth (middle and upper elementary kids) met Sunday nights when the parents would go to Bible study, but there wasn't anything for the high school age and up. We created a new name- Gravity Youth- and designated Wednesday nights as our youth night.

We started out by deciding the flow of the night. We spend the first 1/2 hour hanging out, chatting, playing foosball, waiting for every one to come in, then we start at 6:30. Jason wanted worship, but we don't have a band. So for now, we find cool music worship videos and project them onto the big screen. We do a game, then Jason has a message prepared. He's been doing a good job preparing themes for the week. Last week was on pain and suffering and why God let's that happen to us. He speaks directly out of the Bible. One youth told us at the end of the night that he really like the message today because he always hears about the good stuff and never hears about the not-so-feel good stuff that we need to understand about-pain and suffering. It was cool to talk about the end of times and when Jesus is going to come down to save all of us, but our friends and family who do not believe in Jesus will be left here. It will be a shocking reality some day and it's important for them to realize it will happen. It's important to reach out to those nonbelievers and be Jesus to them, if not share the Gospel with them.

I like being a mentor to the youth because we can talk to them on an adult level about this kind of stuff. We volunteer one Sunday a month teaching the 1st and 2nd graders and sometimes preschoolers and it is always little kid lessons about how God loves us. So it is nice to talk about more mature topics.

After the lesson, we do announcements and talk to the kids about what events they'd like to do. We are going to a few Christian concerts coming up and we are ALL excited. Then after it's over the kids hang out and chat and leave around 8:15.

We are enjoying it. We are still trying to find our leadership style with being friendly with the kids, yet not too much of a friend, but more of a teacher/mentor-figure. It's not as easy as one would think! Even though I have a teenage brother and generally have good relationships with teenagers, it's different to be in this type of position. We are having to earn their respect, develop relationships with them, get to know them on a one-on-one level, and invest in their lives. We have to intentionally invest in them. We are loving it though. I know Jason is for sure.