And we are BACK... Here we go launching again into our Youth Group rhythm with a new series called RUN WILD! We will be studying some of the Psalms and looking at David’s emotional conversations with God to uncover how we should handle our emotions in light of our relationship with Jesus. This week we focus on Psalm 13 with the goal of learning from David’s example of how to voice our feelings to God, yet also being able to remain faithful and trusting of God in the midst of our situation. We want students to be empowered to deal with their emotions through prayer and to declare God’s Truth over their circumstances!

Welcome to the last series of the school year: CHOICES! Life is all about

choices and as followers of Jesus, we want to know how to make good,

God-honoring choices on a consistent basis. In Proverbs, there is a lot of

WISDOM for us to learn from, especially in terms of making choices. We will

spend the next 4 weeks unpacking wise choices guided by the words of King

Solomon, who was blessed with wisdom from God. This week we begin with

Proverbs 12:15 as we guide students to seek the advice of Godly counsel

when making choices, especially important choices in their lives.

This week we close our THIS IS LIFE series with our value of OUTREACH. Romans 12:20-21 directs us to serve others and shows that by doing so we can overcome evil with good. As followers of Jesus, it is important for our students to see the value of service and giving of themselves for the betterment of others! This includes sharing God’s love with those who may not know Jesus and inviting others to come hear the Gospel message and join our community of believers. We are going to be encouraging students to invite their friends to our LIFE PARTY next Wednesday night (April 18) and to sign up to serve with OPERATION INASMUCH (April 28).

It’s great to be back after a week off and to get back into our THIS IS

LIFE series talking about our VALUES. We will continue through Romans 12

and look specifically at Romans 12:17-19, as this week we focus in on our

RELATIONSHIPS as followers of Jesus. We believe that it is so important for

our students to learn about how God-honoring relationships are built on

forgiveness and peace. God’s word continually shows us our need to forgive

each other and directs us to pursue peace in EVERY relationship, even with

enemies! We are asking students to suspend all judgment - for God alone is

the Judge - and to work on their relationships with others.

We are so excited to continue on in our THIS IS LIFE series as we look at the values of our Student Ministry. Based on Romans 12:14-16, we will look at a biblical worldview of commitment and how it relates to our lives as believers. We want our students to understand what it means to truly capture the essence of Christ and his selfless love for us, and how understanding that truth frees us from our selfish tendencies and pushes us toward being fully committed to each other in our Small Groups. This Christ-like commitment will help us become contagious to the outside world as we model what it means to be one as the body of Christ.

Worship isn’t just a “here and there moment - we worship everywhere.” As a child of God, we are to be in constant worship. As we see in Romans 12:1 12:11-13, every breath we take should be in worship. There are many different ways for us to worship - it doesn’t just have to be once a week while singing at church. We can worship through music, prayer, scripture reading, serving, sharing the gospel, working, and even the little things in our everyday routine. This week we want you to think about worship in a way that is constant. We want you to live out your worship so others can see what it looks like to worship the One who deserves it all.

Welcome to a brand new series called THIS IS LIFE! I’m really looking

forward to the next 5 weeks as we unpack the VALUES of our Student

Ministry. Based on Romans 12:9-21, we will look at how we want the “life”

of our ministry (and hopefully the lives of our students) to be defined by:

Love, Worship, Commitment, Relationships, Outreach. We believe that with

these values in place, students will walk closer with God and develop

deeper relationships with each other! This week we begin with guiding our

students to a proper understanding of love based on scripture and

challenging them to choose to love themselves and others like God does.