We walked into week two of our season for online ministry with our students. We jumped on Facebook again and had a great time with our students! Found a new software package that allows for screen sharing. I'm going to give it one more week of usage before sharing the details with you! Watch for that in the next couple of days.

In the meantime, here's the recap of our student gathering this past Tuesday, March 24th!

Like many of you, I learned Saturday afternoon that our church was shutting down. This was in accordance with the governments limiting of large group gatherings. For us, that meant no worship services on Sunday and the cancelation of all events for the foreseeable future. This would include the gathering of our student ministry. So I jumped into the pool with everyone else, hustling to rework their youth ministries to accommodate the shut down.

Our plan was to utilize Facebook LIVE. This would be the first time that we attempted a Facebook LIVE, and because it was our first time, I decided to keep it simple; a welcome, a game, and a short devotional. Below is the outline of our first live youth group gathering.

It ended up being a great night. We had fun with the scavenger hunt. The students utilized the comments space. And, everyone stuck around for the whole message. All in all, not a bad first attempt. Since we will be using Facebook for the time being, we are looking to up the game for next Tuesday night. I have already started planning and trying to figure out how to pull off an excited event! Check back next week to hear what we did.

- jay

One great way of encouraging youth workers, is to share what's happening with your own student ministry. I know a number of youth workers who do this, and it has been super helpful to me. I have been able to learn, collect a few new ideas and discover some really cool resources. So starting today, I want to start a new kind of blog entry. Each Wednesday, I hope to share what our student ministry is doing at our weekly student gatherings.

First a little background...
My student ministry gathers every Tuesday evening. We meet from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. I have been with my group only since June 1, so I'm still within my first year getting to know these students. The program was good. There were some leaders, mostly interns from the local college. About 20 to 30 students. But the program had very little infrastructure leaving the program as a whole unhealthy and unsustainable. Because the ministry was run by interns, every couple of years brought a new rotation of leaders, ideas, and leadership dynamics. One of my roles is to build a sustainable ministry with the necessary structure and strategy for ongoing ministry and growth.  We are now in a season of rebuilding. 

At the beginning of 2020, we made the decision to split our little group, creating a Middle School Ministry for students in grades 6-8 and a High School Ministry for students in grades 9-12. To do this, we have started meeting together for our main program, then splitting for games and age specific hang out. Eventually we hope to have enough students to run 2 independent groups complete with worship, teaching, games, and activities.

​(I feel like there is some good content coming as we rebuild this ministry, so watch for future posts on our sustainable developments.)

Here's the rundown of our Tuesday Night...

Date: Tuesday, March 3rd. 2020
Theme for the Night: OREO Night
Series Title: Help! I'm A Teenager! A Guide for the Teenager.
Message Title: Relationships

Countdown Video: 5 minutes
 - Night Drive, DYM (Night Drive Countdown Video)

Welcome Video: 4 minutes
​ - I took a DYM game and turned it into a 4 minute video that invited our students to play along as the images came on screen. The game was called, Did They OREO It? 

Announcements: 3 minutes
 - Ice Skating, March 8th, 2020.
 - The New TikTok account (tiktok.com/c3students)

Upfront Game: 10 minutes
​ - Face the Cookie (youtu.be/oLvLVL_rfD4)
​ - You can watch our version of the game below.

Worship: 15 minutes
 - Oceans (Rend Collective version)
 - This is Amazing Grace (Phil Wickham)
 - WayMaker (Leeland)

Message: 25 minutes
 - Help! I'm A Teenager! Week 1
 - Relationships (Watch a short series intro...)

After the message, the middle school students were dismissed to our game space for games and fun. Our high school students moved to our hang out space.

Because we were celebrating the OREO cookie, we asked parents and friends of our student ministry to donate a variety of OREO cookie flavors. We received a ton of cookies which made the night, and our "feast" special. Oh, and let's not forget the milk. We had plenty of white and chocolate milk for dunking and drinking.

It was a great night. We stayed on time, utilized some great resources and made good use of our time with students. Celebrating the OREO cookie was easy and the students really enjoyed trying some of the different flavors.

Give OREO night a shot! Just don't forget the milk!

- jay