And That’s What It’s All About!

I have always thought that this time of year is the “lull” time in student ministry…Boy, have I been mistaken.  We are still going strong, with having just wrapped up our 3-D

Group at Encounter

Life series on Church Membership, Encounter (which was awesome, might I add), Valentine’s Overflow for high school, and IGNITE just around the corner (ehem…it’s next week, and registrations are due Friday).

In the midst of all the hustle and bustle of Cove Students, today, I began to meet with baptism candidates.  With all of these events and the 3-D Life series, there has been many students that have decided to commit their lives to Jesus.  When a student makes that decision and tells me, Darin, or their small group leader, we, of course, contact the parents and set up an appointment.  This is by far my favorite thing to do in youth ministry.  There is simply nothing like grabbing a DP (that’s Dr. Pepper in student language), grabbing a seat in The Well, and having a student explain to me what baptism means to them and hear their testimony of how they came to know and understand who Jesus is.

If you know me well, I tend to shed a few tears when things touch my heart, so usually a few tears are flowing from me…their is something so beautiful about a person sharing their faith.  As a student simply put it to me today, “I realized, this is my missing piece!  I just haven’t made the public commitment, and that needs to happen.”  As some of these students simply put their faith to me in words, I could not help but think of Matthew 19 where the children come to Jesus and Jesus essentially tells the disciples to have faith like the children.

I will be continuing to have these appointments in the afternoon for the next couple of weeks.  Then on March 6th, the candidates will of written their testimony (with some help), so that they can read it on video for the baptism service on March 20th at 5:00 p.m.  I love that this way the parents, small group leaders, friends, and family can catch a glimpse of what those appointments are about–a student sharing their faith.

As I think about all the hustle and bustle of IGNITE and other events we have going on,…you have to realize that it kind of all boils down to those appointments.  Usually, I have a student say, IGNITE, Bigstuf, Road Trip, Encounter, Impact, etc had impacted their faith in those appointments.

In the midst of all the planning and the debating as to what to do or whether to let your child attend this event or that activity, please keep in mind: that’s what it’s all about.

It is all about a student deciding to follow Jesus and developing a relationship with Him.

Making disciples.

That’s what it’s all about!

In His Hands,

C

Encounter: “If you really knew me…”

Darin and I started out on a mission this year to provide the juniors and seniors in our student ministry with the opportunity to have some “say-so” and leadership with in the ministry.  We specifically wanted their help with Encounter.  So, on the Varsity Rafting Trip, Darin invited the students to help us plan Encounter…everything from the theme, to the games, to the t-shirt, to the booklets.

At BigStuf this summer, I went into one of the sections of rooms, and there sat around 20 sophomore girls all piled on top of each other crowded around 1 little bitty tv watching this show on MTV called, “If you really knew me…”  Their response in pure attention caused me to respond in curiosity as to what they were so fascinated with that was on TV.  As these teens purged about themselves the truth, some shocking, I saw how it stirred up all sorts of conversation among our young ladies.

Therefore, I was not all that surprised when our juniors and seniors settled around this theme for our high school retreat.  If you watched the video above, that is just an example of some of the thoughts that we will be circling around for this retreat.  We really want the students to have a chance to bond and truly find out about each other, “if you really knew me ___.”  Not only do we want them to have a chance to bond and get to know each other truly, but we also want them to have the opportunity to find out how God would finish the phrase, “if you really knew Me ____.”

If you have a high school student, please encourage them to sign up for Encounter (Plug: The early bird deadline is this Sunday!).  We will leave Friday, January 28th in the afternoon and return on Sunday, January 30th in the afternoon.  We will of course have food, games (including Outpost–which will be epic with the way our seniors have planned it this year!), our guest speaker is Jason Brown from Broadway United Methodist Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Blake Waldrop, senior, sharing part of his testimony, worship led by our youth band, low ropes course, and our new drama team may have something to contribute as well!

Your student won’t want to miss this retreat to Encounter Christ.  Please contact me if you have questions.  I am expectant about how God is going to mold this group through this special weekend!

In His Hands,

Caroline

Daraja is Coming!!!!

Back in the spring, Darin, Emily, and I sat down and did calendaring for the fall.  We had this idea to have a concert in November for the Student Ministry.  We thought, “We will cancel Open Well and Overflow for the month, and we will open this up to the whole congregation!”  Well, back then we had no idea who exactly would be the entertainment or worship leader for this grand event.

Then, we went to BigStuf in July.  There we were in Panama City Beach, Florida with around 100 from our church that were filtered into this conference room of around 1,500 youth from around the country.  All in a sudden, we heard drums and children’s voices. Here came some, what we learned were Kenyan, children from the back of the room in bright yellow attire.  We all stood in amazement as they sang and danced to songs like, Blessed Be Your Name, Mighty to Save, God of This City, as well as, some African songs & oddly enough Thriller!  Tears of joy spilled my eyes, as well as many others.

Daraja @ BigStuf

Darin had the idea to have the choir come,…and how he secured them coming is still a little fuzzy to me, watch WAAY 31 and find out on Focus on Faith.  As the months have

T.M.I.

We’ve all had that experience where we have been have casual conversation with someone and everything is pleasant and friendly. Then, out of nowhere they hit you with an “oh, by the way…” only to leave you with that mental image that you wish you had never had. it leaves us screaming Too Much Information! (T.M.I.)

We are faced with an interested dilemma in the 21st century…

Parenting Beyond Your Capacity

Orange.

Orange is a philosophy of ministry that Cove Church strives to live out.  It is about the church being a bright light in the community (yellow) and the family be the rooted love (red) and when you combine them you make ORANGE!

When I was at the Orange Conference this past April, one of the creators of this concept, Reggie Joiner, presented a book to the pastors there.  It is called, “Parenting Beyond Your Capacity.”  

When Reggie Joiner was going over some of the key principles, it sounded A-MAZ-ING!  I went and picked up a copy at the bookstore.  Darin read through it.  Then we went to BigStuf with Liquid.  Low-and-behold, there was Carey Nieuwhof training the leaders sessions at BigStuf the co-author of the book.  What was his topic??  ”Parenting Beyond Your Capacity!”  He went through an outline of the key concepts  of almost every chapter with us first hand (So cool!)!  We gave one of these books to all of our small group leaders in Cross Roads and Liquid.  Darin and I strongly encourage you parents out there to go grab a copy at Life Way or a Christian Book store!

To be honest, due to me already hearing the key concepts from the writers themselves, I have kind of put off reading this.  It has collected a little bit of dust the last 2 months it

Open the Doors & Let Them In!

After the excitement of our first Overflow of the school year, the rafting trip, C-Link for Liquid, and Road Trip past us, there is a fun, hopeful, spirit in the Student Ministry right now…or maybe it is just the beginning of football season!

Worship at Road Trip

There will be many opportunities to come check out our Student Ministry and bringpeople in to the Cove Students Family!  As we discussed on Road Trip the theme “Something Beautiful,”  there is something so beautiful about being a part of a bigger picture and plan.  We hope the reasons we open up The Well will help continue to encourage students and adults to discover, develop, and demonstrate something beautiful!

This coming Sunday, September 12th, we will be opening the doors and letting the 6th grade parents in for an Open House!  We will be doing the same thing for 7th and 8th grade parents on Sunday, September 19th.  Come and see what a typical Sunday is like in Cross Roads!  Parents will also have a chance to see our Road Trip 2010 Highlight Video,

SURPRISE!

Me....SURPRISED!

This weekend, our pastor let the cat out of the bag that I will be turning 40 this weekend.  Actually, he said that I turned 40 last weekend by mistake and took away my last full week of my 30′s!  Seriously, I’m not overly concerned about entering this new decade of my life. (Here are some people that are my age.) It’s just hard to imagine that by the next time I celebrate another 10 years, my oldest son will be a senior in high school!  WHAAAAAAAAAT?  crazy stuff.

The best thing about turning 40 so far has been a party that I went to last week. 

THINK!

Last week we took 106 people, mainly high schoolers, down to Panama City Beach, Florida for BigStuf Camps.  It was my first BigStuf, and it did not disappoint.

Before we left, I spent some time challenging our students to think about what exactly is at the forefront of their minds.  What do they spend their time thinking about most?  Is it God?  A sport?  School? Money? A boy?  A girl?  Popularity?  The reason I ask this is because whatever is at the center of our thoughts is most likely what we worship.

As the week unfolded, Jared Herd, Stuart Hall, and Ben Crawshaw continued to challenge our thinking.  How we see God.  What we think about God.  Do we ask “What” or “Why” questions of God?  Are our thoughts based on whatever is true, lovely, pure, honorable,… (Philippians 4:8)?  What is YOUR next step with God?  

Serving Your Neighbor…Still a Mission

Sunday night a group of 60 middle school students will be embarking on a mission called IMPACT.  A mission to serve their neighbors.  You know, we may only be 30 minutes outside Hampton Cove, but it is still a mission.  We are ultimatly hoping to have an IMPACT on our community.

Our theme for the week is based off of Matthew 5:16, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” We hope that this week our middle school students would shine their lights and in turn that those that see their light would glorify God.

We have several projects in store for the week… VBS, visiting the senior center, reading at the library, cleaning windows at Dots Dairy, prayer walks, trash pick ups, filling the CARE Center with a TON of food (hopefully, bring your food!), making a walkway to the Children’s Clinic, re-landscaping a playground, and the list goes on and on…We hope to have a little fun on this mission trip too.  At night we will have crazy, fun games, lots of worship time, some great speakers that are active in our community, and small group time.  Tuesday afternoon we will be going to Southern Adventures, and we will be ending out our time on Wednesday night by throwing a barbeque picnic for the community.  The picnic will have Big Cove Barbeque, an Xtreme Inflatable Obstacle Course, and The Young and the Restless Bluegrass Band!  It should be a ton of fun, and hopefully some of our new friends from the community will be there!

Having a cool summer!

I have been so encouraged over the last week with the response that I’ve seen from so many of our students here at Cove. Here is a list of some of the cool things that are happening…

1) Our mission team from Appalachia has returned safely and cannot stop talking about how God is at work in their lives. Worship on Sunday was heavily influenced by that teams’ excitement about singing their praises to a God for who he is and what he has done.

2) This week we have the highest number of students to volunteer for Go-n-Grow (Cove’s version of VBS) that we’ve ever had. Which means that the number must be in the 70 range.  It’s amazing to see students serve in that way.

3) Starting tonight, our student worship band will be leading worship for the 4th/5th grade students in The Well. They had rehearsal last night and