Parents and youth,
I’m super pumped to share some exciting news about a big change coming up in our youth ministry!
Last week I had the privilege to take Frances, Tyler, Jeanne, Noah, and Grace to the Charlotte airport to pick up Peter. He was flying in after serving on Work Crew for a month at a Young Life camp in New York. What a gift it was to watch these 6 teenagers exchanging hugs and hear their deep belly laughter.
Last year, these 6 kids went to 6 different schools. One is an aspiring actress, another an aspiring mechanic. One’s a soccer goalie, another a softball catcher. One loves reggae music, another loves fish. They don’t share classrooms, playing fields, or live in the same neighborhoods. By the world’s standards- they shouldn’t be friends.
Isn’t that part of the wonder of the Church? Our Heavenly Father takes all kinds of broken people and creates a beautiful mosaic that He calls the body of Christ.
One of my favorite parts of Camp Booyah was watching our middle and high schoolers love one another. We split them up on work/rec teams where they were essentially forced to spend a lot of time with people who were not already their friends and not the same age. On the first day I watched kids look in their camp notebooks and lift their heads with sadness. I even had a few requests, “But Drew, can I PLEEEEASE switch to my friend’s team?!”
By the end of the week, strangers had become BFFs. High school seniors were jumping in the line of fire and taking paintball bullets for little 6th graders. It was b-e-a-utiful.
I came home from camp thinking about our school year environments and realized that our middle and high schoolers are separated on Sunday mornings for DRIVE and THE Q and have also been separated during the evenings with WAHO and SNL. The Lord continued to stir in my heart a deep desire to bring them all back together.
I’ve done youth ministry for 20 years. Everything I’ve learned about the development stages of teenagers says that middle and high schoolers are miles apart. It doesn’t make sense to put them together.
On Sunday, I was sharing my tension with our incredible team of youth leaders. I said, “I feel like the Lord wants us all to be together this year, from the non-deodorant using 6th grade boy all the way to the extra cologne using senior guy. But I know that doesn’t make worldly sense. I know that the high schoolers are probably not going to want to come to an event filled with middle schoolers.”
That’s right when Nathan Hedman, one of the wisest guys I know, said something that deeply resonated with me, “Let’s not give them what they want, let’s give them what they need. The world tells us who should be our community: people that look like us, act like us, dress like us, and are the same age as us. As the church, we get to paint a new picture of what community looks like.”
I started envisioning our high school seniors showing up on toga night at the football game and yelling their head off in the student section, right beside their 7th grade friend they drove to the game. I’ve sat in a whole lot of student sections and have never seen that happen.
I began to pray for siblings, kids who share a wall and yet can’t stand one another. Could we get to watch brothers become besties? God is all about shattering expectations. He split the sea for Moses. He raised Lazarus from the dead. I believe he can do immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine when it comes to changing our hearts.
This week I’ve spoken to a few of our high schoolers on the phone and pitched the idea of combining on Sunday nights. The conversations blew my mind. 100% of them have been excited about the change. Over and over again I heard them say, “Yeah, I really want to get to be with the middle schoolers.”
The Lord is up to something and I think I’m more excited about youth ministry than I’ve ever been.
Would you join me in praying for our middle and high schoolers? Would you pray this year would be a year of personal and cooperate transformation? That individual kids would fall deeply in love with Jesus? And would you beg the Lord that He would knit their hearts together and build a community that oozes grace and the aroma of Christ? Would you pray that we would fix our eyes on Jesus, together, and that we would be filled with awe?
“They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers. Everyone around was in awe—all those wonders and signs done through the apostles! And all the believers lived in a wonderful harmony, holding everything in common. They sold whatever they owned and pooled their resources so that each person’s need was met. They followed a daily discipline of worship in the Temple followed by meals at home, every meal a celebration, exuberant and joyful, as they praised God. People in general liked what they saw. Every day their number grew as God added those who were saved.” –Acts 2:42-47 (The Message)
Today, completely out of the blue, Honey said, “Daddy, I love your job. I love that you get to tell kids about Jesus, and that I get to be friends with the kids, and that you have a job that lets you spend time with me too.”
Thank you for allowing me to have a job I absolutely love and for trusting me with your precious kids. If I could have any job in the world, I’d choose this one.
Drew
THE DETAILS
WHO
SNL (Sunday Night Live) is for 6th-12th graders and youth leaders.
WHEN
It will kick off on September 11th, and be every Sunday night this fall until Nov. 20th. We will not meet Nov. 27 bc of Thanksgiving. See the Fall Calendar for more details about Sundays in December.
6-8pm. I’d love to create a culture where the older kids that drive feel free to hang out later, til 9pm-ish. Others can be picked up between 8-8:15.
WHERE
For now, it will be at our house, 1210 Alderman Dr, for lack of a better alternative. With middle and high school combined, along with youth leaders, I anticipate 60-75 folks each Sunday night. We’ll use our basement for the large group time and when we split up into small groups we’ll use upstairs as well. Nat and I are happy to host and we’re attempting to build a retaining wall and small concrete pad in our backyard to hopefully make it more usable for the large group.
Please be mindful of our neighbors when dropping off and parking on the street. Our neighbors are awesome, I just want to be respectful of them since it’s such a large group on a regular basis.
We’ll likely move SNL to New Garden once the space is ready, but that probably won’t be until Easter.
NFL
As a football fan, it saddens my heart to miss the end of the 4:00 games on Sundays, but it’s for sure worth it. We’ll probably have the games on the TV from 5:45-6:25, but hopefully this won’t affect too many kids, and thankfully the Panthers play on Thursday in opening week so they won’t be playing on our kickoff Sunday of Sept 11th. J
TYPICAL SCHEDULE
5:15- youth leaders gather to pray
6:00- middle and high schoolers arrive and eat dinner together
6:25- competition and laughter ensues
6:35- worship
6:50- talk
7:10- small groups (divided by age/gender)
8:00- SNL is over, parents can pickup, high schoolers can stay and hang if they have parents permission and a ride home.
9:00- drew kicks everyone out
FOOD
I’ve talked to a lot of folks about the food scenario and we’ve decided to do dinner each week because we think it’s bonding to eat together and is helpful to families since we’re meeting at dinnertime. Weekly pizza and soda is unhealthy, so we’re going to try and switch it up some this year, but anything else is pretty expensive. We’d like to mix in Zoe’s Kitchen, Q’doba, Subway, and any other ideas you have. In the past I’ve asked parents to send $5 to help cover food costs. We’ve rarely collected enough money to cover pizza.
This semester we’re going to try something new. We’re asking you to write a check to “Church of the Redeemer” and write “Youth Food” in the memo. We’re asking you to donate $75/kid for the 11 weeks of dinner we’re going to provide, which comes out to less than $7/meal. This will even out between the pizza and more expensive places. If you know your kids won’t eat, please don’t feel obligated to pay, this is merely a “suggested donation.” If you’re able to donate more to help cover costs for our friends who cannot pay, that would be awesome. I know that is a big chunk of money, especially if you have multiple kids, so feel free to pay gradually as you can. Please give me the checks so I can manage the budget and not burden Jessie with that. You can mail them to our house at 1210 Alderman Dr, Greensboro 27408 or hand them to me at church or SNL.
ROLES YOU CAN PLAY
Rides: It’s a huge help when you pick up kids, take kids home, organize carpools, invite friends. It builds community and saves our youth leaders gas. I know transportation is a lot and that some of you have community groups, so please let us know if we can help too. Sometimes it’s great, but not at all expected, if you’re able to offer some gas money or a gas card to youth leaders if they help with rides consistently, especially our college volunteers.
Prayer Team: I’d love to start a youth prayer team of folks that meet to pray for us during SNL. If you’re interested in helping organize that team or being on it, let me know!
Food: It would help our small group leaders and I be more present with kids if on the “non-pizza” weeks we could have a parent pickup the catered food and bring it at 5:45 to set up in the basement. Let me know if I can sign you up for a night. It would also be awesome if we had desserts, appetizers, snacks, etc.. any time- so if you ever want to make something to send, it will get eaten!
Feedback: I’d love to hear your thoughts or questions, so please feel free to call or email me with any feedback!
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