God Isn’t Fair

Life isn’t fair. God is in control of life. Therefore, God isn’t fair. That’s the syllogism we created at the beginning of Youth last night. [If you are not familiar with syllogisms – they are a great tool for deductive reasoning, often attributed to Aristotle – worth looking up] Everyone agreed with the first and […]

Draw Near

“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” James 4:8a This verse was the focus of our lesson. We looked into the context of the verse, summarizing verses 1-6, reading verses 7-10 and discussing that this verse is within a passage addressing humility and turning toward God and away from the world. […]

Barely Alive V. Thrive

We delved into Jeremiah 17:5-8 last night. Thus says the Lord:“Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come.He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.” “Blessed is the man who […]

Parenting

Our lesson time started by remembering Alyvia, a classmate and friend to three of you. We discussed her death and talked through the emotions that have surfaced. We reminded you that as you grieve the loss of a friend, you are supported by God, your families, your Youth group, your church, and a whole community […]

Eclectic

Eclectic is how I described our list of topics last night at Youth. There was no apparent theme, just topics I’ve listed over the past several weeks that I wanted to discuss, so here we go! Talent Search – I’m looking for Youth who can sing, play an instrument, or cross stitch – if that’s […]

2020 in Photos

A few pictures from our 2020 activities… Even during a pandemic, we were able to safely squeeze in a lot of activities in addition to our weekly meetings. Looking forward to even more trips / activities together in 2021!

A Teenager’s Job

Mary was likely a teenager when she had Jesus. God has always asked and trusted teenagers to do important things.

A Gift

Each year, we share a Christmas Communion. Its one of my favorite things we do together. In the midst of everything that Christmas has become – vacations, presents, meals, gatherings, special programs – our shared communion provides a reflective time to remember why Jesus came to earth. He was born to die. For us. For […]

3 in 1

It wasn’t planned this way, but we ended up drawing upon 3 past lessons last night at Youth. Several of you shared how you utilized (or plan to utilize) the $50 of God’s money you were entrusted with (for details read this post): donated to an Angel Tree at school purchased gifts for a neighbor […]

Thankful

I’m thankful for everyone’s unique contributions to our Youth group. In addition to many other great qualities you bring, I’m thankful for: Grace’s enthusiasm Kaylee’s confidence Shelby’s sweetness Nic’s independence Camryn’s poise Kendal’s logic Madalyn’s quirkiness Anna’s intelligence Hannah’s helpfulness Sophie’s caring Claire F’s adaptability Lillian’s fierceness Claire T’s authenticness Alex’s curiosity Kylie’s kindness Chloe’s […]

$50

Our church collects and spends $200,000 of God’s money each year. God gives people money, people give some of the money back to God through our church, then the church board decides how that money should be spent. Going through the church budgeting process this year reminded me of the compounding responsibility of spending God’s […]