Wednesday Aug. 20^th at 7:00 marks the kick off for the jr. and sr. high youth group meetings. Jr. High and Sr. High will both meet at the same time for this particular meeting. We have a lot of new things planned this year; new ideas, new visions for the youth; new leadership, and we want to catch you up with everything that is going on.

We currently have twelve leaders committed to the spiritual growth of your child. Mark (Youth Pastor) and Bonnie Wells, Patti, Andy and Bethany Rountree, Dexter Williams, Mike Settle, Bailey Smoak, Lori Ramey, James Bendowski, Steve Andreasen and Rodrigo Brotto. Each of these leaders has expressed a deep desire in reaching and ministering to each and every student at New Covenant. I am excited about what God is about to do through these men and women for the community of Anderson. Some of them have committed themselves to Cornerstone (Jr. High) and some of them have committed themselves to Capstone (Sr. High). A couple of them will be helping with both.

We have decided to split the Jr. and Sr. high up in terms of time (after the first meeting on the 20th). I have seen over the years and have been advised by other older youth ministers, that it is best for the youth leader to always be a part of both groups and there are only two ways to do this. We could either have no separation in the youth at all and we could teach them together, or we could separate the times. In the past we separated the Jr. and Sr. High but had them at the same time. This gave no room for the youth pastor to be involved in both. If we combined them completely though, we would be unable to teach certain things to the older that we feel they need to be taught and we may end up teaching at times above the Jr. Higher’s heads. It just wouldn’t work out very well, so we decided to have them at separate times so that I can be fully involved in both ministries.

Cornerstone (Jr. High) will be meeting every Wednesday night from 5:30 to 7:00, and Capstone (Sr. High) will be meeting every Wednesday night from 7:30 to 9:00. I hope this doesn’t cause too much of an inconvenience for anyone, but I feel that this is the best way to do it for now. I am not opposed to other suggestions though.

Many of you by now have figured out that our focus and vision for the youth and on parental involvement has changed quite drastically from what it was before. We have come to a cross roads in our youth group. If we continue to go down the road we are going, we (the youth team) believe that we are going to completely lose our youth spiritually, emotionally and physically. We have seen that the modern idea of babysitting the youth and occupying them with a bevy of mindless activities, does not work in strengthening the spiritual growth of the child and his need of covenantal teaching from his parents. We deeply desire and make it our goal to seek God’s will for every student in this church and His will in scripture is that we teach and rear our children covenantally . The only way we can achieve this is by partnering with you in raising your child. You are the student’s primary teacher. We know this by reading Deut. 6. We know that everything we do in this youth group, if it is not backed and supported by each family, will fall short of where we desire it to be.

Therefore, we urge you and we need you to come and join us in our vision. We deeply desire to reach every lost child in our community, but we must start with a solid foundation. We must reach out to our own children, strengthen them for the fight, and send them out into the world to bring in their friends and reach out to those lost around them. 

Please join our cause. Come hang out with all of us starting Wednesday night August 20^th and let’s start something refreshing. Let’s all get on board in reaching out to each of these children. There are a lot of kids in our youth from other churches and backgrounds, some without strong Christian parents, some with no parents, or just one parent. We need you to come and minister to them. Your kids may not always think you are cool, but their friends probably do. If you remember what it was like being a high schooler you probably remember what it was like to wish your parents were like your friends parents, so come minister to your child’s friends as well. They need you, I need you, and the youth team needs you. You can contact me anytime via email at wells@ncchurch.net or call me here at the church to find out what you can do for the youth ministry.

Also, please visit our Youth Website at www.ncyouth.net which is updated weekly to find out about any upcoming events. We will have a calendar of events for the fall posted on the website soon. Our new assistant Bailey has also done a great job of making flyers and sending them out to all of the parents so please thank her when you see her for all of her hard work.