New year for Youth Group. . .Moving To Jr High For Me
So, I’ve moved down in the world –
The past five years I have been active with the high school ministry at church which I loved. High schoolers are so real and so raw and so down to earth and I have enjoyed hanging with my two older children’s youth groups and leading a discipleship group and helping organize mission trip fundraisers and mission trips.
I have been involved with youth ministry off and on for 25 y ears. Since I became a believer in high school, I had told God that I would be willing to reach out to youth to help them in that journey and I have had that opportunity these years. Helping college age through Campus Crusade for Christ, helping high school and junior high youth through my youth ministry leadership position just out of college, to other volunteer positions these past years.
One of the things that my husband and I have liked to do is be involved with our children where they are at. And having a large family means divide and conquer, so these past years I have committed to high school ministry and my husband had done the Awanas for our younger children.
Now that our older kids are finished with high school and moving on (I still cannot believe it), I am moving down to the junior high group, http://www.678live.com/ As is my husband. He is still helping with Awana and boy scouts and I have my other areas of ministry, but related to youth group, I sure enjoyed our first week of junior high group. It was an introduction night and since we are on the welcome team, there was not a lot to do for me, so I got out my camera and shot photographs and that now will be one of my roles. Capturing the kids in action with their leaders at Fusion.
My 6th grade twins are so excited to be a part of the youth group at Rolling Hills. They were in a discipleship group last summer and they went to outdoor movie night and bible study and got to know the staff and the kids and they want to grow.
I am loving moving to the junior high school youth group to help there. I love this age. The students are so excited about life and so innocent and so willing to learn and so eager to learn and so willing to try new things and they mostly just try to be a part of something and grow without all the tangles that high school sometimes has. They are willing to have fun and be crazy and just be. They are so eager to take God at His word and I hope and pray they stay that way and I believe God that He can and will protect their hearts and I see the heart of the youth ministry staff and their desire to come alongside families to partner with them, to raise this generation of youth. There has been so much more of an emphasis on discipleship this year at our church and it stems from Pastor Dale Ebel and it is expanding into all of the areas of our church including the youth, which I feel is so vital. Parents need to be discipling their children and it is neat to see the youth group emphasizing this.
The honesty and sweetness of junior high schoolers is exemplifed in an example of one of my twins coming home to tell me what happened at school. He was listening to his teacher talk about evolution and how we were evolved and he said to the girl sitting next to him, I don’t believe that this happened this way. It is only a theory. I believe that God created people and the earth and he asked the girl what she believed and she said she agreed with him.
I love this age. Sweet junior high age.
Cornelia Seigneur (Parent of 6th Grade Students)
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