Youth Blog

Saturday, September 17, 2016
at CBC
Pastor Justin

The Bathroom Bill

Here are some things to guide you:

1. What are the facts?
2. What's the worldview behind the issue?
3. Be careful not to attack the person(s) but the issue
4. Remember, we're trying to help our youth "think" through things.

Resources

Friday, September 16, 2016
at CBC
Pastor Justin

Why'd We Do That?

WHY'D WE DO THAT? is a document that we're putting together to explain pretty much how and why we made the decisions that we made. The point is so that others can understand our thought process, provide feedback and questions. Our hope is that others would read through these carefully and perhaps use some of what we're doing in order to grow and benefit their own ministries.

1. COMMUNITY GROUPS (CG):
We formed these groups because of several factors. First of all, we always want to make sure that we were being led by Scripture and by the Holy Spirit to do this and after much praying, studying and planning, we felt that this was the right direction to take. Second, we formed these groups because we felt like this would be one of the best ways to engage the majority of our youth group. Most of our students were attending church on Sundays, yet they were never really plugged in or they showed up but nobody knew who they were and what was going on with their lives. The hope is that CG's would make that anonymity impossible for students to come and not be known. Third, we wanted it structured with both genders, all grades and multi-leadership because we were trying to model the multi-generational picture of the church. This is hopefully going to establish long-term trajectory in membership and ecclesiology.

Community Groups resemble the Korean House Church model with characteristics of modern church structural community group model. We know for certain that getting started and building momentum will take a long time. It'll be difficult and when our students and leaders get busy, they start to really know each other's annoying habits, and when they realize we're not stopping... that'll be the big test. However, we're hopeful in CG's because there is real potential of lives changed. We hope to see it as many youth will be discipled not by one but by many older students and leaders that are dedicated to their growth. We hope to see friendships and relationships nurtured during the week where real heart change takes place. We hope to see Gospel-saturated students evolved from this and continue to model this understanding way past their teenage years.

We're doing Community Groups because we believe that lives will be changed by the Gospel through this.

2. SNACKS TO COLLEGE CAMPUS MINISTRIES:
At the end of the 2015-2016 fiscal year for CBC Youth, we noticed that we had a significant surplus in finances due to...I'm not sure - fundraising? Underspending? Well anyways, we wanted to take a look at it and see what we could do with some of that extra money. We decided that with some of the left-over budget, we wanted to support some of our former CBC Youth. So we are targeting the college campus ministries where our former CBC Youth are currently a part of so that is: AACM & EPIC in Austin, Texas, AMIV at Baylor, AAIV, at A&M, and UHIV at UH. There are other smaller ministries but we'll be spending individual packages there. Ok, so why are we doing this?

1. We teach about partnerships with like-minded ministries and so we practice partnering with whoever we can. We want our students to know that other ministries around the world are also engaging and equipping others with the Gospel and so we want to support them in their efforts. We want to reiterate to parachurch ministries that the local church is behind them cheering them on.

2. We want to fuel our former youth in their efforts to be faithful on campus. Just because many of our students have graduated and now attend colleges all around the world, we want to make sure that they know that they are being prayed for, supported and that they still represent our church where they're at.

It's a small thing that this youth group is doing, but we feel like a small thing can go a long way. Again, our youth ministry wants to be faithful in the small things - even if that is supporting our college campus ministries. Our prayer here is that wherever Gospel-minded believers are that they be faithful...we hope that these little gifts gives you a bit of encouragement while they're being faithful.