Who We Are
Knowing God
Serving Each Other
Developing Leaders
Engaging Our City
This sums up in essence everything we try to do to impact students, their families, their schools and our community. Behind these statements are the four core values that are foundational to our student ministry: Gospel-centered relationships, leadership development, missions involvement and comprehensive Bible teaching.
Knowing God
Knowing God is rooted in two concepts:
- that God’s Word is sufficient to inform and shape every aspect of our lives (2 Timothy 3:16-17) and;
- the primary task of ministry is the preaching/teaching of the Bible (1 Timothy 4:13).
Because Scripture is sufficient and it is imperative to teach the Bible, we make these concepts the primary focus of our student ministry. We devote our Wednesday nights to the systematic study of books of the Bible. We also spend time studying and applying Scripture in Growth Groups (small groups) using The Gospel Project curriculum.
We do not read, hear, see, study, preach and apply Scripture so that we simply know more about the Bible — that’s knowledge that “puffs up” (1 Corinthians 8:1). Instead, we do that so that we can store the Word in our hearts to know God more and live more effectively for Him (Psalm 119:11).
Our goal for our students is to train them to teach others the Bible. We want them to teach because they learn the discipline to invest in others as they mine scripture to feed themselves spiritually. That’s the end goal: to teach the Bible so that, when our students graduate, they can handle the Word themselves and grow from it.
Serving Each Other
This is rooted in the second greatest commandment (according to Jesus), “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:40). Human beings are inherently selfish. We are good at taking care of ourselves. What we desire for our students is that they look outside of themselves and develop a genuine care and love for other people.
A natural response to the love of Christ is to love those who are created in His image. With every opportunity that presents itself, we are to “do good unto all men” (Galatians 6:10). We can, and should, love our neighbor because of the Greater Love that was displayed and lavished on us.
Developing Leaders
This finds its biblical foundation in 2 Timothy 2:2. There it describes the cycle of raising up leaders in the church to carry on the work of ministry. Leaders are tasked to find others who would be great potential leaders and invest in them. In our student ministry, we are always looking for students who show potential to be leaders.
Those students will be the influencers who can help shape and raise up the younger middle students. But beyond identifying those who have leadership gifts, our aim is to develop all of our students to be influencers, even if they are not leaders.
Engaging Our City
This is accomplished by involving our students in local and global missions. Matthew 28:18-20 and Acts 1:8 provide the where and the how of missions. Our approach is that we seek to go on missions to serve both our neighbors and the nations. It is every Christian’s task, and the church’s commission, to take the Gospel to those who have not yet heard. On a practical level, our student ministry, along with our church body, serves in local ministry sites in our community.
Missions is the culmination of biblical teaching and leadership development: students are equipped to go into their schools, their teams and their clubs and to be “salt and light” for their friends (Matthew 5: 13-16). For us, “engaging” is not about our students simply inviting their friends, it is about living on mission everyday.
