Events - to have or Not to Have?

Here at Valley Family Church, we feel that events outside of the typical weekend service time are crucial to creating a “family feel” in our Student Ministry.  The weekend service is all about challenging students to chase after God and the life He has for them.  We endeavor to connect the students to God through live, relevant worship, sweet giveaways, videos, and messages from the Bible that make sense.

With any size youth group, it’s important to encourage students to connect with each other too, and that is the very reason why we plan events.  Our goal is to have at least one organized event each month that revolves around an activity that brings students closer together.  From ice skating to house parties, it is important that students know that they can have a blast while not engaging in the things the world tells them they must do to be cool.  During an event, multiple Student Ministries volunteers come with one goal in mind – helping connect students with other students.  It is important for students to feel and be connected to our ministry far deeper than periodically attending our weekend service. 

A common phrase used in our Student Ministry, is “show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.”  This phrase communicates that the friends you hang around with and associate yourself with today will ultimately be very influential in shaping your future.  When walls are broken down between students, a bond in Jesus Christ forms stronger than one could even imagine.  Our goal is to unify the students at Valley Family Church with one voice to be able to reach their own peers in Southwest Michigan with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  So bring on the ultimate Frisbee tournament!

-Ruth

Social Media Volunteering

Social media continues to fascinate me every day. It is absolutely everywhere and is becoming the new reality that we all must live in! Get this:

• Facebook has over 845 million active users
• Twitter has over 465 million active users, and is growing at a rate of 11 new accounts per second.
• There are over 1 billion Facebook posts a day
• Over 175 million tweets are sent per day on Twitter
• Over 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day

And there is a really good chance that all these statistics have totally changed by the time you are reading this blog.

So what’s the point? The point is that as a youth volunteer, the students in your youth group spend way more time with you on social media compared to the time they spend with you at a youth service or event. Students are paying way more attention than you think to your status updates, tweets, photos, or inactivity for that matter. I’m not saying that you can only minister to students on social media versus face-to-face, but what I am trying to get across is that we all have a message resonating from our social media accounts to this next generation.

Questions: Are the messages you are sending through social media congruent to the message you send face to face when you are volunteering and serving at a youth service? Are your posts, pictures, likes, comments, and content you are sharing on social media enhancing the messages that the youth pastors are speaking on a weekly basis or hindering it?

Whether we like it or not, we are all responsible to be great social media volunteers in our youth group!

Students are watching…what message are you sending?

-Eric