What Is The Purpose Of Youth Ministry at First Cov?
The answer is in the question. As a youth staff, our job is to minister to and with youth in the context of First Evangelical Covenant Church. This means that the youth ministry is going the same places that the children's, adult, worship, outreach, care, and missions ministries are going. In short, the mission of the church is our mission too! As a church we claim the following Mission Statement:
Our Mission:
Because God loves us first in Jesus, we are committed to lives of:
LOVING GOD by offering our bodies as living sacrifices, in both personal and corporate worship.
LOVING EACH OTHER in relationships of prayer, mutual encouragement, spiritual growth and service; in equipping each other to serve God through the gifts he gives us
LOVING THE WORLD by sharing the gospel with those who do not know Christ and reaching out with God's love and compassion to a needy world.
In light of this, we seek to tell the story of God through all that we do. We seek to tell the story of a loving God who calls us to return that love and share it with each other and the world. For us this looks like meeting together weekly for prayer, worship, fellowship, and (of course) food! These weekly gatherings include Junior High Large Group (Link'D), High School Large Group (Innervate), and High School Small Groups. We also do larger community building trips, which include serving others, challenging excursions, and deeper faith development. Our connection with Portage Lake Covenant Bible Camp puts us in relationship with other Covenant churches around the Great Lakes Conference during weekend retreats during the school year and week-long camp experiences in the summer.
In all that we do we seek do draw young people into the Story of God. Through loving God, Each Other, and the World our stories begin to overlap with each other. Our hope is that young people will begin to see that their story comes to overlap more and more with the work of God in our world because God is at work in our world! Our responsibility as The Church is to discover how God is working and partner with the Missio Dei -- The Mission of God.