So What’s the Deal with Youth Sunday School?

This week, we’re continuing our 4-week blog series walking through all of our Youth Ministries fall programming. We have reinvented all of our normal wheels, so we wanted to make sure everyone feels caught up to speed on what to expect. You can check out last week’s blog, on confirmation, here, and if you want a really in-depth look, as well as an opportunity to ask questions, join us this Sunday, August 30th, at noon on Zoom for our annual youth parent meeting!

Sunday School is our biggest program here at FUMC Fort Worth Youth Ministries, and we’ve spent some time thinking over how to use this opportunity to make the experience even better for our teenagers while working within the constraints we have. Sunday School will begin the semester all online, although we have hopes that we will able to transition at least some of the classes to an in-person format at some point in the semester.

The classes will be a blend of the familiar ways of being and learning together as well as new focuses and experiences. We ask that all of our youth register for Sunday School this fall, Middle School registers here, and High School registers here.

Middle Schoolers (7th and 8th grade) will start all together at noon, with a quick game and fun, a recorded lesson from Gabby, and then (virtually) head to a small group lead by volunteers that will walk middle schoolers through interactive activities with a combination of digital, interpersonal, and physical elements picked up as a kit once per term. So for example, the kit for one week might include elements to make a silly craft, and kids will talk about their weeks while they put it together, and then use the craft as part of an activity that engages them in the content in a creative and integrative way. Their curriculum will use a narrative teaching style to go through the whole “big story” of the bible in a way that is cohesive and integrated into their daily lives.

High Schoolers will be sorted into “classes” of 8-10 that they will stick with for the semester and which will function as informal small groups. Their class, lead by volunteer teachers as well as staff, will work through 2, 4-week units, representing our normal elective classes. The Faith in 3D unit covers complex but accessible curriculum around current events and pop culture (ok I may have also written a lesson about teen movies to throw in there too) and encourages teenagers to look for God in the stories playing out around them in their world and in their lives. The Soul Care unit will teach four different simple, old school, spiritual practices, like Lectio Divina and breath prayers, and help teenagers understand these tools as a way to connect more deeply with God as well as cope with anxiety, stress and the tremendous amount of uncertainty in their world right now.

Middle School Sunday School will be at noon on Zoom, and High School Sunday School will meet at 1:00 pm. The time change is to make sure there are enough zoom rooms for all of our church ministries and because, let’s be honest, getting to church at 9:30 in the morning was never any teenager’s favorite part of Sunday School anyway! We know that virtual programming has really significant challenges, but we are committed to finding the best way we can to connect to your teenagers during this season, no matter how many different ideas we have to try!

Sign up your teenager for Sunday School, and we hope to see you at Parent Meeting on Sunday!

 


Kat Bair
Director of Youth Ministries

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