Big thanks to everyone who joined us for our Youth Parent Meeting! We loved getting to see all of you in the Justin again and we cannot wait to see what this year holds for us and for your families! Just in case you missed it (or if you want to keep this info around), here’s Part II of everything we covered: what we’re doing each week and big events, like trips and retreats!
What We’re Doing Each Week
This year, we are making some changes to how our weekly programming is structured to facilitate opportunities for connection and long-term relationship building, as well as help better connect the youth ministries to the larger church community.
Confirmation (6th Grade) meets on the 2nd Floor of the Justin, where our Confirmands will spend some of each time as a “Class” (all 60+ of them together) and some as a “Cohort” (a set group of 10). The time as a class will involve teaching and large group activities, while their time as cohorts will involve intentional check-ins, application activities, and group bonding. Our Confirmation program uses Healthy Plate Discipleship as a framework for their experience and the seven vows of confirmation as its core content. The vows, found in the United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline, represent the beliefs and knowledge that our denomination has historically held as the defining core of our community. The vows include beliefs about Jesus, scripture, faith, service and more! Our deepest desire is that when your young person gets asked, in front of God, friends and family these vows of membership, they know what they are saying “yes” to and that they cannot wait to see what comes next in their journey of faith.
This year, our Sunday Morning youth programming, normally referred to as “Sunday School” is going to look a little different: instead of things being divided solely into Middle School and High School programs, everyone will gather together on the 1st floor of the Justin and engage in the same series each week. Each series will be tied into what the larger church community is focused on – for example, the first sermon series that The Gathering and Traditional services will diving into is “Do Unto Others” – and so will we!
The first week in a series, we will have Youth Worship – a worship service for youth in the Justin that will use the Gathering’s model and feature a message from one of the youth staff. The following weeks, we’ll open with announcements and worship before splitting into age-based breakout groups led by adult volunteers for discussion, all centered around the series that we’re currently in.
Our Sunday Evening programming is called “The Refuge” and is designed to be an opportunity for our teenagers to find safe space to grow authentic relationships, process things happening in their everyday lives and have a weekly opportunity to disconnect and recharge. Each week of Refuge will have a different focus:
- Some will be big, one-off events, including things like Fall Kick Off, happening this year on September 8; Halloween Party and Christmas Party later this fall and Spring Kick Off and Youth Banquet this spring!
- Some weeks will focus on opportunities for learning and discussion around topics that are relevant to our students lives but need a little more time to unpack – things like mental health and relationships.
- Some weeks will provide space for our teenagers to engage in worship and include a message diving deeper into their faith – our first one this year will feature Rev. Lance Marshall talking about God and science!
- Some weeks are what we call Open Justin – the building will be open for students to get to just be together and play, and we’ll open up everything the Justin has to offer, including the gym, the Prayer Room, and games on the 3rd floor!
During the week, coming to Your Events is one of the biggest parts of our schedule! Most of you are back to school now or are about to start, so as you have your schedules for sports and arts and anything else you have going on that you want to invite us to, take a picture or a screenshot and send it to us as soon as possible. We try to make it to as many things as we can, but it makes it way easier on us and our spouses if we know ahead of time!
We also want to know what’s going on in your family’s life – both the good and the hard – so we can be there alongside you. We do lots of coffees and ice creams and showing up at hospitals and on front porches – but we can only do that if you let us know what’s going on. We can’t ever promise that we can offer much outside of showing up and being there with you – and ice cream almost never hurts.
BIG EVENTS!
This year, we are also placing a renewed emphasis on our big events, especially our overnight retreats and trips. These events offer really unique opportunities for students and adult volunteers to build relationships, dive deeper in their faith and create memories that last a lifetime.
Middle School Retreat and High School Retreat are both overnight events held at Lyle Lodge, our church’s retreat property on Eagle Mountain Lake. These retreats are great opportunities during the fall semester for students to step away from the busyness and the chaos of life, take a moment to breathe and reconnect with God and each other. This year, these retreats are going to focus on something we haven’t hit in a while, and honestly, something that our whole church community isn’t that good about: best practices for actually using their bible. We’ll have a workshop where we’ll talk about what the bible is, what’s in it and a few ways they can use it well in their own lives. We’ll also have plenty of time for big games, food, relaxing in the lodge, campfire and more.
Revolution Weekend is our biggest all-youth event of the year, hosted at Glen Lake Camp and Retreat Center in Glen Rose, TX – and if we’re being honest, it’s the staff’s favorite event of the year. Revolution Weekend features a guest speaker, worship together, small group discussion, a couple of big games and some down time. It is an incredible event that people look forward to every single year and an event that once you start going, you never want to miss the next one. Normally, we’re not super pushy about getting people to choose something we’re doing over something else that’s going on, but this is one of our exceptions: Revolution Weekend is that event, it is worth prioritizing on your calendar and it is worth choosing to be part of it even if you have something else that weekend. This event also runs parallel to our Winter Confirmation Retreat for our 6th grade students, with some fun moments of overlap between events!
Every year, we take four trips over the summer with students. Most of these registrations will open later in the school year, with one exception.
Middle School Mission Blitz (June 2-4, 2025) is our in-town mission experience for current 6th & 7th grade students, who next summer will be our rising 7th & 8th graders. This trip provides an opportunity to experience what a mission trip is like, without being too far away from home. We serve with great local organizations in and around Fort Worth that we’ve partnered with for a long time, and overnights will either be hosted here at the Justin or at Lyle Lodge.
Cornerstone Youth Choir Tour (June 5-10, 2025) is open to all participants in our youth choir program here at the church. Each year, they travel to different parts of the country to share the love of God through music, singing in different communities as they travel. This trip does require a fair amount of rehearsal and investment before tour, but all you need to do to be ready is show up on Sundays and be part of youth choir!
High School Mission Trip (June 15-21, 2025) is our week-long mission trip for current 8th-12th grade students. Every year we go somewhere different, but we serve in a variety of ways, and year-to-year the work is different. Some years, like this last year, we do hands-on work on community homes; some years, we work directly with community members in service locations; some years, we do a lot of weeding in community gardens.
Camp Barnabas (July 12-18, 2025) is a camp located in Purdy, MO that is designed to serve individuals with physical and developmental disabilities and chronic illnesses and provide them with a summer camp experience. Each year, we bring a group of high school students to serve at camp in one of two roles:
- Students who will be 14 years old when we leave for camp serve as barnstormers, helping keep camp running, and
- Students who will be 15 or older who serve one-on-one with a camper, providing for all their needs 23 hours a day.
Barnabas is the hardest, most intense thing we ask teenagers to do, and it’s not necessarily for everyone. But Barnabas is also one of the most transformative, empowering experiences that we offer, and people who love it really love it.
Registrations are OPEN TODAY for Middle School Retreat, High School Retreat, Revolution Weekend and Camp Barnabas. All registrations for our events can be found on the Youth Events page on the website, and we’ll send out registration emails for all of them.
We are so excited to be launching into this school year and we cannot wait to see what this year holds for your teenagers, for your families and for our ministry! If you have any questions about any of our programming, policies or you want to volunteer, please reach out to me (mbritt@myfumc.org), I’m always happy to talk!
Much love,
Matt Britt
Director of Youth Ministries
