Each year, we start the school year off with a youth & parent meeting to talk through all of the exciting things happening in the upcoming school year. We had nearly 100 people in the Justin Youth Building on August 16 at 9:30 AM, and we (the youth staff) enjoyed getting to chat with everyone there.

We know life happens, though, so if you couldn’t attend in person – or you could just use a refresher on all of the information you received – we wanted to provide you with a quick cheat-sheet of everything you need to know for the upcoming school year.

Our youth staff is made up of 3 people: Kylie Campbell, the Youth Discipleship Director; Claire Manno, the Youth Program and Design Associate; and Rebekah Davis, the Youth Ministries Coordinator. The three of us have a deep love for youth ministry and are excited to continue to build relationships with you and your students.

Here’s what we covered:

Sunday School Programming (6^th-12^th grade students): This happens every Sunday morning from 9:30-10:30 AM. Students will walk into the Justin Youth Building through the parking lot side entrance, sign in at the front desk, and then head into “the big room” for donuts, lemonade, weekly announcements, worship, and a short lesson. Then students will break out into small groups based on grade.

We Are the Band: Our student-led praise team leads us in worship every week during Sunday School. They meet every Sunday morning at 8:30 AM to practice a couple of songs and lead them during Sunday School. Right now, we operate through a group text to share what songs we will be playing the upcoming Sunday and for youth to share who will be there each week. All youth are welcome to lead.

Refuge on Sunday Nights: Sunday evenings from 5:30-7:30 PM, your student will sign in as they walk in through the main entrance of the Justin Youth Building. We will gather to pray and eat dinner, and then at 6 PM is when programming begins. Our main focus on Sunday nights is building community with each other. We have game nights, mission nights, worship nights, and Open Justin when we open the building up and let students choose their activities for the evening.

Confirmation for 6^th graders will also be during this time! Confirmands will enter the Justin Youth Building, sign in at the front desk, eat dinner with the larger group, and then separate from the bigger group into their Confirmation class. To learn more about Confirmation this year, please reach out to Kylie Campbell [hyperlink email here].

Our School Year Theme this year is Where the Magic Happens. We’ll spend the school year learning life lessons from Inside Out, Marvel, Moana, Disney Princesses, and more.

Important Things to Know:

• Weekly Newsletter – each week you’ll receive an email from us explaining all things Youth Ministry for the upcoming week. There will be reminders about upcoming events, the student extra-curriculars you can find a youth staff at that week, links to registrations for different events, and more. If your inbox looks anything like mine, I know getting another email might easily fall through the cracks, but we try to put as much information in ours as possible so you know exactly what to expect.
  • Please check your spam! We utilize MailChimp to send these out, and sometimes that flags our emails as marketing/junk.
  • If you’re not receiving our emails yet and you want to (I promise you want to!) please let Rebekah[hyperlink email] know and we’ll get you added!
• Parent Facebook Group
  • Coming soon is a Parent FB Group. In years past we have had a public page that anyone can join. We will be archiving that page and using the new group that will be kept private and only for use by current active parents/guardians of youth. This will be another place to look for upcoming reminders on top of the Newsletter.
• Instagram: @fumcfwyouth
• Ministry Safe 101
  • If you’ve been around FUMC for any length of time, especially if you’ve been involved in children’s or youth ministries before, you’ve likely heard of Ministry Safe. This is our child safety training and screening process that all church employees and volunteers must do before they can begin working or volunteering. Some examples of Ministry Safe protocols are that adults and children never utilize the same restrooms; there will always be at least two adults in a room or within eyesight of each other when with students at all times; if we’re providing transportation, there will always be at least 2 adults in the vehicle. This means there are never closed-door one-on-one conversations between adults and students. Ministry Safe protects students and adult staff or volunteers alike. Our students are incredibly familiar with Ministry Safe concepts at this point, too, and know when to point out that something isn’t Ministry Safe.
• Forms for the Year
  • We have updated our forms recently, so even if your student has been on trips with us this past summer, we will need you to fill them out again. BUT, as long as they are filled out and returned to me, we will keep them on file for the year and you won’t have to fill them out again until August of 2027. These forms include:
    • Medical Consent Forms – these help us know what medications your students are on, what over-the-counter medications they’re allowed to have if they need them during youth events, any allergies they may have, and the information needed in case of medical emergencies.
    • Photo Release – this is a part of our consent forms this year. It’s always been part of the form, but it hasn’t always been easy to find. Lots of fun things happen in Youth Ministry, and we typically document it all well as you can see in the photos around the building. If you have any questions about photo policies, we’re happy to chat more as needed!
    • Youth Covenant – each year we ask our students to agree to some guidelines for being in community as a youth group. Your student and you will both sign so that everyone is on the same page about expectations for how we treat each other. Again, if you have any questions, we’re always happy to talk through them!

What’s New This Year?

• Youth Leadership Team
  • This fall we are starting our Youth Leadership Team. The purpose of this group to encourage youth to share their ideas, make sure their voices are heard, and help lead the youth group.
  • There is an application for all youth to fill out and turn in by September 20. If your student is interested and needs the application, reach out to Kylie [hyperlink her email].
  • The Leadership Team will meet once a month on Sundays from 3:30 – 5:00 PM in the Youth Building.
  • All of the requirements for the Youth Leadership Team are in the application paperwork.
• Confirmation on Sunday Nights
  • As outlined above, this year Confirmation is happening on Sunday evenings!

Volunteering in Youth Ministry 101

There are SO many wonderful ways to volunteer in Youth Ministry!

• Sunday School: We are excited to have some returning volunteers, but we always need more. For this role, you will be facilitating a conversation after our students hear a lesson from the stage. There will be questions about the lesson y’all can talk through, and an opportunity to hear about what is going on in your students’ lives.
• Refuge: Refuge looks a little different from week to week, but oftentimes Refuge involves a little chaos and a lot of fun. The role of our Refuge volunteers varies a little, too, but most often our Refuge Volunteers are around to talk and check in with students, help with different stations or activities, and play games (either board games or in the gym) during our Open Justins or other free time.
• Food Service/Dinner Help: This year, Confirmation will run at the same time as Refuge, which means we’ll be feeding LOTS of students at 5:30 every Sunday! This is always easier when we have some volunteers dedicated to serving behind the counter. If you follow the QR code, you’ll see we need weekly servers, folks we can call in to sub, dinner providers, or general contributions to dinner. We have __ confirmands and usually around 30 other students at Refuge, so this will definitely be a helpful way to volunteer. It’s also a good way to ease into volunteering if you’re not sure about spending all two hours with middle school and high school students.
• Donuts: Sunday mornings always means donuts and lemonade in the building. You can sign up to bring donuts for our youth!
• Trip Volunteer: We take several trips throughout the year that are only made possible by our wonderful trip volunteers! We do weekend retreats, week-long trips, day trips. Like I mentioned earlier, we follow Ministry Safe protocols, so any overnight trip or day trip we take, we must have enough volunteers to be Ministry Safe. The plus side? These trips are always incredibly fun! You’ll get to hear a little more about them shortly.
• Building Organizer: Are you someone who enjoys tackling cluttered areas or cleaning out storage rooms? This is a great way to dip your toe into volunteering in the building. We have a resource classroom down here in room 103, and other storage areas throughout the building that could use a little TLC, and we could use your help! We’d love to host a building workday in the near future, or if you have a couple hours to spare here and there, we can work with your schedules, too.

If these roles don’t seem like the right fit, but you’d like to give back and volunteer, let’s talk! Sometimes we need folks to grill out at Lyle Lodge, return vans to our rental company after a trip, and more. Let’s talk about the possibilities!

If you’re on the fence, or you’re thinking your student doesn’t want you around at youth events… they may say that. But I can tell you from personal experience as a former youth myself, and from watching our students with their parents when they volunteer, that you being around for youth events is a good thing. AND, if anecdotal evidence isn’t enough to convince you, studies have shown that parent involvement in youth group positively impacts students’ lives as they grow in their own faith.

There will be a Volunteer Training on August 23 from 12-2 PM. Childcare is provided for any little ones, and lunch will be provided as well. Learn more and register for the event here. [hyperlink this: https://fumcfw.org/event/youthvolunteertraining/]

Email Rebekah about becoming a volunteer today.

Youth Trips and Requirements:

Over the course of the year, we have several retreats and trips that are both local and out-of-state. In November, we take our high schoolers out to Lyle Lodge, the church’s lakefront property in Azle, and spend a weekend together playing games, learning about Jesus, and, of course, making some unnamed campfire desserts.

• Revolution Weekend is our all-group retreat that was once in January, but now is in March! Last year’s mini ice storm prompted us to reschedule, and we discovered that we actually really like it not being super cold the entire time. We have small group time, big group games, plenty of free time to make friendship bracelets, worship, and a hike across the river and up a modest plateau. It’s a lot of people’s favorite weekend of the year, and for good reason.
• High School Mission Trip is for our youth that have finished 8^th grade through our graduated seniors, and is in June. We partner with an organization called Revive225, which operates out of FUMC Baton Rouge, to help with a variety of home renovation tasks. Over the years, this has included replacing screen doors; ripping out the tile in a kitchen and cutting and placing new tile; rebuilding a kitchen subfloor from the ground up; removing, cutting, and replacing siding of a house; cutting and installing soffits and fascia; and much more. In the past, we’ve switched mission trip locations every summer (and I’m not saying we won’t ever go back to that), but going back to the same place has allowed us to form really great relationships with not just the staff at Revive225, but also our homeowners. For example, last summer was our third summer at one of the houses on their work list, and several of our kids had become very close with the elderly sisters that live there, to the point where one of our wonderful now-sophomores hand-sewed a quilt to bring to them as a gift. It was exactly as sweet as you are imagining to see their faces when she gave it to them. We are very fortunate to have such wonderful mission partners!
• Middle School Mission Blitz just happened a few weeks ago for the first time in a few years, and it was so much fun! We were able to serve at a few mission locations around town (including our own First Street Methodist Mission), painted rocks and decorated offices across the street as random acts of kindness, and did lots of team building at Group Dynamix in Carrollton. Thanks to our incredible Shive family, we closed the weekend with a pool party. This was our last trip of the summer, and will be around the same time next year
• Camp Barnabas is a camp for special needs kids and adults in Purdy, Missouri, and my personal favorite out of these trips. It is also our trip with the most caveats for attendance, which I will explain in just a minute. Youth who are rising 9^th graders serve as Barnstormers, which is both a softer introduction to camp and a whole lot of cleaning and washing dishes. Barnstormers have their own small groups within their cabins and spend time with campers while not being responsible for one themselves. Missionaries are youth 15 and older who will be paired with a camper for the week. They are responsible for that camper’s needs for 23 hours a day, with a break each afternoon. If that sounds intimidating, I get it—it’s not the easiest trip that we take. Not every camper needs direct support, and every summer is different.
  • Registration for camp is a bit more complicated than our other trips. In a second, I’ll put up the QR code for the interest form—this must be filled out before you do anything else. We love taking as many people as want to attend, but our week of camp fills up extremely fast. I booked our spots for 2027 the week before we left for camp this year, and both genders of barnstormers are already on a waitlist camp-wide. I’ve been assured by the camp missions director that they should free up in the next few months, don’t worry. As such, we want to be sure that our spots go to our kids that are invested in being here and going to camp. If you are interested in going to camp, you’ll need to show up; specifically, for at least eight Sundays each semester this school year. It can be in the morning or the evening, they both count (but only as one Sunday). The dates we are tracking are on the form, and I’ll remind y’all periodically throughout the semester. This is not a requirement for cabin parents, but we’d love to have you hang out on Sundays too!
• For general trip and retreat capacity (excluding Camp Barnabas), we’re introducing a new system this year where we will start at a hard capped capacity of kids with a waitlist and increase space as we get more volunteers. These trips and retreats literally and MinistrySafe-ily cannot happen without y’all, and we also just like getting to hang out with you as well. This also ensures that we don’t end up in a situation where we have 75 kids and 5 volunteers and have to scramble last minute to find more. It just makes everyone’s lives easier, and if you’re feeling uneasy about being around that many teenagers at one time, please find one of our current volunteers and ask them about their experiences! You’d be surprised how many people have discovered a deep love for chaotic group games or serving food through spending time around here.

Extra-Curricular Schedules

As much fun as our trips and retreats are, there’s also a lot of fun to be had during a normal school week—at your schools, barns, and district-property stadiums! We love going to as many youths’ events as we can during the year, and I’ve come armed with statistics to prove it. During the 25-26 school year, we were able to hang out with 228 non-unique youth and parents and spent almost 80 extra hours watching youth do what they do best.

These events truly are some of the best parts of our week, and we love getting to see y’all do what you do best and meet your friends. Who you should bring to youth, by the way. But we can’t go to your stuff if we don’t know that it’s happening! DM, text, carrier pigeon—it doesn’t matter; as long as you give us your schedule or invite us in a written format, we will do our absolute best to be there at least once.

Resources for Parents, Students, and Families

Our summer intern, Macie, created a document of professional resources. If you are looking for a therapy centers who specialize in trauma, aggression, depression, anxiety, EMDR, conflict at home, bullying, behavioral problems, LGBTQIA affirming counselors, addiction, various disorders and more – these people have been researched and vetted. Our research shares what background their staff is made up of (gender, ethnicity, age), types of therapy, cost, location, website, and other important information.

We also have an abundance of books varying in most topics you can think of connected to youth development. If you would like to peruse Kylie’s office shelves to borrow a book, you are always welcome.

We hope you know that we’re in this with you. We want to know what your student is going through. It truly takes a village and we’re honored that you’ve chosen us to be a part of yours.

We know that is a lot of information to put into one blog-post, but we wanted you to have all of it easily accessible to you! We are looking forward to an incredible school year this year, and we hope you are, too!

Rebekah Davis