Suncreststudentlife’s Weblog

I have the privilege of visiting Amy’s family this Christmas.  Which means I am in beautiful southern Florida, where the over night low was 45 degrees, and now it is 60 degrees out, going to get close to 70 today.  I am sitting at Starbucks working on my sermon for Sunday.  When a women walked into the store with her 5 year old son, wearing a jacket and a winter hat.  I got a picture of him wearing the hat, he had already removed the jacket. Thought you folks up north shoveling snow this week would enjoy the pic!

Calling all high school students.  New Year’s Eve at Suncrest is going to be Epic!!!  You need to sign up soon.  I had a sponsor step forward and told me that if anyone didn’t have the money to attend he would pay for the first 10 students that needed help paying for it!  So if that was your excuse, it is gone.

We are going to have a whole lot of options for you entertainment.

• Inflatables
• Xbox on 100 inch projector screens
• Basketball
• Dodgeball
• Texas Holdem
• Free Coffee
• Free food
• The girls lounge…with stuff girls like to do (I don’t know what that is)
• Oh yeah we are going to start the night off with some awesome worship

The event starts at 10 PM and goes until 7 AM.  The cost is $5 ahead of time and $10 at the door.

One of the parts of Suncrest that I love is our heart and passion for reaching lost people. It is what drives almost all of the decisions that are made. In the last couple of years, Suncrest has become a multi site church as a way to reach out further into our community. The multi site church is an extension of church planting where we will continue to plant campuses in the area to reach people far from God. Over the last year God has placed a passion and desire in my heart to lead the next campus that Suncrest plants. With this, I am announcing that I will be transitioning out of the Student Ministry and into the role as Campus Pastor for our Highland Campus. I will still be on staff at Suncrest, it will just be in a different capacity. We are in the process of finding someone to replace me in the Student Ministry, and we are doing everything possible to make it a smooth transition for all parties involved.

Welcome Mitch!!!

As of December 1st Mitch Wright will be joining the Suncrest staff as the Student Life Worship Intern. Mitch is a Junior at Chesterton High School and is heavily involved in the music department. Mitch has been playing in the Student Life Worship Band since he was in 6th grade. He started out playing bass guitar, then because of his passion for music, he started playing electric guitar when we were in a pinch. As if that wasn’t enough, he started playing acoustic guitar and in the spring of his 8th grade year he lead worship in Student Life Worship for the very first time! Ever since then he has been on our rotation of worship leaders. Mitch and I have had a number of conversations over the years about his desire to be a worship minister…or go into some form of ministry as a career. So, in an attempt to maximize his giftedness and to help Mitch see what a career in ministry really looks like, he has joined our staff. I believe this is going to be a tremendous experience for Mitch to grown and learn and bless Suncrest. When you get a chance, please encourage Mitch and welcome him to the staff.

If you haven’t been in a while, you need to stop by and check it out.  There was some great energy during worship; Robert introduced a new way to start “Song of Hope.”   Students really seemed to be engaged during the message…which is always encouraging.  Community groups  have made such progress recently. They have gotten to the point where the students are really going deeper and doing life together.  We had to break one group up at 8:50 to tell them to go home.

The Christmas Coffee House is December 15th at 7:00 PM.

This Sunday is a pretty big day for Student Life Ministries.  It’s Teen Sunday, and I know for a fact that Jared is a little stressed about it seeing as he has to preach.  Not only that, but I’m pretty sure he leaves in a few minutes for St. Louis, for a Cardinals game with his boy Gibson then some family time Saturday morning with his parents followed by a mad dash back to St. John for Chris Hall’s bachelor party only to land back home late and exhausted before catching a few hours sleep to wake up before the sunrise Sunday morning.  Not exactly the calm relaxing prep time one would dream of before the responsibility of engaging hundreds of people for a message on Christ.  Sometimes things are less than ideal.

I use that statement a lot.  The wording is always just a little bit different, but in the end the message is still the same.  For me it’s often an excuse to be less than perfect.  Let me indulge you with some past examples.  My lesson for Team56 didn’t go as well as I hoped… well that’s because the age and demographic of the students is not within my ideal skill set.  The mailer I sent out didn’t quite have that wow effect I desired… well that’s because I had to create it in Publisher which is not the ideal program.  “John Doe” asked me a question about something important… but I was tired and had other things on my mind and some of my relationships weren’t where I wanted them to be, and well… it just wasn’t the ideal time to talk about it.  So I didn’t.

I thought about this, maybe you have too.  It has led me to only one logical conclusion thus far.  The issue isn’t that things are less than ideal.  The issue is I am less than ideal.  It kinda has a distinct feeling of less than adequate doesn’t it?

We are all  creatures of habit and we get thrown for a loop when we change things up.  It is one of the reasons people have such an adverse reaction to change.  Even though it is hard on me, I absolutely love change.  There is an excitement in the air when new patterns are being developed. If the change is the right change, I know that something great will come out of it even if it is weird for me to change my Thursday morning sermon writing time at Starbucks to Monday, I know it is totally worth it!

Questions for thought…

How do you respond to change?

Do you lead with an open mind?

If you are a person that fears change and has a hard time with it, take an hour or two and read this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Who-Moved-My-Cheese-Amazing/dp/0091816971/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251132483&sr=8-1

This has been an exciting time of year in youth ministry; students are filled with nervous energy because school is starting.  At this point, most students are either back in school or will be soon.  It is also a season of transitions as some students go to middle school or high school for the first time.  We are also making some transitions in the Suncrest Student Ministries this fall. Our first change is the addition of some new programming.

A couple of years back we decided that we need to do something special for our 5^th and 6^th grade students. Our reasons for doing so are that most 5^th grade students are ready to be done with “children’s ministry” and tend to lose interest in our Team Go programming for that age group, and most 6^th grade students are overwhelmed by our Student Life Ministries programming. So, with that in mind, we created Team56, a special ministry just for 5^th and 6^th graders. Team 56 kicked off on Friday night with the amazingly fun Jell-o Olympics. We had a great turn out, and had tons of fun. Everyone ended up covered in Jell-o with big smiles. The Jell-o Olympics also built great momentum for the Team 56 Class that that met for the first time on Sunday morning with a crowd of very excited 5^th and 6^th grade students!

This fall we have a new line up in Student Life Ministries.  We have moved Student Life Worship to Tuesday nights. The new lineup is:

6:30        Doors Open

7:00        Worship Begins

7:45        Community Groups

8:30        Parents pick up students

We experimented with this format last spring and found that when students worship they are much more engaged during their community groups.  Tuesday night was great, and I have found that students love the idea of a worship service to give them a little boost during their crazy weeks.

Taking the place of Student Life Worship is Student Life Connect.  Student Life Connect takes place on Sunday mornings during the 9:30 and 11:00 services at West Campus and during the 9:30 service at East Campus.  Student Life Connect is designed to help students connect with each other and with Christ.  Sunday, I got to sit back and watch students sitting around tables talking with each other about the lesson, and working through their faith by talking about it with their friends.

This Friday we have an exciting night planned.  We are going to have a jell-o Olympics.  It is going to fun and crazy.  Make sure you wear cloths that can get messy.  We will provide trash bags for students to wear like a poncho so that they don’t make parents cars messy.  The Olympics last from 7 PM to 8:30 PM.

Deep River water park registration deadline is Sunday!