Monday, January 26, 2009

Eastview Parent Weekly-January 25-31 2009

Dear Parents,


Websites and Articles of Interest to Parents:

Children’s Six-hour Screen Day
Walt Mueller Review of Christless Christianity
Self-injury

Upcoming Events:

GORF- Middle School Trip to Iowa/Nebraska Christian Convention
  • We’re leaving THIS Friday by 11am, and will return no later than 4pm on Sunday, February 1. Please be at Eastview by 10:30 so we can load and leave promptly at 11.
  • We’re staying at the Holiday Inn Downtown Omaha, the site of the Convention. This Holiday Inn is also the home of “Coco Key Water Resort”, a 6000 square foot water park...make sure your kids bring their swim gear!
  • We have 4 students going, Beth Frederick, Brianna Scott, Kyle Hoback and Tyler Wright.

Lincoln Christian College and Seminary Campus Visit
  • Seniors only!
  • We’ll leave Sunday after church (exact time to be determined), drive to Lincoln, sleep in the dorm and spend Monday checking out the campus. We’ll be home Monday evening.
  • Cost is $30 for a few meals, and any spending money.
  • Please let me know by the end of this week if your student is going.
A little further down the road...Summer 2009 Ministry Events


Mission: Kansas 2009 June 28-July 3 2009
  • We’ll be talking about our upcoming Mission:Kansas mission trip, and the possibility of making it a “middle school only” trip. Do you have an opinion on the matter? We want to hear it, and our February ministry team meeting is the place to talk about it.
Summer Camp 2009
  • Camp season 2009 is right around the corner. This week at youth group, the kids will each get a handout with some specific information about their camp weeks. We’re doing this now because we want your kids to go to camp!
CIY Summer Conference July 27-August 1 2009
  • CIY’s summer conference is just for high schoolers. We have 5 high school graduates for whom this will be their last chance to attend as a student, and at least that many new freshman (for 2009-2010) that can go for the first time.
  • I can’t think of a better send-off for our senior or a better welcome for our freshmen than CIY. It is an intense week of spiritual challenge and growth. They won’t want to miss it.

Have a great week!

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Weekly Parent Email-January 20, 2009

Dear Parents,

Thanks to all of you who came out for out annual parent meeting this past Saturday. We had a lot to talk about, there was great discussion and good questions asked. Here are a few things that came from the discussion:

The New Sexuality Study: We are working on a schedule for our New Sexuality study, to begin sometime in February. The groups will be separated throughout this lesson series, from beginning to end. As soon as we have it, you’ll know what topics we’ll be discussing and when we’ll be discussing them. The parents who attended the meeting all have copies of the each of the topics, as well as discussion questions we’ll be walking the kids through. If you’d like copy, please contact me and I’ll get one out to you.

Kansas Mission Trip: There was a lot of discussion about making this a middle school only trip this summer. If you have an opinion, we’d like for you to attend our February ministry team meeting. We’ll block time out early in the meeting to converse about it. Our meeting will be February 15, immediately following corporate worship. After discussion and hearing your thoughts, a decision by our team will be made.

Mexico Mission Trip: We also discussed the National Missionary Convention attendance requirement for the 2010 Mission Trip to Mexico. This week, I’m spending time putting the thoughts and reasons to paper, and I plan on visiting with you if you had questions and concerns about this. This document will also hit the parent website soon.

Speaking of the website, if you haven’t visited it lately, there are now links to all sorts of things, d-group lessons, permission slips, more and more documents will be stored there for your viewing pleasure.

A few things coming up:
GORF for middle school students- We’ll be leaving Eastview by 11am on Friday, December 30th, and return by mid-afternoon on Sunday, February 1. We will meet for d-group that night.

Lincoln Christian College and Seminary visit for high school seniors- February 16. We’ll be leaving EARLY that morning, and be back early evening. Cost will be minimal (plan on $20).

Some websites of note:
Long Term Effects of Hook-Up Culture
Teens, Cell Phones and “Sexting”
Parents and the Example We Set

Have a great week!

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Wednesday, January 14

All evening activities (EKLUB, Youth Group) have been canceled tonight due to weather.

Monday, January 5, 2009

2008 Recap

This is hitting our Annual Report in a few days...

2008 has been an interesting year for our ministry team. We’ll look at our ministry from the following standpoints GROWTH, EVENTS, and CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES.

GROWTH

There are many victories in the growth category. We have seen numerical growth at all of our weekly events. For the last quarter of the year on Wednesday nights, most weeks we had more that 30 middle school and high school students come to youth group. We are seeing some students make the transition from Wednesday night to Sunday morning and even Sunday night. We saw 3 students come to Christ through baptism.
In September, we introduced the “Family Table” concept to a very skeptical group of kids (and adults). Each Family Table has a Table Parent (or 2). The kids sit at the same tables with the same adults each week; this has allowed them to develop relationships with Christian adults who are there to simply engage the kids and talk to them about their life. Within a few weeks, the kids fell in love with the idea, and it is now an integral part of our culture.
At the end of the 2007-2008 school year, we had a number of adults leave our ministry; Seth and Megan Clark left to have their first child, Sher Barns left to focus more on her ministry at school, and Laurie Thomas went to grad school at UNI. For most ministries, this would have been a disaster. BUT…in May we had a meeting for adults and we had 17 attend which is amazing. We found a place for those adults, while God alone deserves the glory for what is happening here, He is using THEM to accomplish His will.

EVENTS

2008 was filled with a wide variety of events. Our typical week consisted of 3 regular gatherings. Sunday mornings we met from 8:45-9:45 for Sunday School. At Sunday School, we use the Faithweaver material, which, over the course of 3 years, leads our students through an overview of the entire Bible. Sunday nights we met from 6:00-8:00 for D-Group. D-Group is a time of deeper Bible study, we covered a wide variety of topics from the Gospel of Mark, to the Biblical statements on government and war to a study on 12 core beliefs that Christians hold to. Wednesday nights we met from 5:45-8:pm. In this time, we ate a meal together, had a group fellowship/game time, and in our small groups, talked about the Person of Jesus.
We went and served food at the Saturday Evening Meal Program in
Downtown Cedar Rapids, and we worked with Mid-American Energy’s Housing Assistance Program during our 30 Hour Famine. We left Cedar Rapids on more than few occasions, our middle school kids went to Omaha for CIY Believe, our high school kids went to Omaha for a Nebraska Christian College event. We offered two mission trips; one went to Morning Star Ranch in Florence, Kansas, and the other to San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Add in there several summer camp weeks at North East Iowa Christian Service Camp, and our students were involved in the gospel everywhere…from here in Cedar Rapids, to the states of Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska, and even in Mexico!

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

2008 was not without it’s challenges. The biggest growth piece for us as a ministry was learning that God can and will do more than we can ask or imagine. This manifested itself on our 2 mission trips and with our 30 Hour Famine service project. Adults and kids alike were challenged to grow, they got tired, hungry, cranky, selfish…and yet, God moved and worked. All of the work that we set out to do was accomplished, and that is what God does. We grew in numbers, while our building space shrank due to flooding in our basement. Our entire ministry team turned over and we had an entire new set of adults working with our kids. God accomplished His good and perfect will with us, through us, and despite us.
2009 will be a year of opportunity. We are looking to increase our partnership with parents. The majority of the kids that come to our events are NOT Eastview students. Because of this, we’ll need to work even harder to get with parents and adults. While we have seen numeric growth, we are asking ourselves as leaders the following question: “How can we get our students to examine their own understanding of Jesus?”. We’ll continue to evaluate our events…are we simply filling calendars and giving kids something to do, or are we creating an environment where they will hear God? May God help us to be about the latter.

-Student Ministry Team