Friendships and Jesus

What a great week. Two days on the lake with high school students (tough job, but someone has to do it), e3 was awesome (full band, great worship), taco dinner at CCC and the anticipation of Pastor Paul starting his ministry at CCC this week.

This is what we talked about this week as we wrapped up our three-week series on friendships and Jesus. Our focus has been on helping equip and encourage teenagers to talk with their friends about what God has done in their own lives and what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
In this final lesson, we discussed the importance of being able to communicate God’s story and basic Scripture that can lead someone to Christ. We talked about how God will open the right door at the right time, and when that happens, we can be ready to respond. Our job is to pray and to be prepared.

This week, take a few minutes to talk with your student about being prepared for those spiritual conversations with friends. Here are some possible questions:
• Do you have friends who have been asking questions about Jesus?
• Are you praying for specific friends who might be going through times?
• How can I support you as you pray for your friends to make a decision to Jesus?

As always, thanks for your love for your teenager and your support for our youth ministry!

Friendships

We’re continuing our series on friendships, and this week we used the biblical example of Matthew to encourage and inspire our teensagers. Matthew was one of the first disciples chosen by Jesus, and after responding to Jesus’ call, he turned around and invited a whole bunch of friends to his house for a banquet with Jesus.

We told our students that one of the best ideas to help friends learn more about Jesus is to invite them to an appropriate setting within our youth ministry where they will feel welcome and accepted. Everyone loves being invited to fun, exciting places. Matthew understood this idea and created an opportunity to introduce his friends to Jesus.

This week, I encourage you to find time to talk with your child about the principle of inviting friends to places they feel welcome:
• Do you have specific ideas for making your youth group a friendlier place for your non-believing friends?
• Would our home be a place where your friends could hang out and interact with some friends who follow Jesus?
• How can I help support your efforts to have a positive influence on your friends?

Have a blessed week! Thanks for your prayers and your support!
Don't forget Saturday night will be our CCYouth auction to help support our youth as they go to Manassas, VA for "Week of Hope." This will start at 6PM with a silent auction and the live auction will begin at 7:15PM. Lots of great items are available and this will be great fun.

Vacation Bible School 2011

Exciting Times @ CCYouth

EXCITING TIMES! WOW!! We are soooooo busy. Sorry for the late update on this. We have been preparing for VBS. So, excited for next week. You won’t want to miss this Sunday and see what we have been preparing for VBS. All of CCYouth, Pastor Roger, Mrs. Sowder, Mr. Taylor, Mr. McCoy, Mrs. MacCrossan, and many more I am sure have been very busy transforming CCC to Hometown Nazareth. And WOW does it look great. Great things are going to happen.

Some of us have also been busy helping Mrs. Cox with some rough, tough manual labor preparing a new warehouse for Events Décor and More. This is to help us raise funds for our summer mission trip to Manassas. Speaking of Manassas you can help by coming tomorrow Saturday June 11 9AM-12PM to our CAR WASH. Also, please don’t forget we need your help with our auction. Contact me or Mrs. Howe for more information.

This week we started a new series talking about the role of friendships in teenagers’ lives. Our focus is on the importance of telling our friends about Jesus—not in a pushy way and not because we see our friends as “spiritual projects.” We looked at words Paul wrote in Ephesians 6, asking other Christians to pray for him as he spread the message of Jesus.

Paul asked his friends in Ephesus to pray for God to open the right opportunity and the right timing to share the message of Jesus with people. In our lesson, we challenged our students to pray for God to open up opportunities for their friends to hear about Christ. Our teens can ask God to open their friends’ hearts and provide the boldness to talk about Jesus.

I’d encourage you to find time this week to talk with your teenager about the importance of having spiritually focused conversations. Remember to offer stories and examples of how you do this in your everyday life, or how you struggle with it. Here are some possible questions to ask:
• What are some opportunities you regularly have for talking to your friends about Jesus?
• Which friends or groups of friends might be most interested in a spiritually focused conversation?
• What fears might you have in taking steps to talk about Jesus?

Pray with your teenager that God would give the right words, the boldness, and the clarity to share the good news of Jesus.

Thanks for your prayers and support of CCYouth! These are EXCITING TIMES!!!!!

Repost from ym360

Something to think about as you start your day: "Your influence is negative or positive, never neutral." Henrietta Mears