So we get together and we worship. We hear the Word preached. We pray together. And then we head back to “our churches”.

And hopefully as these kids grow up their idea of “church” is expanded a bit. Hopefully they see their church body as bigger than their own congregation. And hopefully God is honored and worshipped through it all.

So let’s gather up…at The Gathering.

Hopefully we all came away with a stronger understanding of who God made us to be…uniquely, that is.

But in the end, we collected 215+ non-perishable items to donate to Evergreen Christian Outreach…and we had a ton of fun along the way! Props to the Jr. Highers…

Congrats to Team Klingenberg for dominating the day and coming away with the hallowed trophy…not to mention the respect of hundreds.

It seems that after we have fished for so long in one place, God wants us to “spread our nets to the other side of the boat” as well. We want to minister not only to the students who currently attend Lookout, but also to reach out to students in our surrounding community.

Why Change Youth Group? Our high school ministry offers several things to students at this point. We are a welcoming, fun place for students to meet other Christian teens and develop relationships with them. We also teach teens scripture-based, biblical truth about topics relevant to them and offer them opportunities to connect with God in worship. Our kids know they have a home here and are blessed with great relationships with each other and caring adults. There are a few things we don’t see happening, though, and want to expand what we do to address those needs and dynamics.

1. Our kids rarely share their faith or invite their friends to youth group
2. In general, students are not responding to opportunities to worship
3. The majority of our teens still struggle to own their faith and have a firm grasp of how to study scripture.
4. In addition, area para-church ministries are offering opportunities for teens to accept Christ, but follow-up and discipleship of new Christians is still a need.

The changes being made in our youth ministry are meant to address those needs in the spiritual development of Lookout’s teens and teens in the surrounding area as well as strengthen our kids’ ties with the larger church body.

The Change. Sundays: On October 10, 2010 (10.10.10) the High School ministry will kick off our brand new “Revive” youth service on Sunday nights. This means that Sunday mornings the high school students will be in “Big Church”, the adult service, with their families and there will be no youth group for High School students in the morning (Junior High youth group will continue to meet Sunday mornings).

“Revive” will meet from 6pm to 7pm on Sunday nights in the Banquet Hall, doors will be open 30 minutes before and after service. Shuttles will leave Evergreen and Denver West at 5:30 and return at 7:30. Although other ages are welcome, the elements will be focused to resonate with High School students. The music will be loud, the graphics will be intense, the energy will be high and the messages will be straight, raw gospel.

Note: Also, there is a bit of an awkward shift in when high schoolers will begin attending the adult service on Sunday mornings. Although Revive doesn’t start until October 10th, Lookout is beginning a very important series on Forgiveness the weekend of September 11/12th. In order to allow our students the chance to benefit from that series (and not come into it partway through), the HS youth will begin attending the adult services on September 12th. We also want to honor the kids needing a bit of an adjustment period, and knowing this gives them short notice, we will be holding planning meetings for Revive at 9:30 a.m. from Sept 12th to October 3rd so kids who want peer time Sunday mornings can jump in and be involved.

Wednesdays: Wednesday night youth group will continue at it’s usual time (6:45 to 8:15 p.m.), but we are shifting to a deeper bible study focus that will feed teens who have been Christians for a while and need tools to dig into scripture and worship with more understanding and commitment.

The Reasoning. Moving our high school youth service to Sunday nights serves several purposes. It allows students to actually participate in worship with their families and the larger church community on Sunday mornings. Sunday night services will be a service that LMCC kids own, run and offer to their peers at a time that is more appealing to this demographic. In addition, adults in our congregation who wish to be involved can serve here without needing to give up their opportunity to worship in the morning.

Using the Banquet Hall will allow the service to be more distinctly worshipful instead of having service in the same place we hang out and play games. This service will also have encouraging, real, discipleship-focused messages that help guide kids into a deeper understanding of the Christianity and invites them to worship with peers who are committed to their personal faith.

We know…this is big. We understand that moving our high school service presents complications for families with juggling other activities and arranging transportation. We hope that the growth and fruit we see from this move will be well worth the additional effort made by us and families. We do hope to address and ease some of the burden on families in the area of transportation by offering two shuttles from the downtown Evergreen and Denver West areas on Sunday evenings. We understand you may have questions and are happy to address any of those as we proceed. We are so excited to see how this will address needs and help our students grow in many ways. We appreciate your prayers and involvement as we respond to the Lord’s urging to move.

In Christ,

Shev and Alaina

Awards were handed out for everything from the “Longest Pee-Holding Award” (congrats to Connor G. for snagging that honor), to the “Most Improved Player Award”.

Our thanks to some amazing kids for another great summer. We’re excited for the next adventure to begin, rubber ducks and all.

Our group was split into two teams for the week and paired with other church groups. Each team spent two days running a summer camp for dozens upon dozens of Navajo kids, ranging in age from 4-18 years old. These kids have a violent nature and vocabulary to make any mother blush. Loving them through all of their “rough edges” can be difficult, but our kids did an amazing job of it anyway. They gave piggy-back rides for hours on end, sought out shy kids to get to know them and led times of Christ-centered skits and worship. The other two days were spent sweating away the hours as we helped with “beautification projects” like house painting and landscaping.

In the process we met many wonderful people, and we hope to share their stories through the kids soon. …for more on the aftermath and tons of photos, click here!

We also spent part of Saturday afternoon in a gigantic “crud war”, smearing shaving cream all over one another. Took part in a camp-wide dance crew competition (and ROCKED it!). Watched Kyle and Shev make total fools out of themselves (as usual).

But these retreats are about one thing more than anything else: relationships. We got to know each other better, shared some incredible experiences and a ton of fun and laughs. And hopefully we also took the opportunity to grow our relationships with God. Through some incredible worship, the God-bearing story of Hosea, some quiet times and lots of small group discussion…many of us were flung into spring with a renewed hope and love for our God.

Spring Fling is a wrap. Can’t wait until next year.

CHECK OUT PICS FROM THE WEEKEND!

But fear not, because your youth leaders love to watch sports, performances, plays…you name it. The problem is, we can’t come see you do what you love to do unless you tell us that it’s happening. So bring your sports schedules, performance details and recital invites along with you to church so we can come cheer you on! Or email them to us at underground.lmcc@gmail.com.

And hopefully we’ll see you there, dominating the soccer field, volleyball court, dance floor, piano keys…whatever it is you love.

To be honest, the Thirty Hour Famine always made me nervous as a high schooler.  I did it all four of my high school years, and every year when it was all over, I was always very glad I’d done it.  But going into it each year, a quiet sense of unease would settle over me.

And no, it’s not because I’d be fasting for the better part of two days.  I didn’t mind not eating for thirty hours.  I mean, sure, I got hungry; who wouldn’t?  But the pain from the hunger was never overwhelming.  I had friends and leaders around me, all being supportive and very distracting.  They made sure the experience was not only spiritually impacting, but – between crazy games, sleepovers, and constantly having something to do – also lots of fun.  Lots and lots of fun.

So, why the dread?  Going into it every year, I knew that we’d go downtown and somehow work through Christ Body Ministries to feed the homeless and incredibly poor.  I dreaded that part.  Which is slightly odd because I had no problem going down to the capitol every-other Sunday after church to hang out with the homeless and eat peanut butter sandwiches with them (we never did run into someone with peanut allergies, thank goodness).

My unease might’ve had something to do with the thought of handing out large amounts of unwashed food in grocery lines, or cooking large amounts of food to hand out for dinner later.  Putting unwashed cabbage in bags and baskets for hours on end can be a filthy, tiring job, believe it or not.  And did you know that if you boil enough hotdogs for long enough, they start to foam?  I guess it makes sense, but gross!!!!  But after they foamed, we still had to wash them off and serve them with the chili-from-a-couple-ginormous-cans that we were warming on the other burner.  I mean, I was glad we had warm food to serve to these hungry people, I just wished it didn’t look so much like what jail food looks like in movies.

To be totally honest though, I think my dread of going and serving the homeless had more to do with the people themselves.  They were just so unsettling.

You might think this is odd, since you’d think, that going downtown to hang with the homeless every-other Sunday after church with the youth group would be similar to what we did during the Famine. Somehow, not so much. I was more comfortable during the “Go-Time” visits.  Part of that was because we always went in a pretty large group – safety in numbers and whatnot.  It also helped that I knew what kind of people we’d meet.  They were homeless of course, sometimes because they chose to be, usually not.  They’d probably swear, though they’d try to dial it back a bit since we were good “church kids”.  And they didn’t mind telling us what they thought of God, or the church, or the government, or what really happened to JFK.

But the people in the food line we served in during the Famine were different – or I thought they were.  These people were often Christians, or at least could talk like they were.  They were always very thankful for their chili dog.   And, often, I felt like they could see right through me.  After everyone had gone through the chili-dog line, we were supposed to go mingle.  Not my favorite thing to do in a group of strangers in the best of situations.  This was far from the best of situations.

Over slightly-cool chili dogs, I learned that these people hadn’t always just been lazy.  Often they’d lived middle-class lives for a good chunk of time.  They’d had wives and houses and white picket fences and 2.5 kids.   Then, usually, something out of the blue would happen to them: cancer, or a relative needing a place to stay or a lot of money, or a wife throwing them out of the house.  Unplanned stuff like that.  Stuff that you hope never happens to you.  Stuff that, as an all-knowing teenager, I knew would never happen if you just lived your life the way God wanted you to.  But somehow, that formula didn’t always work.  The more I listened to their stories over the four years of high school, the more I discovered that often, their stories aligned better with Job and with someone who was on crack.  And that’s what was scary.

It was unsettling, learning that an entire life could change with a snap of someone’s fingers.  It was unsettling learning just how much like me so many of the people I ate chili dogs with had once been.  And so, the Famine was the beginning of me realizing just how unstable all of our lifestyles are – no matter what we tell ourselves every day, no matter what plans we make to ensure we’re never going to end up like “those people” standing at the corner with a piece of cardboard. Those thirty hours once a year throughout high school were the beginning of figuring out just how futile it is to believe that the plans I have for my life will actually happen exactly as I planned, and how much God’s the one in control of such things.  It was the beginning of believing that God truly does hold everything in the palm of His hand, though His palm might look completely different than we expected.