RIDE TO CHURCH FROM JAMUL

Hey parents,

Anyone know a family that comes to Journey from Jamul? We have a high school girl who wants to serve on our worship team but has trouble getting to church on the weekend. She's looking for a ride on Sundays and even Wednesday nights if that's possible so she can attend a small group. If you know someone who might already be headed to La Mesa from Jamul, perhaps we can create some carpool love.

Shoot brian an e-mail to encounter@journeycom.org if you have some connections.

THANKS!!!

CHANGES TO SUNDAY MORNING 8:30AM HOUR

SUNDAYS IN HIGH SCHOOL AT JOURNEY COMMUNITY CHURCH

OUR SUNDAY MISSION:
To provide a worship service for high school students in East County that is practical, relevant, engaging, and fun while challenging them to fully devote their life to following Jesus.

WHEN WE CURRENTLY MEET TO DO THIS ON THE WEEKEND:
Currently we meet at 8:30 and 10:30am on Sundays.

THE PROBLEM THIS CREATES WHEN TRYING TO FULFILL OUR MISSION:

• Most high school students and their peers are asleep during those hours. The 8:30 hour was not designed for a high school target.
• The most common excuse we get for students missing church on the weekend is, “I slept through it.”
• Our student leadership team must arrive at church at 6:45am to help us prepare and practice to put on a quality program for their peers.
• Visitors: the only way a visitor comes to journey in our high school program is if someone spends the night at a peer’s house and then comes in the morning with them or if their whole family is visiting. Those two scenarios make up almost 90% of our visitors.
  

A POSSIBLE SOLUTION WE WANT TO TRY:

• We would stop our 8:30am service, and as of October 28th, begin to offer a program at 10:30 am and at 6:30 pm instead.
• This would allow us to still provide a weekend service that is parallel to other Sunday programs and a service that is at an hour which is more conducive to high school cultural norms, thus allowing our students to invite their peers, much like the adults already do at journey.
• Our 6:30pm service would also offer a significant change in “atmosphere”. We will run our normal Sunday program for an hour and a half from 6:30 to 8:00pm. However, we will also offer some “hang out time” before and after by opening our doors and encouraging students to come as early as 6pm and stay as late as 9pm if they’d like to hang out in our café, play some games, or just meet some new friends.

WHAT SHOULD AN 8:30 AM ATTENDING FAMILY DO? Well, there are a multitude of reasons someone chooses the 8:30 am service for their family. We don’t want to hurt them, we’re really trying to help students and their peers follow Jesus in this change. Here’s some possible solutions.

• Become a 2 service family. Come at 8:30 am and serve in children’s ministry or in the café or usher or wherever during the 8:30 hour and then send your high school student to us at 10:30am and you go to main and meet after.
• Sleep in and become a 10:30am family.
• Stay an 8:30am family, but allow your high school student to catch up on sleep so they can come to our 6:30pm service instead.
• Stay an 8:30am family, but allow your student to serve in children’s ministry etc. during the first hour so they can come to our 6:30pm service.
• Stay an 8:30am family and have your student join you in the main service and then they can come to our 6:30pm service.

WHAT ABOUT HOMEWORK AND RIDES?

1. We find that students will make time for what they value. Some students have a habit of doing homework on Sunday night. This is something they would have to change if they were to make Sunday night a viable solution for them. Perhaps it means doing it Sunday afternoon instead.
2. As for rides, students seem to manage to carpool their way to all kinds of activities. Our hope is that students will do the same for Sunday night- much like they might for a movie or something.

WHY NOT FRIDAY NIGHT?
We seriously considered this option (it would be better for our high school pastor Brian too) and even did an experiment with it last year with our student leaders. We had meetings set up for every 2 weeks before the Friday service where we had dinner together and then we would attend the Friday service together. After trying to make it work for 3 months, we had to give up. This is not a good time for a program at church, simply because of so many other options available to students in our area during that same time. Saturday has the same problem.

WHAT ABOUT COLLEGE GROUP?
Currently the college ministry meets in the high school room on Sunday nights too. Starting on October 28, college will be utilizing another room on campus.

OUR CONCLUSION:
No change is easy and no change is perfect for everyone. Our hope and desire is to help students grow in their faith while giving them a realistic chance to invite a friend too. We hope we lose no students and that this transition is one where as a team (both high school ministries and the families represented with in it) we will make the necessary sacrifices and changes to see this transition be a success over the long haul.


Questions or concerns: Please don’t hesitate to ask our high school pastor, Brian Berry- by phone at 619.464.4544 ext. 237, by e-mail at brian@journeycom.org, or by appointment.

SMALL GROUP KICK OFF

Small Groups Start tomorrow night in Student Center A from 7 to 8:30pm. The cafe will be open for drinks and nachos and stuff if you want to send a few bucks along for grub. We will meet as a large group- all the girls and the guys together and spend some time finding out who will be in what small group, setting some small group expectations, and playing some get-to-know-you type games.

If your son or daughter wants to be in a small group, this wed. is the night to start. Then on Sept. 12 and 19 we'll have small groups in homes for the girls and in Student Center A for the guys. Directions will be sent home on Wed night and available from our church office as of Thursday this week.

STUDENT LEADERSHIP

This wed. night from 6 to 8:30 at Brian's house is the student servant team school year kick off. We have 4 teams: a production team (weekend sent and program), a praise (read music) team, a tech team (read sound and lighting and videos), and a people team (greeters and cafe).

If your student wants to get involved, they should have already gotten an application from us. If not, they can pick one up and you can e-mail Brian @ brian@journeycom.org for directions to his house. Students who have already turned in an application should already have the information e-mailed to them by Tuesday.

BE A KID AGAIN

On Sundays, we're in a fun summer series about kid stuff. The first week was on DREAMING BIG, last week was on LAUGH OFTEN, this weekend is BE CURIOUS, and next week is FORGIVE QUICKLY. It's been tons of fun and we'd love to have your student join us. We meet at 8:30 and 10:30am on Sundays in Student Center A.

DODGEBALL

This Wednesday is Dodgeball. We meet in Student Center A at 7pm and we'll be done by 9pm. No you don't have to have a team. Yes you can come and just watch. $5 is the cost for prizes and ice cream we're giving to everyone.

IS THIS HELPFUL

Hello parents,

As you can tell, this blog has not been updated in about 2 months. I have received very few complaints about this, so I'm wondering how helpful this resource really is in the first place. I think having a place on the web where you can come to get information about our youth ministry would be helpful, however it appears to be not very useful.

for a while, I was posting all my message outlines and such so that parents could see what students were learning in our high school group, but I think that was a lot of time very few people seemed to enjoy. So I stopped.

I'm thinking about using this site as an updated announcement section, where I could post regularly the calendar issues you might be concerned about, like upcoming events, some praise reports, maybe a photo re-cap, etc.....

So, if this sounds good or if you have thoughts as the value of this web blog. Please comment on this post or e-mail me at "brian@journeycom.org". I'd love to hear from you if you 're a parent of a high school student at Journey.