Personal Narrative: Middle School Retreat

The Church hosts a multitude of activities to promote interconnectivity in the community. Aside from Sunday sermons, the church also holds weekly Wednesday bible study groups, church hoedowns, and a monthly potluck breakfast for the church's most

Ryan Moline and I sat down before the service and I got to ask him some questions about the youth group and himself. He graduated from Spring Arbor University and while going there he volunteered at Spring Arbor Free Methodist Church working with the youth group. He has now been a fulltime pastor of the young teens for 3 years making his total amount of time there 6 and a half years. Being the pastor of the young teens he mostly spends time preparing for the Sunday night youth group and the Wednesday night youth group: making up lessons, planning games, making sure he has all the leaders he needs, and setting up the outline for the night. He also plans the youth groups retreat or mission trip they are having that year. Finally, he also is looking ahead for the year, this means coming up with general ideas for the months, figuring out what they will talk about and when they will talk about it.

The Boston Baptist Church youth group has been one that has thrived in the past years as it reached out to the community at large and attracted youth to it’s programs. In the past year, other churches in the community have decided to reschedule their youth group meeting times to the same time as the Boston youth group. As a result, the population of the youth group has dwindled to an average of five to six youth in attendance. It is interesting to note that the most consistent attendees are ones from the community instead of the church, which is because the church does not have an abundance of youth in the congregation. While this group is very small, every third month there is an opportunity for youth groups in the area to combine and come together for a program called Hive. This program allows for the youth to meet others in the area, have a great time and to support each other in Christ. There are also special events within the Boston youth group once every month where they will go ice skating, go on a hike or something else similar. The goal of this proposal is to; present a plan where we are able to focus on the spiritual growth of the youth and to focus on how we can reach out to the youth in the community.

Desert Springs Church Youth Group: I have been part of my church’s youth group since Freshman year. I’ve been able to meet other people, as well as get people involved who usually aren’t. This has helped me gain teamwork skills.

In OMG: A Youth Ministry Handbook, Kendra Creasy Dean goes over several different ways on how to do youth ministry in today’s world. Through reading this book and evaluating Grace United Methodist Church, I have noticed several things that need to be fixed. One of the main things is the youth group lesson focus and the way the youth relate to one another.

I don’t believe what just happened! I just can’t! I won’t! I never knew that he could pull off a stunt as crazy as that! Landon Ashby, my friend, was basically on the verge of insanity . . . just because of me! I mean, what I said couldn’t do that to a person, right? You are probably wondering what I said to get into this dilemma. I guess, diary, I will now tell you what happened because you seem hungry for details of the incident. But first, you must promise not to tell anyone, OK?

I started middle school at Bethany Middle school, I had my two older cousins going to school with me. One is the same grade I am and the other is two years older. It was nice having them but we all hung out with different crowds and sometimes we would not agree on the same things so we would not always get along. My first day of middle school was not as bad as i thought it would have been due to the fact that the Bethany middle school was not big at all. My 6th grade year was tough for me when it came to school work, i was used to the work from Central Elementary school and the Bethany Schools were much more strict and left a lot of homework so it was a big change for me. I remember my English class was the hardest along with science but I

For my senior project, I volunteered at my church, called Spirit and Truth helping in Children’s Church along with Youth Alive. Children’s church is for children ages 3-12 years old. We use games, activities & discussions to build up their spiritual relationship with the Lord and living a Godly life. We also encourage them to share what they learn with their families and friends & to apply it to their everyday live. Youth Alive is the youth ministry at Spirit and Truth Church.

I attend my church's fifth and sixth grade summer camp as a teen counselor, and have done so for three summers. This experience is very special every year because as I grow in my own faith and knowledge, the experiences I see my campers undergoing in just a weekend means more and more

From my experience, surviving middle school takes a mixture of luck, naive fearlessness, and an aggressive number of colorful plastic binders. I started my first day of fifth grade a jumbled mess of nerves, anxious about making friends and doing well in class, and inexplicably dressed head-to-toe in red, white, and blue swag my mom got when the Summer Olympics were in Atlanta. I mean, my backpack matched my shoelaces, which matched my pants and my shirt. I might have even had a hat. A hat. A precisely matching hat. That I wore all day. Needless to say, I was not a particularly cool child. I studied hard, had a core group of equally nerdy friends, and constantly worried about whether I was doing the right thing or, perhaps more accurately, becoming the right thing. Was I not studying hard enough to get into college? Or maybe studying too hard, missing out on my youth? Would I grow into my teeth one day? Would my skin eventually stop looking like greasy peanut brittle?

As I went through 1-9 grade school I finally found grit. Going to St. Mary’s during 1-6 grade school getting up at 6:30 every morning just wanting to hit the snooze button so I could get that extra hour of sleep in. After getting ready for school, I would get on the bus, three stops later we would pick up these annoying foster kids that gave me a headache every day because they would shut their mouths that I would have to push through school with. Then building up all the energy sitting in 1-2 classrooms the whole day waiting for recess so I could let it all out. Since I pushed through those challenges, I was able to move on to middle school. During my two years of middle school three out of the five days of school, I would get up at 5:30 and

I was never the type of kid to standout in school especially not in the hallway. I was never too tall, never too short, not too scrawny, but the one thing I like to do is make people laugh. Yet even though that was very fun and all I still leave my legacy behind, which as weird, as this sounds, I was the one kid teachers never took seriously, but for the most part I never got that bad of a grade, in middle school(except when it came to 7th grade language arts class).

Choices. Regardless if the choice is good or bad, everybody makes them. There are times where the choices people make can alter their lives forever; this was one of those times. It was April 26, 2013, a normal friday for me attending West Middle School in my sixth grade year. At the time, I was the definition of an attention freak; I always wanted the spotlight on me. For a reason still not known to this day, I wanted people to feel bad for me. I thought that by gaining sympathy, I would be able to make friends and be the talk of the school. What I didn’t realize is that not all attention is good; some can be devastating. Unfortunately for me, I was not thinking about the effects of the choice that I was about to make. I couldn’t have possibly

When I hear the word “survival”, I think of someone who has made it through the impossible or conquered a near death experience; but that isn't all that it means. According to the the Merriam Webster dictionary, “A survivor is a person who copes well with difficulties in their life.” Moving from elementary school to middle school taught me many new characteristics such as how to be more independent, responsible, and more open to changes.

In Middle School, where we were still growing up as adults, we did not like following the rules. I was in 9th grade. That day the bell rang for our next class and me and my friends did not want to go to our next class right away. We waited outside the room for our next class and chilled and talked. Me and my friends were in class all day and we wanted to let go of some energy. We kept talking and if our teacher came, we would go into the class right away. Our school did not like students to hang out in the hallway because they made too much noise. We did not care, we still chilled outside the class. We talked about new shoes and what we were going to do after school. It was so much fun because I had not seen my friends since 8th grade and it was the