Our goal is to make our students life-long disciples of Jesus who are meaningfully connected to the local church.
This past spring, we hosted several parent meetings across our campuses about the future of VC Students. We sent an email after that meeting to update you on those feedback conversations, and to solicit more input. We appreciate all the feedback we received as we worked with “wet cement”... your patience and participation have been highly valuable! At this point, we are ready to announce our final plans for VC Students moving forward.
To recap: we began rethinking the strategy for Student Ministry before Covid19 hit. We were receiving a lot of feedback from parents that the model was not working well for several reasons. Here were some of the challenges:
- We were running 6 separate, robust youth services every weekend at our Cooper Campus. It took an incredible number of staff hours and volunteer leaders to properly facilitate a real discipleship experience.
- Many students were not attending the same service each week, and this made it difficult for leaders to create meaningful relationships with students and students to create meaningful relationships with one another. Many experienced the time as ‘being in a crowd’ instead of being connected in the community.
- Our weekend experiences were vastly different in attendance, energy, and engagement depending on the service time.
- Students were “consuming” church, but most often not engaged in serving or doing missions with others.
- We were seeing a decline in some of our important discipleship milestones such as baptisms and Small Group attendance.
- We were seeing students “age out” of the church because they were never connected to the main weekend services or pastors.
Our prayer and desire at that time was to address these challenges and rethink our student strategy. Then Covid19 hit and we took our services online. The church relaunched our in-person services in January, and we have been slowly rebuilding our other ministries and volunteer teams ever since. VC Students began to rebuild by hosting a monthly in-person Student Night and they have continued to offer monthly events throughout the summer as we discerned next steps.
As we shared at the parent meetings, our goal is to make our students life-long disciples of Jesus who are meaningfully connected to the local church. We believe the model we landed on moves us more in that direction and addresses the key concerns shared by parents’ and caregivers’ over the past few months.
Here’s how we’ll be moving forward, beginning this Autumn:
STUDENT NIGHT
We will launch a new weekly Student Night beginning Sept 19th that meets at each of our campuses on Sunday nights from 6-8pm that will include 6th- 12th grades.
We will begin with some time of connection and games to help students build relationships with their peers. We will then have an exciting large group time with dynamic worship where we invite our students to experience God. Finally, we will break down into “Crews” – our in service Small Groups –, which will be broken down by grade and gender so students can go deep into Scripture and understanding how Jesus is relevant to their everyday lives. We will also take time to pray during Crews and invite the Holy Spirit to change lives.
Along with Student Night, we are rebuilding a dynamic team of leaders who will be consistent and committed to their Crew of students each week – not only on Student Night – but also building relationship outside of Sundays. We know that students are most impacted when they have many supportive and trusted adults walking alongside them in life.
SUNDAY MORNINGS
We want to welcome our students to attend church on Sunday mornings with their families and friends and begin to build them into the center of our church. However, many middle school parents gave feedback that they wanted something more focused for their student. In response to parents and family feedback, we have decided to offer Middle School: Sunday Mornings at all of our campuses. Sunday Mornings will begin on Sept 5th at all campuses. We will still welcome our Middle Schoolers to worship with their families in main service worship. After worship, we will give an option for 6th – 8th grade to go into a separate space where they will have relevant teaching, small groups and prayer ministry time. The content of Sunday Mornings will be different from our Student Nights – and will continue to disciple and deepen our students' faith. Sunday Mornings will be a time of learning and discussion led by parents and volunteers. As we rebuild, we will offer this at our 9am services at Cooper and Sawmill and 10am at our east campus. Our plan is to rebuild our teams to offer it at both services by the end of the year.
Our prayer is that our VC students will learn to engage with our main services and feel that Vineyard Columbus is their church. We will continue to host a place in our main lobby where students can connect & hang out before & after service at our Cooper Campus. We’ll continue to offer a special student section at our Cooper Campus where 6th-8th grade can easily step out for Middle School: Sunday Mornings after worship.
Thank you to everyone who gave us feedback! We are very excited about rebuilding VC Students and we need YOU to help! If you are a parent or caregiver interested in joining our VC Student Team, please let us know by emailing: Rachel.Lyatuu@vineyardcolumbus.org. We will be relaunching our website and list all the relevant dates for the year for you to access. We will also be sending regular reminders and updates about Student Night – so make sure you are opted in (and your student if they have an email)!
We are grateful for you as parents and families and are excited to partner with you to disciple your students into being lifelong followers of Jesus. If you have any further questions, or if you are interested in participating as a volunteer or leader, please email Santos Chaparro (High School Pastor) or Michael Doom (Middle School Pastor).
Gratefully,
Eric & Julia Pickerill (Senior Pastors)
Amanda Pershing (Weekend Pastor)
Santos Chaparro (High School Pastor)
Michael Doom (Middle School Pastor)