Elevate

    Youth Ministry

    Welcome to Elevate!

    "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power - together with all the saints - to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ..." ~ Ephesians 3:18

    About Us

    As Union Center’s ministry to youth, Elevate provides an exciting and welcoming place for students in grades 6-12 to make meaningful connections with God and others. We meet nearly every Sunday from 6:00-8:30 pm throughout the school year, and continue with other activities during the summer. Elevate offers several opportunities for students to get connected to other teenage followers of Jesus, and teaches students the skills they need to know God better.

    We exist to invite all students to Know, Love, and Live a relationship with Jesus that starts now and lasts forever!

    As a church, we resource parents as the primary disciplers of their families and provide environments where students can experience spiritual, emotional and relational freedom and growth through Jesus Christ. We seek to do this through the context of a Christ-loving, family-style community. At Elevate gatherings, students of all commitment levels are engagged with authentic relationships, and environments which are purposefully designed to facilitate forward-moving relationships with God, parents, friends, youth leaders, and the larger church family. Through mentoring, serving, worshiping, studying, we learn to enjoy God and take up our part in His kingdom work.

    EVENTS & FORMS

    ALL THE INFO YOU NEVER KNEW YOU WERE LOOKING FOR!

    Everything from our current teaching series to that medical slip your student needs to have filled out can be found right here! You are now just one click away from 210% youth ministry know how :)

    EVENTS & FORMS

    STAYING CONNECTED

    THE TRUTH IS, WE MISS YOU WHEN YOU'RE GONE...

    Facebook groups? Text alerts? Just want to glance at a calendar once in a while? Follow this link to tell us how you’d like to stay informed and connected… then pull up a chair and hang out for a while.

    STAYING CONNECTED

    PARENTING RESOURCES

    The Rights of Passage Experience (ROPE) is designed to help parents strategically pass down their faith to their teenager through the use of annual Family Experiences. Designed in partnership with ParentMinistry.net, we give you the resource tools and support you'll need to carry out an experience each year including:

    A Planning Guide to walk you through the resource.
    2 Videos explaining the why and how of each Family Experience.
    A Kick Starter idea for Biblical family discussion time to help lead up to the experience.

    Each grade will focus on the biggest milestone for that year and give you the tools to make this moment one to remember!

    Check out those amazing Rights of Passage (ROPE) resources right now!

     

     

    3 THOUGHTS ABOUT YOUTH MINISTRY

     

    Kids are more into a sincere person than a fun person. 

    Many people think that effective youth volunteers need to be like an energetic, “super fun” pied piper. In reality, kids trust, are attracted to, and listen to a person who is sincere. People who deeply internalize the gospel and understand just how much God loves them, often have an attractive level of comfort in their own skin. They also tend to listen well. These qualities transcend age, and are more important to kids than someone with a thousand great jokes.

     

    Bible centered ministry “works” with young people. 

    Paul’s charge to Timothy – “preach the Word” – is just as applicable to youth as to adults. At any age, God’s Word is meant to do the “heavy lifting” in gospel ministry. At the root of youth ministry, you should always find the same basic convictions about the importance of a steady diet of Bible teaching for spiritual growth, and equipping for ministry. (see 2 Timothy 4)

     

    Young people can be equipped to become the church of right now. 

    It is true that there is a temporary nature to youth ministry work; students are with us for a short “season” of life, and often we will never get to see what they look like as adult members and leaders in the local church. Still, even in their years of youth, our job is to help parents equip them to “do the work of ministry” right now in the context of the wider local church body. (see Ephesians 4:13)