It’s here for some, and very close for others. The end of the school year has drug along and finally cropped up. I wanted to personally congratulate each student for completing the year. I know how hard school work can be and I’m so proud of each of you especially with all of the extracurricular activities that you do!

I especially want to contradulate four specific youth whom I’ve known for many years, some even before CCCM began. Chelsea Tubridy, Jackie Loftin, Courtney Robinson and John Keller all graduated high school this year and for them, this is the mark of a new life of sorts.

I know each of these students and it’s my prayer that not one of them will become one of the statistics that we hear about Christian teens after they graduate. The statistics show that 75% of all Christian teenagers fall away from their faith within 4 years of graduation, but I’ve known these four students for so long, and I’ve personally seen the passion they have for Christ and for others. I know that God has blessed them and will watch over them as a father does his child.

Please take a moment with me over the next couple of weeks and congratulate all of the students for a year finished well, and a well deserved summer vacation!

Gary

16 Teenagers set out on a search for 50 items on Sunday, May 17th.  Their goal was to take digital pictures with as many of the items as possible and return by 6pm.  I have to say that it was an incredible blast to see the teens working together with their adult captains to capture the moments on film.  Below is the winning team that had the most photos.  The “GREEN” team was led by Ashleigh Anderson and they really went all out to get the photos.  All of the photos can be seen in our photo album from the link above.

After the hunt, we settled down and had some pizza, soda and our 3rd in a series of 6 sermons on spiritual habits.  You can read more about our sermons to the right under the sermon heading.  Our current series is “Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Treasured Life”.

Way to go, Green Team!

I hope that some of you are finding the website, and that this will be a tool we can really use.  I’m very excited about the ability to put into words some of my feelings about the youth sermons we give on Sunday nights.  My hope is that this will be a good way for parents to hear about what we are learning, and that it can be a good review for teens that possibly missed the night.  In any case, it’s good for me to be able to just let my thoughts out in writing.

I’m pretty sure there is a way to subscribe to this stuff so that you can get an email or something when a new blog has been added.  I had thought about going back to sermons from a long time ago, but instead, I’m starting with the last series and moving forward from here.  I’ll be updating the Indiana Jones series this week.  You can find these on the side bar to the right.  I hope you find them useful.

Gary

If you’re checking back on the website, you will notice a TON of new things that I’ve added.  I’ll list some of the changes below and just know that I’m going to be adding and keep adding until we have the best website we can!!!!!  You guys can subscribe to the site too and get updates whenever I update it too.

Another important feature that I’m adding to this site if sort of a blog if you will.  Each sermon series that we do as a youth group will have it’s own link on the right, and for each night we meet, I will be posting some thoughts about the night and what we discussed.  This is going to be a great way for you to go back and review topics we’ve covered, or read up on one that you might have missed, but also, it will be a great place for your parents to check out what we’re learning and what you are actually doing in the youth group!  Keep checking back, I’m so excited about this site!

• Added several more photo albums back from the old site.
• Added an Announcements box to the right which will show upcoming events.
• Added a Now Showing and Coming Soon to display the posters of our series
• Added a “Verse of the Day” to the bottom of the right side of the page.
• Added the Youth Sermons Blogs to the right, click on the links to read.
• Added a download page to put things like forms, sermon MP3, etc.

Wow!  That’s a lot of stuff.
Gary

Well, I have to be honest.  It was really time for a new look at feel for the youth website.  The way we’re doing the website is also going to be a lot easier to update, will allow us to have much more blogging capabilities which I want to use after each youth group meeting and small group session.  In addition, We will now have the capability of putting our own vidoes on the site and streaming them as well as putting up MP3’s of any messages I give as soon as we start recording them.

Keep checking back often.   An even better part of this site is going to be the ability to subscribe to feeds so that you can be notified if a message gets posted, etc.

Last, but not least, we have more capabilities, and we will be saving money moving to this type of system.  I will be adding photos back as soon as I can get the chance. 

Welcome!
Gary