We have this thing on Wednesday nights called Oasis. Oasis is a time in the middle of the week for the students to come together and be refreshed by the study of God's Word.
Oasis is pretty awesome (Can something be "pretty awesome" or is saying "pretty awesome" like saying "sort of infinite"? Nevermind.") Oasis is a Bible study for both Jr. High and High School students, but they have separate Bible studies.
The High School students gather together for a Bible study with a guy named Jason French and after he teaches for a while, they break up into small groups and have more in depth discussion and study.
The Junior High hangs out in the Refuge area (our Youth Worship center) and Johnny Scott leads worship. He has different Jr. High students play in the band with him - which is awesome! They are so talented, I'm very impressed. After the worship time we'll usually have some kind of interactive element (eg: writing on a prayer wall, prayer time, responding to a video, or reading out loud some scripture). Then someone will come up and teach a short 10-12 minute lesson (sometimes it will be me, other times it will be a Youth Coach or guest teacher).
This lesson time is intended as an introduction to the topic for the evening. At the end of the lesson the teacher will dismiss the students to go into their small groups. The groups are divided up by grade and sex (7th grade boys, 7th grade girls, 8th grade boys, 8th grade girls). We don't want the groups to be much larger than about 5-6 kids, so there are about 7-8 groups.
The small group time is the most important! It is where the meat of the Bible is discussed. We devote at least 40 minutes to the small group time. The lessons are written and given to the small group leaders in advance so they can prepare for the lesson - and the focus of the small group time is for the students to really interact with the Bible and learn by discussion and study. All groups study the same topic, but the leaders are free to teach in any way they decide.
We also value hang-out time. So we build hang-out time into each evening both before and after Oasis. We don't play games and we don't get too crazy on Wednesday nights because I believe that Junior High students are ripe and ready to be challenged to go deeper into the word. On the other hand, I know they need a time to go nuts! So we have a thing on Sunday nights called The Zone.
The Zone is a night of craziness for the Junior High students to be themselves. We have games, videos, loud music, energy and a lesson with some time for the students to pray together in small groups.
But what I want to focus on is Oasis. Oasis is serious business. At the end of the 2 years of Junior High school these students will have the opportunity to get a good dose of the Bible. We focus the teachings into 5 major catagories - Gospel, Epistle, OT, Doctrinal/Foundaitonal, Topical (relationships, another OT series, current events). Everything is based on the Bible, and everything is entrusted to God. Johhny, the youth coaches, and I have a deep desire to see these Junior High students become who God wants them to be - fully devoted followers of him.
That's what we do. We meet the kids where they are and take them where God wants them to be. Plain and simple.
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