November Youth Newsletter

Welcome to our Youth Newsletter! If you have any questions or suggestions for future newsletters, please contact us @ [email protected] or call the church office @ 501-745-6113

Parent NiGHT - Report

Our first annual Parent Night was a success! We had a great turn out with parents even participating in our game time, lots of laughs! Then our lesson was about honoring our parents but also parents not 'provoking' their children. Afterwards we met with the parents and talked about a few things you'll see below:

• Best way to help grow your students closer to Jesus is to make sure they are going to church, and the best way to do that is to make sure you’re going to church!
• Suggestion Boxes - these are for our students that have questions about God, the Bible, Church, how we do things, etc.
• Monthly newsletters – mailing addresses! If you have not received our newsletter postcard in the mail it's because we have the wrong mailing address. Please contact our church office to submit your mailing address.
• Policies/Procedures - that help keep your students and adult leaders safe.
• Need volunteers – for Wednesday nights, Sunday morning ‘Life Groups’, 5^th Quarters, camp chaperones from time to time. - Pick up a copy of our policies, application, and background check.
• Wednesday nights’ schedule
  • After our Wednesday nights, we ask our students to wait inside the building for their rides because it’s getting dark earlier now and we want to keep them safe.
• Monthly text messages - I send out texts about once a month asking for specific things to pray about for you and your student. Know that you are not alone in raising your students.

Looking forward to next year's Parent NiGHT!!

ABSC Youth Pastor Dinner - Report

Each year, at the Arkansas Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting, Youth Pastors from around the state are invited and treated to a dinner. This year's dinner time was very special because I met 3 other student pastors, that I hadn't met before. We shared things we were doing, how the Lord was blessing, and also encouraged each other. It's just a great time to fellowship with others, but for me it's a time where I can learn and grow as a pastor being that I'm still very green (new) to this calling God has given me.

During this time we have a keynote speaker or sometimes a panel of Youth Pastors to bounce questions and ideas off of. This year we heard about a brand new program that The Summit Church Student Pastors came up with called Senior Interns. The concept is give the High School Seniors leadership roles where they organize, plan, lead, and direct in multiple events and activities. Just like a church might hire a college intern to lead during the summer months except there are more seniors and they aren't paid :) 

I've personally thought about doing something like this before and even tried getting a "student leadership team" of not just seniors but also key students that have shown leadership in different areas before. We met, we studied a student leadership book, we talked about plans, but alas nothing happened and nothing changed. Giving students the freedom to plan, decide, budget, organize, etc is a fantastic idea. It's the follow through in executing those plans.

For our ministry and community I personally believe we are over-extended, over-booked, and extremely over-committed. Things like sports, school events, band, choir, drama, FFA, social clubs, etc. While those ARE good things, does one student need to do all or a lot of these at the same time? I totally get trying to keep students busy  so that they aren't doing bad things and getting into trouble, but where does God fit into all this? Why does God have to "fit into" anything! God, His Word, His Church should take FIRST priority in all this. It just "seems" like we've gotten so busy with worldly things that we can only give God the left-overs. Which is NOT the way that works. We should be giving God the first of everything we do or get.

Please forgive me for venting a little. I have been in this over-extended boat before too. I have put God down low in my priorities before. But at some point (hopefully before it's too late) we've got to start setting a better example to our children and students, me included.

Back to the Senior Intern thing. This is something that I am going to get more information about, directly from the sources and see if this is something that would not just benefit our Youth Ministry but our students as well. More to come...

Policy Manual for Youth Workers - Updated

Our Youth Committee has been hard at work updating our Policy Manual for Youth Workers. This policy helps to insure we keep our students safe as well as our adult leaders.

Below are some changes that we have made and that the church approved and adopted on 10/27/2019:

- Under POLICY STATEMENT we added "Whenever the reference of "written permission" is stated, 'written' is to include permission submitted 'digitally' by parents or guardians under the E-Sign Act of June 2000."

- Under SCREENING PROCEDURES - Any candidate for a leadership position must: "Be an active church member of Clinton First Baptist Church or another local protestant church in good standing for at least the last six months."

You can download a copy of the new policy here:

https://clintonfbc.org/policy_manual_for_youth_workers

Contact Us!

Ðarin Farmer - Student Pastor

o. 501.745.6113

c. 501.253.0500

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Wednesday Night Leaders: Dara Hensley, Anita Dawson, Shiela Farmer, Darla McJunkins, Ginger Morgan, Tizzie Stewart, Meredith Morgan, Sheila Durham, Chris Dufrene, Will Dawson, Jerry Pico, Darin Farmer

Life Group Leaders: (7th-12th) Jr. & Sr. High Ladies - Bev Davidson; (7th-9th) Jr. High Boys - Darin Farmer; (10th-12th) Sr. High Boys - Will Dawson, Doug Davidson

Youth Committee Members: Darin Farmer, Kya Rhoda, Kyle Hensley, Karen Bagley, Lacey Standridge, Randi Newland