On Sunday mornings, youth primarily attend the Contemporary Worship Service at 9:30am followed by Sunday School in the Annex at 11:00am. They also have an opportunity to attend Youth Group on Sunday evenings from 5-7pm.
What is Youth Group?
   
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Youth group is short for UMYF which means United Methodist Youth Fellowship. UMYF was designed to reach the United Methodist children in grades 6-12. A normal meeting consisted of Fellowship, Bible Study, Games, & Prayer.
Today, UMYF is still a very vital part of our church. Through outreach, doorhangers, mailouts, and personal invites, we have been able to grow our current UMYF program with children from inside and outside our church family. Thus creating a core group of children some of which have Biblical backgrounds and some that may not or are not getting what they need from their current churches. Many families have been touched by our outreach and several have even become members of Grace through the curiosity of "What exactly is it that draws my child there".
Today, our youth call UMYF youth group for short. It's a simple way for them to reach out to their friends and get others involved. We still follow the same format with some modern twists. We begin with 15 minutes of fellowship during arrival time. We usually all hang out in the kitchen and talk over a few snacks. Then, we move into the meeting room. Open with Prayer, and dive into an hour and fifteen minute lesson plan. It sounds long, but it really goes by fast with lots of segments to keep the youth energized, thinking, and not bored. Currently we are studying "Jesus Said It, an experimental multimedia Small Group Bible Study Designed for Youth". The study involves a pregame that relates to the lesson, an experience activity where youth are doing a hands on activity relating to the study, an encounter period where they look up and discuss the scriptures as a group and then as smaller group with an included activity. Afterwards, everyone comes back together, we watch a video segment that wraps up the discussion. We then move into a postgame discussion followed by prayer and our last 30 minutes in spend in organized game play.
Currently we have five parent volunteers and provide several mission opportunities for our youth. Last year, we participated in the Ronald Mc Donald house, The citrus drive (feeding the hungry) of the Seminole Tri-county area, VBS (were youth volunteered their time and devoted it to the education of children), Food Drives, Easter Baskets, Christmas Toy and clothing drive, Breakfast with Santa (Youth voluteered helping with various segments providing a wonderful opportunity for yound children and they also spent a week decorating, moving furniture, and preparing the building for VBS), Church Clean up Day, Fall Festival game area (where they worked all day with a tiny break offerering fun for others and sharing about our church), Carwash where they washed 35 cars and donated all proceeds to the church to help with the general fund, and much more.
This month, we will be holding a parent meeting and discussing new projects for next year as well as creating new opportunities for parent involvement.
If you have a sixth - twelveth grader, I encourage you to get them involved. And, if you ever have an questions, concerns, or suggestions, please know that my door is always open.
Thanks,
Traci Rhea 407-322-1472 mypastortraci@msn.com
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