.
This is the Handbook describing our new SOS (Serve Our Schools) initiative, which is has been developed under the umbrella of Serve The City (STC). So far the vision has been accepted by 22 youth groups. (On the back page is an SOS directory, so you can see the names of all the STC churches as well as a few others who are aligning themselves with our vision.)
History of SOS. The vision began in June, when Luke Reid and I began to share the passion of our hearts for reaching our schools in a significant way. As we’ve talked to other STC youth leaders, our vision has grown and has been confirmed, being crystallized in these pages. Continued feedback and input is welcomed as we enter this new territory of unified ministry.
SOS Vision. The ultimate goal is to spur each of our students towards what STC calls a “Prayer, Care, Share lifestyle”. The SOS plan provides a simple structure whereby they are regularly encouraged to see their school as a mission field. By teaching them to Pray for their school, Care for their peers, and most importantly, Share with them, they will be obedient to the Great Commission in making disciples.
In a nutshell, the plan is to link our 20+ youth groups together and designate a monthly “SOS Day” where all our youth group kids are encouraged to:
1. wear the unifying SOS t-shirt to school,
2. do a service project (either a major cooperative service project or have individuals look for serving opportunities throughout the day), and
3. in the context of natural relationships strike up spiritual conversations and/or invite peers to their church or youth group.
SOS Side Benefits. There are so many residual benefits of this plan. Here are a few.
* Demonstrating to a lost world that Christians are to be about serving, not being served.
* Unraveling the stereotypes saying that Christians are primarily judgers, self-focused, and uncaring.
* Showing the unity in the body of Christ across denominational lines.
* Encouraging Christian kids who may feel they’re outnumbered at their school.
* Communicating between students about needs and opportunities at their school.
* Increasing awareness of on-campus ministry opportunities like FCA, YFC, and prayer groups.
* Bringing the youth pastors/ministers together in a cooperative effort.
* Building up each local youth ministry.
* Reminding youth groups to be intentionally receptive to newcomers.
* Accomplishing more together than we could ever hope to do alone.
* Improving the conditions at the schools.
* Building bridges between Christians and the school administrations and staff.
* Augmenting the overall impact of Serve The City.
SOS Frequency. We agreed we could make plans to do SOS once a month if we encouraged the students to pace themselves--periodically doing simple service projects so as not to overextend themselves. Each school can decide what is realistic for them in terms of the scope of their projects.
SOS Scheduling. We have decided that SOS days will be Wednesdays. Since we want to launch this on See You At The Pole day, the concept arose to have it each 4th Wednesday when possible. There are three months where there are conflicts; in those months the plan is to move it ahead one week to the third Wednesday. The schedule then is as follows:
* Sept 24
* Oct 22
* Nov 19 (third Wed due to Thanksgiving)
* Dec 17 (third Wed due to Christmas)
* Jan 28
* Feb 25
* March 18 (third Wed due to Spring Break)
* April 22
* May 27
Of course we can evaluate it as we go along—perhaps we’ll decide to change the frequency, the day, or whatever. However, it’s important that we agree on the days, so all the youth pastors can promote it easily to their youth groups.
The role of each youth group leader/pastor
One role will be to remind students in our individual youth groups of the upcoming SOS day, making sure they know their service plan and reminding them to wear their shirts. We should try to do an SOS reminder the night before using every means of communication available (email, texting, Facebook, etc).
We also need to be sure we remain outrageous cheerleaders for our kids! More on this below.
Another role of ours will be to prepare for a potential influx of guests to our youth groups. We want them to find our youth groups to be places that are welcoming, relevant, and sensitive to the fact that they may be unfamiliar with “churchianity”. When guests are invited, we might feature testimonies, gospel presentations, or activities that will endear them to us and most importantly towards Jesus.
Organizing the Service Projects. We really want this whole endeavor to be simple and student-led and student-owned, so we want to minimize our adult involvement in the details as much as possible. We do not want to micromanage the students, but to empower them and cheer them on in their outreach efforts.
For Middle School. We’ve decided it would be simplest and best for each of the schools to do the exact same service project on a given SOS day. Each month Mark Eades and Brad Singleton (our city’s two full-time Middle School pastors) will collect ideas from all of us and then choose one that they feel would be most appropriate. (The projects must be simple and do-able regardless of how many SOS students attend the school.) They will announce the plan to each of the youth group leaders on our list and it then will be our responsibility to communicate the plan to all of our middle school students prior to SOS day. Examples of projects might be: “return trays in the cafeteria”, or “write appreciation notes to your teachers.” We adults are simply suggesting what students can do that day and wildly cheer them on—yet the success of each school’s SOS day will directly relate to the effort the students put into making it happen.
For Senior High. For Senior high, the service project part is entirely student-led and indigenous to each school. Our plan is to identify one or more “SOS Student Leaders” for each school. The youth pastors/directors will encourage the “Student Leaders”.
SOS Student Leader – one for each participating Sr. High School
CHARACTER / TRAITS
o Must be a solid Christian student who understands and is passionate about the SOS strategy.
o Must be willing to come under the umbrella of Serve The City and share doctrinal agreement with them.
o Must have natural leadership, be outgoing and influential.
o Seniors are preferred due to their position of influence.
o Should be students who are not already in a key leadership position in other ministries, such as FCA.
o Must be able to motivate and inspire the SOS vision in others.
o Must be able to work with a team of students to make team decisions.
o Must be a good listener and be responsive to the ideas of others.
o Must not be power-hungry, but rather a humble servant-leader.
DUTIES
o Be the contact person for students who later may want to be added to your school’s SOS group.
o Keep the SOS vision alive among the students.
Note: the duties below will vary greatly depending on how many enthusiastic, motivated SOS students are at your school. If you have just a handful, you won’t need much of a leadership team or communication system at all. Nor will you be able to organize large-scale service projects. Your role will mainly just be reminding your peers to look for opportunities to be a servant throughout the day. The duties described below assume a larger number of students will be involved.
o Depending on number of SOS students, recruit a team of 2-5 student leaders to help with the following duties.
o Contact your school principal to explain that the people he’ll see wearing the SOS shirts are simply there to serve (and to alleviate fears that you might be a gang J.) You’ll want to build good rapport with them!
o Establish a communication system to keep all your schools SOS students informed of what’s planned.
o Decide what the service project plan will be each month.
o Work with the youth pastors to acquire the resources needed for the projects.
o Stay in touch with the school principal to seek further opportunities to serve the school.
SOS Q&A.
Q. What was the rally about? A. We had a huge SOS kickoff rally on Wed, Sept 17th to hand out the t-shirts and to get our kids excited and to prepare them for the first SOS day a week later. We had 500 people there altogether with several students who shared their heart for their schools. All the youth pastors/leaders were up on the stage, to challenge, inspire and pray for the students in their mission! After the rally, they broke out into school groups to talk about how they will handle See You At The Pole and the first SOS project.
Your browser may not support display of this image.Q. Who gets the t-shirts? A. Most of us agreed that mainly students should wear the SOS shirts. The thought is that we want our students to receive all the credit for serving their schools—and that if we’re wearing matching outfits, onlookers might assume that the students needed prodding from us in order to serve. We want this whole effort to highlight the fact that students are taking their own initiative to serve their schools. Yet, if individual adults want a shirt to wear to show support, that’s ok too.
Q. Can we still get t-shirts? A. After the rally, shirts may be purchased for $5 (while supplies last) and obtained from any of the SOS youth pastors or from Mark at New Covenant or Luke at First Assembly. If we have to reorder more shirts, the price may be slightly higher.
Q. How can adults show their support if they don’t wear the SOS shirt? Those of us who don’t wear the shirt can still show great support for the students in other ways. We need to be outrageous cheerleaders for our students who serve, and they need to tangibly feel our support. Having them share their serving stories in youth group, highlighting noteworthy achievements, notes, letters, texts, Facebook wall posts, church bulletin ‘Kudos’, church service testimonies, youth group treats, etc. can all be ways for us to affirm their faithful involvement in SOS. Some even suggested that we adults get our own distinctively different t-shirts, saying something like “SOS Fan Club” or “Proud Youth Pastor,” etc. If any of you want to spearhead that project, please do so!
Q. What are some examples of Sr. High Service Projects? A. We’re going to let each school SOS group be creative with this, but some starter ideas might be:
1. Clean up after lunch
2. Take a friend’s lunch tray to the wash area.
3. Pick up litter in the hallways.
4. Pick up litter on the outside of the building.
5. Make encouragement cards for all the teachers and administration.
6. Wash Car Windows
7. Declare holidays (why not, Hallmark does!) and celebrate them with balloons, banners, locker posters, gifts, cards, photos, contests, etc.
• Freshmen Appreciation Day
• Lunch Lady Appreciation Day
• Teacher Appreciation Day
• Janitor Appreciation Day
• Administrator Appreciation Day
8. Free Car Wash in the School Parking lot after school
9. “Candy Bombs” where each SOS student brings 10-15 candy bars with a note “have a great day, from SOS” and secretly hide them all over the school: in backpacks, lockers, shelves, hoodies, bathrooms, etc.
10. When there is an event at school (i.e. music contests on Saturdays, etc.) the youth could volunteer to help for the day whether it is as a runner, assistant to a judge (get supplies, etc. as needed) or some other position. This would provide for a very inexpensive way to serve.
The number of students at a particular school will affect how realistic some of the ideas are. Some ideas will require talking to the principal to find out what the needs are. And some, like #10 might be extra projects, planned on days other than SOS Wednesdays.
Q. What about Sr. High Schools with only a few SOS students? A. Obviously the schools with a lot of SOS students will have the advantage of momentum. But students with small numbers can serve their school as individuals by looking for opportunities to serve others throughout the day, picking up trays, buying someone lunch, writing thank you notes to teachers, putting encouragement notes on lockers, etc.
Q. What about home schoolers? A. Obviously, students who are exclusively home schooled are going to be surrounded only by family members. They can still participate in the SOS day, taking the opportunity to serve and share spiritually at home. Those who are part of home school associations or who take some public school classes can take part in SOS there as well.
Q. What if any non-Serve the City individuals or youth groups want to participate? A. All the STC churches and SOS youth groups embrace a common theological and doctrinal perspective. Other youth groups are welcome to join SOS as long as aligning themselves with our perspective is desirable to them. As is the case with all STC churches, a good indicator of common theological agreement would be substantial agreement with the Lausanne Covenant. http://www.lausanne.org/lausanne-1974/lausanne-covenant.html.
Thanks for reading all this! Please feel free to pass it on to those leaders who would find it interesting.
Privileged to serve side by side with you,
Mark Forstrom
Pastor of Sr. Highers
New Covenant Bible Church
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment