Kickoff Meeting Notes

• Parents and guardians, you have so much to be proud of in your students' growth. This is a dynamic group with a growing reputation in our church and community. Youth and adults spoke to this during the meeting, including David White who popped in to express his apprecation for their example
  
• Logistics and such:
  • We want to keep activity and media release forms updated yearly. If you couldn't make it last night, see Geoff for one next time you can or we'll make sure one gets filled out no later than the next major event your student attends.
  • Our Safe Sanctuary policy mandates background checks for children/youth workers every 5 years. Due to the timing of the last big shift in our policy, many longtime volunteers are about to come due, so don't be surprised to hear from staff soon about that. If you'd like to volunteer and haven't before, we can get you signed up easily as well.
  • Our group has experienced some signifcant growth and will continue to do so as our youth invite others and the Bridge students officially join in January. That means we'll have more spots for more adult volunteers to make sure events go smoothly and are fun for everyone. We already always need at least one woman to balance out Geoff per our policy, but we increasingly need more than one volunteer and would love to have more men join us as part of that. Our teens need good role models from various walks of life, and they genuinely are a blast to be around. To sign up to provide food or volunteer for our Engage Bible study nights on Sundays, click here. Sunday nights are a great time to join us and get to know the group for the first time. If you want to be there but someone else has already signed up to volunteer for that particular night, let Geoff know in advance. To get signed up for all other Fall 2022 youth events, click here. This second list will be added to as more volunteer needs come into view. 
    
  • We, for the first time in a long time, have a growing number of drivers in our ministry. That means we can do things we couldn't before, like pop-up hangouts that we've started adding in. But that also comes with the need to delineate some things. Our policy will be
    • Students won't drive on out-of-town events, unless they're only driving themselves due to scheduling issues that we've had a chance to discuss/with their guardian's permission. An example would be in the past when a student had to join us late at Camp Wesley Pines. 
    • Students won't drive for competitive fellowship events like scavenger hunts, etc. Skin in the game? Foot off the accelerator. 
    • If you aren't comfortable with your student driving other students or being driven by other students, please let Geoff know. This can be for a specific event due to its logistics or a blanket policy your family decides. 
      
• Big ideas and trends for the next year
  • Welcoming new faces. We have a chance to take a big step forward as a group with how we respond to all the new folks joining us from the Bridge in January.
  • This year's overall Bible study theme is "Everyday Heroes" as inspired by requests from the youth who asked that this year give them a further look into practical concerns of faith as well as some more specific information on those who went before us. We'll be talking about Biblical and historical Christian figures, how we can learn from them, and what it means to follow the example of Scripture in our everyday lives.
  • More service opportunities. Between continued reopening of previous opportunities in our community, the vision of our PHUMC Leadership Team, requests made by our youth, and the remarkable ways they have found a strong group identity we'll be stepping up the ways we step out to serve. Watch for continued announcements about that soon. We've already found a small yet big way to help this year: MadCAAP was very grateful for the large pile of nonperishables we collected at our Black Light Party last week!  
• Key dates and discussions
  • Sept 18: Host home dinner night. We'll split into two age groups for dinner and discussion in place of normal Engage. Older youth are headed to Geoff's house, so we'll need at least one volunteer driver to make that possible. 
  • October 9-10: Fall Retreat to Roosevelt State Park. Registration will open soon. Price TBA but this will be a very affordable event. 
    
  • Oct 21: The group last night was strongly in favor of a 5th quarter event following the MCHS vs Germantown game occuring right across the street from our church. Geoff suggested a late night pancake supper, an idea which was warmly received. This will be a great event to serve at as well as for our teens to invite their friends. 
  • Oct 30: PHUMC Trick or Treat Trail, with youth and Bridge students serving our kids.
  • Jan 14-16, 2023: Winter Retreat at Camp Wesley Pines. This will be the first big youth event after the Bridge students officially join our ministry, so we'd love to have a lot of current youth there to welcome them. Price will be announced when CWP lets us know. 
  • Week of July 4, 2023: Tentative summer trip date. Look for further announcements about details this semester. This seems to be the week every year best suited for everyone's schedule.
• BOYO for:
  • Youth and churchwide Christmas info.
  • Wednesday nights. Our staff is actively working on what Wed night resumption will look like. Some nights will be churchwide; youth-specific events on other nights will be more based around fellowship than learning in order to give them a break from their busy school days. The youth also expressed interest in a few homework nights as part of that schedule. 
  • For anything else of note recently that we didn't cover, you can always take a look back at the August youth newsletter.