Student Ministries Blog

Are you being relational?

Most students that we’ll encounter at Fuse are searching for something. Obviously, we know that their main need is Jesus, but in most cases, they’re also looking for/in need of a human relationship. A lot of our students grow up in the absence of one or both parents. Some students have a hard time finding friends that will accept them the way they are, and others have no one they can trust. This is where a caring adult that loves Jesus is indispensible and can truly save a life. Our main focus as small group leaders has to be relating to the one life. If we ever place our focus on growing a crowd instead of ministering to the one, then we’ve missed the point.

What are you doing to be relational? How are you making the most of your time with students? Is Fuse just another chance for you to see your friends, or do you have a burden to pour your life into students? Are you playing dodge ball to develop relationships or because it’s fun for you. Being relational is actually pretty simple. Start by spending time with your students. A relationship can’t grow without time together. Next, find out what they like. What gets them excited? Why do they get out of bed in the morning? Spend time talking about and doing things they like. After a while you’ll gain rapport and their trust. Then, when you try to teach them about Jesus, your words will actually mean something.

We need to constantly keep our motives in check and our focus aligned, because there’s too much at stake for you to not be invested relationally. God has given each of us a unique personality and relational gifting. Let’s use it to glorify God by being personal with our students.

Know your role

God is doing big things in our student ministry. Each week, we’re seeing tons of students attend Fuse on all of our campuses, our volunteer numbers are growing monthly, and most importantly, students have been making decisions to accept Christ. We’re so blessed to witness a move of God like this, and for whatever reason, He’s chosen to let us be a part of it! However, with blessing comes responsibility. Every one of us—staff, volunteer or student—has some degree of responsibility in shepherding this ministry. Whether you view your responsibility as big or small, your actions will determine if this ministry succeeds or fails.

The danger with a ministry that’s growing like Fuse is that it becomes increasingly easier to think that your role and responsibility become smaller as we grow. It’s easy to think that there are so many leaders at Fuse that you can take it easy and God will bring someone along to pick up the difference—that your small group isn’t that important because you only have 3 students. The opposite is true. It doesn’t matter if God has placed 3 students in your group or 30, you are a key part of this team, and you being faithful in the small things will show God that we are able to be trusted with big things.

We say it all the time, as our ministry gets bigger we have to fight to grow smaller. We’ll never be able to sustain 1,000 students if we can’t lead 10 with excellence. And the thing that’s going to get us there is for small group leaders, like you, to have passion, embrace the responsibility you’ve been given, and invest your all into overflowing into students what God is doing in you. Know your role. It is so important!

You can’t teach passion

All of us began volunteering with student ministry, because we were determined to make a change in the next generation. We weren’t content with sitting back and watching the next group of students follow blindly into lives of emptiness and brokenness. We wanted them to do it better than we did it—to keep them from having the same hurts and scars that we had. Hopefully, most of us started our journey as small group leaders fueled by a passion to make a difference in students lives. But, if we’re not careful, we can lose that passion and fall into routine and apathy.

Student ministry is tough. There are no guarantees that we will ever see one ounce of change in a student’s life. Sometimes, we pour our entire lives into a student just to see them return to the same sin pattern that we know will lead them to destruction. But we can’t give up! We can’t lose the passion we had when God called us to minister to students. However, it’s our natural bent to burn out. To give up. To lose heart.

The good part is that our God never gives up. His fire never burns out. His passion for His children never dies. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow! We HAVE to find a way to obtain God’s passion or it’s game over for us. We can never fully invest what we need to invest using our own passion. We have to capture God’s passion for His children before we can ever think of making an impact. So what are you doing to catch God’s passion? Are you seeking God’s heart? Are you spending enough time with Him? Is your time with Him worth anything or is it just checking off a list? Without a connection to God’s passion we will fail. Are you connected?

Follow the leader

In 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul says, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ .” If small groups had a theme verse, it would be this one. It sums up everything that small groups are about. It also forces us to ask ourselves the question, “Am I worth following?” We want all of you to feel empowered to lead students in our ministry, but before you set out and get involved in their lives, you have to ask yourself this question.

First of all, the answer to the question is “no.” We aren’t worth following. We are some of the most broken and messed up people that exist. However, with the Holy Spirit living inside of us and the Bible to guide us, we can be confident—like Paul—to ask students to follow our example.

The real question, then comes to be, “Am I following Christ’s example?” Paul was only able to make this bold statement, because he knew that he was following Jesus with his whole heart. Can you say the same? Are you seeking to follow Christ’s example daily? How are you doing that? Who do you have in your life to hold you accountable for the way you live?

Leading students is not something you should take lightly. Leading them by following anything other than Christ’s example is leading them away from him. You have a high and heavy calling on you. Don’t take it lightly. Do everything you can to follow Christ’s example. And then invite students to come along.

“Have it your way”

The slogan, popularized by Burger King, suggests that you can build your own hamburger as opposed to simply inheriting whatever boxed burger is on the menu. One of the cool things about small groups is that you can build your own small group.

Some of you guys are frustrated, because your small group is made up of only one, two, or maybe zero students right now, and I want to encourage you to “have it your way”—build your own group. Instead of powerlessly waiting for students who don’t have a leader to sign up for small groups, get out and meet some new kids. One of the best ways to have/grow a group is to meet the students yourself. That way you don’t have to wonder what they look like when you try to find them the next week.

I know that this is harder than the traditional way of just waiting until I assign you some students, however, I assure you that it will be worth it. Step out of your comfort zone and meet some new faces. Once you’ve gotten to meet them, ask them if they’re involved in a group. If they aren’t, ask them to join yours. It’s that easy!

Don’t wait passively for students to fall onto your roster. Be active! Seek students out. Build your own group.

We’re so excited about having our new 6th grade students move up to Fuse at the Anderson campus, and we want to do whatever we can to give you guys the information you need to transition smoothly and confidently into our ministry. We’d love to have y’all join us every week on Wednesday at 6:30 for Fuse.

If you have any questions before checking out Fuse, you can call the church office at 864-226-6585. Also, we’ve put together some of the main info about Fuse here if you wanna give it a look. Thanks and we look forward to seeing you at Fuse!

Word from Liz Morrisey - A Greenville Campus Volunteer

Did you know that statistics show it’s more difficult to meet Jesus after the age of 18? Well, here in Greenville FUSE is taking that statistic to heart and making sure 6th through 12th graders don’t miss out on having a personal relationship with Jesus. Courtney Arnold, a junior at Mauldin High School, recently took that next step. “Every time I heard about Jesus, I heard about how it changed their lives so much,” she says. “One day I didn’t want to go down the same path that I was going down.”

“We do whatever we can do to get the students excited,” says Davey. “We believe ministry takes place outside the church. We help our volunteers to go out and do ministry.”  Kelsey and Courtney say FUSE does a good job of relating things to real life. “NewSpring and FUSE always remind me to put God first,” says Courtney. “It will help me view things differently as I get older and as I go through tough times, I can turn to him. FUSE will make a world of difference. It will change your life if you try.”

Here’s a story that was sent in from Rachel Jackson about how her group is using their gift.

Genesis 1:17 - And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth. We are called as Christ followers to be a light to this world, to be disciples. We are the ones that have to think of ways to reach out to others, we have to use our Time, our Talent, and our Treasure to better the Kingdom of Heaven.

Too many times we try to make ourselves look better. We shouldn’t be focused on the things of the earth, for they will be gone one day, as will we. In the numbered days we have, we have to use them to place everything at God’s feet..to store treasures in Heaven.

Recently we were challenged to do something good for someone or our community and cross the line, and to say that we were doing it for the glory of our Savior. We each got 5$ and were told to do what we want, be creative and do something great. Our group came up with about 25$ and we knew what we were going to do…a Blanket Drive. It was the best thing we could think of to get our school involved as well.

With our money we got posters, decorated them, and hung them around our school. We made announcements also! We were so excited! All throughout our day at school we had people asking us what they were for. Great chance to share the love of Christ with people! We have received and donated a total of 28 blankets so far! This will be continued until the end of December!

Please, if you have blankets that are laying around at your house that you aren’t even using, give ‘em to me! You can contact me via email @ .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) to get specifics on where to drop off your blankets! It would greatly be appreciated!

This is how we are using our Talent of creativity to advance the Kingdom of Heaven, how are you?

Joseph Rampey and Anthony Cook’s 9th grade guys served at the Greenville Rescue Mission, last Saturday. A couple of weeks ago at Fuse, we gave each student $5 to serve the community. Check it out here.

The group decided to pool their money together to buy deodorant, soap, toothbrushes, razors and shaving cream—they even put in $30 of their own. And they didn’t just donate and run. They got to stick around to serve lunch, and afterward, they prepared dinner. The group plans to make the trip again soon.

What’s your story? What did you do with your $5? Let me know. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Jenni Hines’ 10th grade girls group used the gift they were given to minister to their teachers. Apparently, printer paper is like gold when you work in the public school system. Each teacher is given 500 sheets of paper at the beginning of the year, and if they use anything beyond that, they have to pay for it with their own money.

So our girls prayed about what they needed to do, and they decided to buy paper for teachers that they thought would need the encouragement. They wrote Bible verses on the outside of the paper packs and baked cookies to go along with them. The teachers were blown away.

Great creativity ladies. Keep serving your teachers everyday!