Goal: Our goal for Living for Christ was to encourage the girls to actively engage in their bibles
Inspired by a camp at Point Loma where we found ourselves sitting with a small group of girls, we discovered the benefits of being in small groups of girls.
The Process: Got approval from Mr. Tonkinson. Talked to Troy Thelen. Planning and discussing what girl’s at Valley lacked and how we could improve these thing.
Getting the Word Out:
- Went around and advertised
- Posted cards on all girls lockers
- Announcements
- Poster
- Twitter
We had our first meeting on September 1, 2015. We had thirty-five girls show up for our first bible study. We started with breakfast and then introduced our bible study and its goals for the year. We introduced the First Five app and opened it up to the girls to share what they wanted from this group. This was encouraging to hear how girls wanted to grow in their faith and knowledge of God by developing a consistent pattern of spending time in God’s word, build community, and implement prayer into their lives.After our first meeting, we got together and decided it would be beneficial to break the girls into prayer groups. These groups would be smaller groups that were each lead by one of us.
We had our second meeting on September 8, 2015. This meeting was smaller than the first, but we still had twenty girls show up. At this meeting we dived into the weeks devotions by going through them and discussing the my moments questions. We read through them and then discussed the question of the day. At this meeting we were really made aware to the fact that girls are more fearful to open up and speak in a group setting. Seeing this we broke up into our prayer groups and talked about the devotions and any prayer requests girls had. This was a much more open and honest time. Girls were much more open in a smaller group setting. We look forward to the coming meetings and seeing how God works and moves in their lives.
Our third meeting for Living for Christ took place on September 14, 2015. The main problem we worried about when starting this project is that people would slowly fade out because of the early mornings. This week I think that fear was brought to the forefront. We only had about eight girls up. At the beginning of the meetings are hearts were crushed! God had others plans for that day though. Our spirits were quickly turned around by the depth of conversation that day. The girls that showed up opened up in ways that we had not experienced in the first two meetings. This was extremely encouraging. In starting this group, we desired that deep, honest, godly conversation would begin. This week our conversation really dug into what it looks like to be Christians who are actively living out their faith.
Our next meeting took place on September 21, 2015. God really showed up at this meeting too! We had more girls show up this week, around twenty or so. We were really encouraged by the openness of the girls in the groups. This meeting showed us that there is a lot going on at this school that I was not aware of. There is so much pain and suffering going on. Family problems, friend problems, sickness, and this is just the beginning. The body of Christ is called to be there for eachother. We are to encourage eachother and lift eachother up in the hard times. At valley, we are good at caring for those we are close to. We are called though to care and love all believers in Christ. The most meaningful time of this meeting was that we were able to take these trials and bring them back to scripture. Prayer and God’s word can provide an abundance of encouragement.
By November, Living for Christ had now been meeting for three months!! We were able to go through the entire book of Genesis with our group. That is a huge accomplishment to make it through an entire book of the bible! Our goal for Living for Christ was to encourage the girls to actively engage in their bibles and we are starting to see this. Girls that show up not only are digging into their bible at least once a day, but are reflecting on what it has to say.
The end of Genesis talked about Joseph’s suffering and brought up quite a bit how we as believers deal with suffering. In Living for Christ we had many deep discussions about suffering that is occurring in our lives, but also how to deal and look different in our suffering. This was an incredible time because it creates vulnerability but also encouragement and prayer in hard times. Genesis was definitely a challenging book, but brought great conversation and some foundational truths about God.
Next, we went through the book of Matthew. Since Matthew was geared towards a Jewish audience, our group was able to use some of the knowledge we gathered from Genesis to further engage and understand the book of Matthew.
One of the biggest challenges we have faced with our group Living for Christ is getting enough people to consistently come so After December we had to re-strategize. We met with Tonk and decided to switch to Thursday at lunch. We then re-advertised our group by passing out candy at lunch and inviting everyone to join us.
Our new study was “Becoming a Titus 2 Woman” by Martha Peace. It was a 6 week study of the attributes based out of Titus 2. These attributes included being:
- Pure and Sensible
- Good worker of home and kind
- Submissive
- Loving
- Practical Application of how to do this
Accomplishments:
- Met for 7 months with one month of prep
- Used First Five app, which allowed 5 minutes in God’s word
- Intention conversation
What Worked:
- Advertising with candy
- Face to face interaction
- Titus 2 woman
- Praying for one another
What did not work:
- 7 A.M. Meetings!!
- First Five App
What we learned:
- Faithfulness, diligence
- Difficulty of holding Bible study
- Importance of the Bible
- God is glorified behind our desire and diligence
How we made an impact:
- Study allowed us to interact with different people
- Put us outside our comfort zones
Challenge The Process 