Middle School

What to Expect

Wednesday Youth Nights

We meet from 7-9pm onsite at Cochrane Alliance Church. Youth nights are all about creating a space for youth to belong and engage with meaningful community.  These nights include times of fun, games, and teaching in both large and small groups. Youth nights will be made of two 1-hour blocks.  One block “hangouts” will be given to the value of meaningful relationships and the other block “grow” will be given to the values of experiencing Jesus and cultural discernment.

Hangouts

In this time block youth will be given space that is intended to help in building meaningful relationships and authentic community.  The goal is to provide space and activities that will help foster a sense of belonging.  We think of this time as “structured hangouts”.  Things such as board games, video games, sports, crafts, paints nights, baking, cooking, service projects and more will be available.  We would be good with youth even bringing homework during this time if that would allow for them to connect with us and their peers. 

Grow

In this time the focus is on experiencing Jesus and helping youth grow in their likeness to Christ.   During this time there will be large group teaching and time in small groups. Sharing life through community is part of our design, but meaningful relationships aren’t always easy to find. That’s why small groups exist—to make these life-changing relationships relevant and accessible to youth. We want to bring youth together so that they can grow deeper in their relationship with God.

Events

Youth events for the year will include a once-a-month Friday evening worship night, retreats (details TBD), and community youth events in connection with other churches. We are also going to be including in our event calendar the activities that the students themselves are engaging in outside of church, such as school performances and sporting events as these are great opportunities for small group to “do life” together.  

Retreats

These are great opportunities for youth and leaders to build community.  Retreats provide opportunities and an atmosphere for community building that cannot be recreated in other contexts.  This is a great chance for youth to grow in relationship with each other and with God and have fun doing it! We will hold 2 retreats a year, one in October and one in March.