What Is Next For River Stone Students
Good afternoon, parents!
Tonight is our first MDWK service of 2025! I am excited for the year and what the Lord has in store for our group. Today, I want to give you guys a brief update on the vision for 2025, along with some dates to put on your calendar.
I am doing something different this year. I have identified three emphases that we will spend our year focusing on as a group:
love, prayer, and invitation.
Our 1st emphasis, love, is a theological emphasis rooted in 1 John 4:7-11, which says:
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
We will read this passage as our benediction on Wednesday nights and I would love to see students memorizing this by the end of 2025. The goal is twofold: For students to understand God's love and to rightfully apply it towards others.
Our 2nd emphasis, prayer, is is a spiritual discipline. We will do this in a few ways. First, we will resume what I am calling community groups. Every student will have the opportunity to be in a small group with other students. They will meet after I preach on Wednesday nights and hopefully find community with one another to bear each other's burdens, as we read in Galatians 6:2. Secondly, we will also host a prayer text line for students to send prayer requests in at any time for leaders to pray over. And finally, we will be emphasizing intercessory prayer for our unchurched friends, encouraging every student to identify one person in their life they can be praying for evangelistically.
Our goal is for students to know that prayer is not only a required spiritual discipline, but an effectual spiritual action. I want our leadership team and our student body to be diligently praying for each other and our non-Christian friends.
Our 3rd emphasis, inviting, is an action. When I say inviting, I mean a few things. First, I mean inviting to church. We want our students to be missional in 2025 and see unchurched friends being shown the Gospel. This will play into our emphasis on students identifying a person in their life to be praying for, as I will challenge them throughout the year to be inviting them to church. Secondly, and more importantly, I mean inviting people into our culture. I like that inviting is an adjective. I want our group to be an inviting group, a welcoming environment where outsiders can easily find community. I want our students to observe the community they have and bring in the friends that don't have it.
My goal with these emphases is to have these ideas in the back of our students heads throughout the year, through every sermon series and event. In the following weeks, I'll preach on each one of these emphases and give a better outline of how we will accomplish them to parents.
Tonight is our first MDWK service of 2025! I am excited for the year and what the Lord has in store for our group. Today, I want to give you guys a brief update on the vision for 2025, along with some dates to put on your calendar.
I am doing something different this year. I have identified three emphases that we will spend our year focusing on as a group:
love, prayer, and invitation.
Our 1st emphasis, love, is a theological emphasis rooted in 1 John 4:7-11, which says:
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
We will read this passage as our benediction on Wednesday nights and I would love to see students memorizing this by the end of 2025. The goal is twofold: For students to understand God's love and to rightfully apply it towards others.
Our 2nd emphasis, prayer, is is a spiritual discipline. We will do this in a few ways. First, we will resume what I am calling community groups. Every student will have the opportunity to be in a small group with other students. They will meet after I preach on Wednesday nights and hopefully find community with one another to bear each other's burdens, as we read in Galatians 6:2. Secondly, we will also host a prayer text line for students to send prayer requests in at any time for leaders to pray over. And finally, we will be emphasizing intercessory prayer for our unchurched friends, encouraging every student to identify one person in their life they can be praying for evangelistically.
Our goal is for students to know that prayer is not only a required spiritual discipline, but an effectual spiritual action. I want our leadership team and our student body to be diligently praying for each other and our non-Christian friends.
Our 3rd emphasis, inviting, is an action. When I say inviting, I mean a few things. First, I mean inviting to church. We want our students to be missional in 2025 and see unchurched friends being shown the Gospel. This will play into our emphasis on students identifying a person in their life to be praying for, as I will challenge them throughout the year to be inviting them to church. Secondly, and more importantly, I mean inviting people into our culture. I like that inviting is an adjective. I want our group to be an inviting group, a welcoming environment where outsiders can easily find community. I want our students to observe the community they have and bring in the friends that don't have it.
My goal with these emphases is to have these ideas in the back of our students heads throughout the year, through every sermon series and event. In the following weeks, I'll preach on each one of these emphases and give a better outline of how we will accomplish them to parents.
Calendar Updates
With that said, we did a lot of planning at our staff retreat last weekend and I want to give a few significant dates for you guys to put on the calendar. These events aren't all on the app just yet, but they will be soon. As for camp, I will have pricing details in the coming weeks. Here are the big ones:
If you have any questions or concerns about the schedule, please reach out!
- Ready Conference | January 24-25 | Registration closed
- Winter Jam | March 22
- Dodgeball Tournament Outreach | April 12
- Summer Camp | June 26-29 | Kansas City
- 24 (Back to School Lockout) | August 30
- Escalate | October 17-19
If you have any questions or concerns about the schedule, please reach out!