Advent in the Youth Group

Every week I run a small group of between 10-25 young people called ‘Redefine.’ It’s aim is to disciple believers to embrace seekers and grow seekers into believers. It’s a group made up of young people from 8 or so churches in North Wales and has a strong family ethic. Each session includes food, Q&A time, Bible-Study, ice-breakers, worship through music, prayer, reflection and response.

What makes Redefine slightly different from many other Christian small groups is the broad age range, a peer-mentoring model, a mix between Christ followers and seekers, and a high focus on participation and serving. This group regularly designs and leads services and events in Churches locally.

As my background pre-YFC is Church of England youth ministry I thought this year I’d have a stab at Advent. The aim is to learn from the first people who worshiped Jesus in the flesh, and see what each set of worshipers revealed about the nature and character of the Jesus we worship today.

Broken up it’ll look like this:

Week 1. The Magi.
Week 2. The Shepherds.
Week 3. The Angels.  (Special ‘invite a mate’ worship driven night).
Week 4. The Parents.  (Hopefully some kind of ‘midnight mass.’)

What makes Advent slightly different from other weeks for Redefine will be some focus on ritual (lighting candles, communion on week 4) and some Christmas ‘class’ with a weekly Christmas toast and souped up carols. There will be a strong focus on application, particularly how we can make Christmas a time of lifestyle worship.

So I will be blogging-up each session breakdown on here to say how it went and give some idea how this can work. These will not be Bible Studies per-say, but with some ingenuity I’m sure you could adapt them if you wanted.

Also – I’d love to hear how you play Advent with your youth group – or why you don’t. Send me a message, or leave me a comment.

I’ll bob the first session up tonight. Thanks 🙂