Redeemer Student Ministry exists to assist parents in the Christian nurture and discipleship of their students (grades 6th - 12th). We hope to partner with parents to lay a foundation for their students to have a lifelong love for the Lord. We do not just want parents to outsource discipleship, we want to provide tools, resources, and weekly worship to help students own their faith.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does the Student Ministry meet?
We meet on Wednesday evenings from 6:30-8:30 throughout the school year and have summer programming as well.
What do the Student Ministry meetings consist of?
A typical Wednesday night includes:
Social Gathering Time: Time to catch up with friends, play games, and introduce visitors.
Fun Activity: A short game or activity to help everyone break the ice, get involved, and make our time together fun.
Large Group Worship: Students and Team Members lead the group through a time of worship through prayer, song, and Scripture.
Small Group Discussion: Small groups are split by age and gender, high school and middle school, guys and girls. This allows for better discussion and real relationship building.
Who is involved in the Student Ministry?
The Student Ministry could not function without our fantastic team of volunteers. Each small group has two volunteer leaders to lead discussion and build relationships with students in the church. All of our volunteers are members of the church and have gone through background checks. We meet as a team once per month to pray for students and think about how to best care for families and students alike.
Our Philosophy of Ministry
Our Mission and Vision are to equip students to own their faith today and prepare them for future Kingdom living by; capturing their imagination with the gospel, catechizing them against cultural voices, developing cross- generational relationships, and developing leaders that have a biblical understanding of the good life.
We seek to accomplish that by the ordinary means of grace, relying on God’s Spirit to meet us in them and provide spiritual nourishment and growth (Acts 2:42).
This begins with God’s Word. During Large Group, the Gospel is taught from the scriptures and followed by small groups, when we take the passage from large group and mediate on it together with the ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) formula. This is also encouraged in private reading of the Word.
That is the foundation for all we do—relying on the proclamation of God’s Word, mediation upon it, and private worship through it. It is living and active (Heb. 4:12), transforming people by His power. The hope of these practices is to lay the foundation for a love for God’s Word in all of life (Ps. 1:2).
Additionally, we pray during our time of worship in large group, we pray for one another in our small groups, and we encourage the practice of personal prayer in devotional time for each student. We believe prayer is the work of ministry.
Each week we are called into worship and sing in response before prayer and the Word. This practically looks like someone welcoming and reminding us of the call before the student band leads us in song. They play a couple of songs that are of biblical content and sound theology. We do provide a playlist of songs on Spotify and Apple Music that is for private worship. We hope that it is a resource that allows students to live into the call of Deuteronomy 6:5 to worship and meditate on the Lord when they wake up, when they eat, when they walk, sit, or lie down.
Finally, Fellowship is a major part of what we do. It is baked into all of the above means of grace. Simply put, we strive to build genuine fellowship around spiritual things. Students gather with friends to talk about passages of Scripture, pray with and for one another, and sing together in praise of their God and Savior. It allows them true community because it is a foretaste of the coming Kingdom in which we live in perfect, redeemed relationship with God and others. Additionally, we host casual events and have fun activities to facilitate friendship over shared experiences that hopefully deepen connection in our large and small group fellowship.
Annual Events
Here are some annual events that are staples of our ministry, specific dates and times will be communicated via email and push notifications from our app. If you would like to be included in that communication, please download the app and reach out to Austin Snively at austin@redeemerwinterhaven.org.
