The Experiment

Are you ready for The Experiment??? (From the mind of Lyle Castellaw)

Hey there! How are you enjoying being a parent of a teenager? It’s a pretty wild ride, don’t you think? And especially tough is you and I helping our kids cultivate their relationship with God. Face it, most parents in our community will do all they can to help their kid become the honor student or the star athlete. But we see things a little bit different here at Terranova. It’s our desire for our kids to go beyond those objectives to be spiritually rich and whole, for their characters to be formed so that they live with a courageous faith, daring to seek purity in a world that scoffs at it. So how do we do that?

Here’s our simple discovery (Dana’s and mine): We’ve seen our teens benefit greatly by providing them a great spiritual diet. They are consistent in going to our youth group, but here’s what’s more: they have gotten into the rhythm of worshipping with us on Saturday nite.
Here’s our routine: we stop what we’re doing about 4pm and clean up so we can get to church by 5pm. We have a great time with the service, which tends to be more laid back, with round tables, candles, and acoustic style. Then we get dinner afterward.

So we’ve been thinking: why don’t more people like us do this, increasing the spiritual menu of the kids, because they still hit youth group and get good stuff there on Sunday morning?

Which leads us to The Experiment: what would it look like if every parent and teen combo showed up at the 5pm service on February 28 (this Saturday), with a potluck item in hand, dropping that item off in the youth room, then enjoying the service-- actually sitting together-- and then right afterward, having a potluck meal together and trying our skill at foosball, air hockey, pool, ping pong, or just chillin? What might happen? You’ll only know if you come!

I know this: your kids will not become strong in their faith by some sort of accident! We have great youth leaders who love our kids, led by Ryan Zeulner, who will be with us on that nite, by the way. And we also have a Saturday service, which we think works pretty well in giving them a time of spiritual feeding. Wanna try it? Just this once? We just want to see what happens, what God might do. We don’t have a big plan for doing things like this weekly or monthly. All we have is…an experiment!

To be a part, just email back and let us know you’re coming (jackie.j@ourterranova.com). And then, just show up bringing a potluck food item to share which can be dropped off at the youth room as you walk in. And then…we’ll see what happens! So….who’s playing?? Please reply back and let us know!

This all takes place on 2/28 at 5pm