Want to know the scoop both before and after about your favorite Youth Department's activities? Well, you've come to the right place!

Here you'll find information about our FPC Youth Group events such as Fall Retreat, Fall Kick-Off, Prayer Partner Breakfast, Ski Trip, Pancake Supper, Mission Trips, Youth Sunday, and Crud Day. And smile because you never know when that beaming face of yours just might be available for all to see on the FPC Youth webpages.

If you don't find the info you're looking for, contact our Youth Ministries Coordinator, Ellie Billington at ebillington@fpcnashville.org, or call her at 298-9584. We're here to help and look forward to seeing your smiling face around the place.

Come by for a visit sometime at our Tyne House youth offices to see Ellie, Linda, Katie, Courtney, Teddy, or Trey. We love company!

 

More Than Mud 2010
a letter from Rev. Mark DeVries

If you didn’t know better, you might be tempted to call it’s just nonsense: mud everywhere and on everyone; mountains of shaving cream cans; hundreds of teenagers running and screaming all around the church grounds, and a minister or two in what appear to be some, well, quite un-ministerial situations.  A passerby might call it “nonsense.” But here in at First Pres, we call it ministry.  

That’s right.  In fact, there’s definitely meaning behind our Mudness (sorry).  

Here’s why well over 100 adults in our church have chosen to invest their creativity, energy and time (for some of them—like our Co- Chairs of Crudiness, Barbara Turner and Leigh Reames—lots of it!) in this rather unconventional “ministry”.  

First, the data is clear that the best way for kids to grow up to be mature Christian adults is to have lots of those kinds of adults around.  The adults who take part in CRUD Day create a “developmental landscape” in which loving, godly adults are just a normal part of their growing up years.  

Now here’s the interesting part.  If you asked our kids how they felt about “all those adults”, I’m guessing the most common response would be “What adults?” This event (and our youth ministry in general) seeks to go against the cultural tradition of isolating the Generations from each other, making it normal (and incredibly fun) for the generations to be together.  

Our second rational for this event is that we want to give our new Seventh Graders a memorable “Rite of Passage” to remember as they move from their elementary years into their teenage years.  We intentionally place CRUD Day on the day of our Fall Kick-Off, as an opportunity for our new Seventh Graders to experience being a part of a community of faith outside the Sunday School classroom or the sanctuary.   

And finally, we’ve found that Mud & Mess quickly becomes “the grand equalizer.”  A Young Person, who may come to the event nervous about looking just right and fitting in, will quickly realize that when everybody is covered in mess, everybody belongs.