CLA Student Ministries Fall Retreat 2016

Join us November 4-6 for a powerful weekend. This retreat weekend will feature powerful services, hanging out with friends, great food, crazy games, epic tournaments, fun small groups, and much more.  We will be staying in dorms and cabins at Camp Hebron, Halifax.

Eran Holt, a nationally-known youth speaker, will be communicating and Pneuma, the worship team from the University of Valley Forge, will be leading worship.

click here to register.

Click here to access all the information for this Fall’s events!

Fusion’s relationship series, Baewatch, will be happening throughout the month of June. We will be discussing friendships, personal values, character, and how Jesus frees us from finding our identity or worth in relationships. We will be having our purity talk on June 26.

We will be keeping our purity talk on basic principles (God’s plan for sex: marriage, boundaries in relationships and boundaries on the internet). For a full rundown of the topic, please email us!

Week 1 (June 5) – Friendships

Week 2 (June 12) – The Purpose of Dating

Week 3 (June 19) – Would You Date You?

Week 4 (June 26) – Purity Talk

Youth Camp 2016 is an amazing week of fun, friends, and connecting with Jesus through powerful services and small groups. Some of the activities throughout the week include pool time, gaga pit, the mud pit, group games, and more. Our church will be attending Week 2 of PennDel Youth Camp with Speaker Mike Holt and worship with Chosen. Register today by clicking here.

When: June 27-July 1
Where: Bongiorno Conference Center

Register by June 5th for the Early Bird Rate – $225
Register by June 19th for the Regular Rate – $260

Bullies, popularity, temptation, decisions, success, and failure are all things every middle school students walk through. Over the next five weeks, we will be tackling the big topics. Join us Sundays at 11am for large group and Wednesdays at 7pm for Tribe small groups.

Week 1 – Going with the Crowd

Week 2 – Bullied

Week 3 – The Successful Life and The Epic Failure

Week 4 – Temptation Island

Week 5 – Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

The 25-Hour Planned Famine is an unforgettable experience where students fast together for 25 hours and raise funds for Speed the Light. Students will collect pledges to raise funds as they fast through the experience. We are challenging our students to be part of something bigger than themselves, get out of their comfort zones, serve our community, and help further the message of the Gospel. Worship services, fun activities, service projects, and a cardboard box outdoor sleepover are some of the key moments of this 25-hour fundraiser. The event will culminate with a meal following Fusion on Sunday morning.

When: 12:00PM, Saturday, April 30th to 1:00PM, Sunday, May 1st
Where: CLA Youth Center
Cost: Free – Pledge form required to attend

How does it work?

Students will receive a pledge form to hand out to teachers, friends, family, and more. Pledges will be made per hour for the 25 hours that they fast. Pledgers can also match the students’ personal giving or give another amount. Our goal for 2016 missions giving is $25,000. Print yours out here.

How can I give to a student?

Each student participating will have a pledge form to raise funds. Contact a Fusion middle school student you’d like to partner with or contact us directly.

What will students do during The Famine?

For the 25 hours, we will be having worship services, service projects in the community, fun activities, games in the gym, prayer times, a movie, and the cardboard box sleepover. The event will culminate with a meal to break the fast following the Sunday morning Fusion service.

What is the Cardboard Box Sleepover?

Part of the event will be a homeless experience that puts our students into the shoes of the 1.5 million people who experience homelessness every day. We will provide boxes, newspapers, and duct tape for students to sleep out under the stars on Saturday night.

What should students bring?

Students should bring a change of clothes, toiletries, a towel, and their pledge form. Students will be able to shower in the church facilities on Sunday morning. Students are also permitted to bring a blanket.

Youth Convention 2016 registration is open! Join over 5,000 other students from youth groups all over the state at our annual District Youth Convention. Make sure you register ASAP as we will sell out. This weekend event features relevant communicators, live music, day trips, fun activities, and two nights in a local hotel with our group. Register here!

Middle school students spend on average 7 hours in front of a screen. We want to do as much as we can to get scripture into the lives of our students, so we have launched Fusion Wallpapers. We will be producing device wallpapers monthly with scripture and encouraging messages. These are sized for the iPhone 6s dimensions, but can be used with any phone screen. Click on any image to download to your device.

One of the tools we will be rolling out for Tribes and currently use for Student Leadership Team is an app called GroupMe. If you are unfamiliar with GroupMe, it is basically an app that allows groups of people who know each other to communicate more efficiently in a safe environment.

At Fusion we take the safety and security of our students very seriously, and we want to protect our students and our leaders from evil and the appearance of evil. Because of this, we do not allow students and leaders to have each other’s personal cell phone numbers and discourage any contact that doesn’t take place in a public setting. That means no direct messages on social media, no texting, no phone calls, and no contact through any other channel that does not involve multiple people. All of this is done to protect our students, our leaders, and our ministry from any inappropriate contact between an adult and a minor, and from any accusations of inappropriate contact that can neither be proven or disproven. If it is all out in the open, then it can be verified.

All of that being said, we do feel like it is important for our Tribe leaders to be able to contact their groups, and it is important for students to have a way to reach out to their leaders when they need prayer, advice, or they just have a question. This is where GroupMe comes in. While there is no perfect system for this kind of thing, there are some safeguards involved with this app that make it worthwhile to use. Here’s what we like about GroupMe and why we are comfortable using it.

No Exchange of Numbers

When you are added to a group in GroupMe, it doesn’t show any of your contact information. It just shows your name and your picture if you choose to create an avatar. The only way you can contact someone in your group is through the app itself. This means that students don’t have leader’s numbers and vice versa.

No Outsiders

The only way to get into a group is to be invited into the group by a group member. That means that the only people involved in group conversations are the people in that Tribe. Your student will be in a group with a dozen or so other students from their connect group and one or two adult leaders from that group. This means that no one can “follow” or “friend” your students. They are only in groups with people they know. If they get invited to a group by someone they don’t know, they simply don’t join the group.

Guys With Guys, Girls With Girls

The way we have it set up, female adult leaders will be in Tribes with girls, and our male adult leaders will be in Tribes with guys. This means that there should be no reason that one of our male adult leaders would ever be in contact with a female student through GroupMe, and vice versa. They shouldn’t even have each other available as a contact in GroupMe. Guys with guys, girls with girls.

Once It’s Out There, It’s Out There

The great thing about GroupMe is that you cannot go back and delete or hide comments or conversations. In some cases you may be able to remove a conversation from your phone, but it is still archived, and is still on the phone of everyone else involved in the conversation. This discourages people from sending inappropriate pictures and messages because they know they will get caught. It also means that if anything inappropriate is taking place, we will find it and we will deal with it.

Three or More

Although GroupMe does allow direct messages between people in a group, we don’t. Our policy is that if a student has a question for their group leader, or if a group leader wants to follow up with a specific student, they cannot have that conversation between just the two of them. There always needs to be at least three people in the conversation, and Fusion GroupMe needs to be one of the three. If a student sends a direct message to a leader, that leader will take a screen shot of the initial conversation and begin a new conversation with that student and Fusion GroupMe, including the picture of the first conversation. This gives us the ability to monitor every conversation that takes place between our students and leaders.

There are some other great features with GroupMe and we encourage you to explore and investigate these features yourself. If you have any questions or reservations about the app, we would be happy to discuss it with you in further detail. Just shoot us an email at tharshberger@clacamphill.com. Thanks so much for allowing your middle school students to be a part of Tribes!

Join us this November 6-8 for our CLA Youth Fall Retreat, our annual ‘Great Escape,’ for students in grades 6-12. Our theme for 2015 is “Here & Now.” We will be spending the weekend at Camp Hebron with communicator Joey Furjanic and Chosen, the official worship band of the University of Valley Forge.

What you can expect:
Lots of fun, good food, crazy games, music, powerful messages, bonfires, gaga pit, flag football, dodgeball, horseback riding, high ropes course, and much more.

This weekend is led by our Middle School and High School staff and volunteer leaders. Students will be housed at the Camp Hebron cabins by grade and gender.

Cost:
Regular Rate: $122 by October 25 ($50 deposit due with registration)

How to register:
Visit this link to register! Space is limited.