Student Center Construction

By now you have likely heard that one part of our churchwide Elevate initiative is the building of a new student center.  However, if you don’t use the East entrance often, you may not have noticed that the ground has been broken and construction has begun!  To get a glimpse of what we have planned, visit www.wschurch.org/studentcenter or check out the pictures below.  We also now have a live feed so you can hope online anytime to see our progress and find out how things are going.  Current plans are to finish construction sometime in the summer of 2012.  It’s exciting to think about how God will use that space to impact the lives of students in the Springfield area!

V-Group Christmas Party

Don’t miss our end or year V-Group Christmas Parties on December 14 from 6:30-8:00PM. Even if you’ve never been to V-Groups before you can come and join in the fun. We’d love to have you!

Just make sure you bring some sort of goofy, weird, cheap or ridiculous white elephant gift to exchange. See you there!

Mission ImPASTAble

This Christmas season West Side is taking on a big project called Hope for the Holidays.  Working with our partner school, Harvard Park, we’ve discovered that one of the biggest needs their students have is for food.  While Christmas break is an exciting time for most kids, there is often a sense of dread in many Harvard Park students because without school, they know they won’t have a regular source of food and will often spend their days hungry.

Our goal this year is to provide two weeks worth of meals for every family at Harvard Park Elementary School.  At over 60,000 meals total, this is a HUGE undertaking.  To help make this goal a reality, our Jr. High ministry is going to take on our own challenge that we’re calling, Mission ImPASTAble.  Over the next few weeks our goal is to collect at least 300 boxes of spaghetti noodles and 600 cans of spaghetti sauce.

Visit our Mission ImPASTAble page more info including info specifics on what we’re collecting and some resources to help get your friends and neighbors involved.  You can also add Wednesday, December 7th to your calendar as finish up our Mission ImPASTAble effort with food collection contest at V-Groups that night.

Join us as we tackle this project and help feed hungry kids in Springfield this Christmas!

Family Night Live

On Sunday, October 16th we released our first edition of Family Night Live, a new resources our family ministry team has put together.  We hope it’ll be a great opportunity for you to have fun with each other and talk about how your family can better take advantage of the time you have together.  We’ve already gotten some great feedback so make sure you take the time to try it as a family.  If you haven’t yet recieved a copy, you can pick one up on the info desk in the consourse or up in E205.

If possible, set aside a couple of hours with your family to try it between now and October 30th.  Then submit your story in the box on the info desk in the concourse or online (www.wschurch.org/FNL).  Not only will it help us plan for the next edition of FNL, we’ll enter your family into a drawing for a night out at the movies for your whole family!

Game Day: World Series Edition

In honor of the Cardinals making it to the world series we’re changing up our plans for V-Groups this Wednesday (10/19).  We’ll meet together in the gym at 6:30PM just like usual but from there we’ll go straight to our V-Groups for a few minutes to check in and see how everyone is doing.

Then we’re going to gather together to watch the first part of Game 1 of the World Series (it starts at 7:05PM) as the Cardinals take on the Rangers.  You can watch the game with your small group or just hang out and talk.  We’ll have free food (if anyone would be willing to bring chips, cookies, etc let Chris know) and we’ll also have some prizes for most (and maybe even least) Cardinal team spirit so you may want to come decked out and ready to cheer.

It’ll be a great time to hang out together but, best of all, this is a perfect chance to invite your friends.  Even if they don’t love baseball, who wouldn’t want free food and some time to hang out and get away from homework for a while.

We’ll meet during our normal time, 6:30-8:00PM so even if you’ve never been before just plan to come meet up in the gym and we’ll go from there.  See you then!

Pumpkinpalooza

On Wednesday, November 2nd from 6:30-8:00PM our normal V-Groups will be replaced by our fourth annual Pumpkinpalooza! We’ll meet you at the camp for lots of post-Halloween fun. We’ll do some fun fall stuff and, since it’ll be just after Halloween we’re asking everyone to come in costume. We’ll also be doing some fun stuff with candy but we need some donations. If you or your family have any extra candy or would be willing to provide some, please contact ChrisS@wschurch.org.

The whole point of nights like this is to give you an easy way to invite your friends to come out, have some fun and meet a few people from church. Take the time in the next week or two to mention this to your friends and invite them to come join in the fun!

Weird Series – Matthew 5 1/2

This week we’re beginning a terrific series called “Weird.”  We’ll be following along with the rest of the church in this series, with some super fun Jr. High twists.  This week as we kick off we’ll be looking at Matthew 5 and we’ll see Jesus take many of the teachings of their day and turn them on their head.  Jesus called the people then to go against the norm and be weird.  He’s calling us to the same today. 

With the remaining four weeks, we’ll be taking a look at several specific ways Jesus calling us to be weird.  To go along with each, we’re crafted a New Revised Velocity version of Matthew 5 1/2 with some of Jesus’ potential teachings for each week. 

Weird Wear Sundays

This Sunday, along with the rest of the church, we’re beginning our Weird series in Velocity.  It’s a great opportunity to learn about the incredible, and weird, life Jesus is calling us to.  It’s also a chance for us to let a little weird out, always a good thing in Jr. High! 

Each week during our series, we’re challenging students to dress weird.  We’ve got a theme for each day, but most of all we just want you to be weird!

• 10/9 – The Case For Weird – Anything Weird Day
• 10/16 – Adopt a Weird Schedule – Dress Like You Parents Day
• 10/23 – Build Weird Relationships – Twin Day
• 10/30 – Very Weirdly Yours – Purple Day
• 11/6 – Carry A Weird Wallet – Celebrity/Costume Day

We’re looking forward to lots of fun stuff.  Just make sure you’re fully clothed and keep it church appropriate (don’t go to scary or violent).

Can’t wait to see lots of weirdos this Sunday!

Fall Retreat Recap

About 50 of us headed up to Little Galilee last weekend for our annual Fall Retreat.  We had a blast and talked about some things God may want us to wake up to in our lives.  Make sure you check out some of the pictures on Facebook.

Boys/Girls Retreats

New this year, we will beoffering a Family Milestone event just for our 7th graders and the important adults in their lives. There will be both a Boys Only retreat and a Girls Only retreat and we’recrafting each to be an intentional experience to help students transition into adulthood.

You may have seen these on our Fall calendar. However, we’re planning to adjust the timing a little this year and move them to the spring. If you are a 7th grader or a parent of a 7th grader, make sure you’re on the lookout for more details over the next few months.