This year, 50 students and several adult leaders participated in Christ Redeemer Church’s annual Summer Youth Retreat at the Kull Youth Center in Ocean City, NJ from July 5^th through July 10^th.

The week’s theme was “The Power of Freedom.” Each night, participants gathered for a time of singing, a testimony, and a talk on freedom. (You can read more about the teaching time below). In the morning, students had a time of personal devotions followed by a small group discussion on the talk from the night before. The rest of the day was spent enjoying the beach and boardwalk, playing games in the Kull Youth Center, and hanging out with friends. Big thank you to the kitchen crew and volunteer leaders who made the trip possible.

To see some of the highlights from the week, watch the video below. Special thanks to Jake Roberts for creating the video for us!

You can also see photos of the week below.

Following the trip, Sarah Ball shared her reflections from the time away at the Sunday worship service. To hear Sarah’s reflections, click here.

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Clap Your hands! Stomp Your Feet!

Summer Celebration Camp was held Tuesday, July 17th through Friday July 20th at the Wellspring Worship Center, just south of Hanover. The theme this year was “Clap Your Hands! Stomp Your Feet!” Throughout the week, children learned to:

• Laugh! God chooses surprising people! (1 Samuel 16)
• Clap! God wins the battle! (1 Samuel 17).
• Sing! God is our faithful friend! (1 Samuel 20).
• Shout! God is with us! (2 Samuel 6).
• Give Thanks! God shows his kindness! (2 Samuel 9)

Over 80 children from pre-kindergarten to 5th grade participated in the week’s events. There was plenty of time for singing, clapping and stomping during each day’s opening and closing program. Children also enjoyed snacks, crafts, and rec time throughout the day.

Special thanks to all the volunteers who made this years Summer Celebration Camp possible!

For photos of the fun, see below. (Click on any photo to view a larger version.)

More than 60 fathers and sons gathered at Gilman Island for the annual Father-Son campout on the Friday and Saturday of Father’s Day weekend. We substituted sleep for fishing, swimming, eating, log wars, manhunt, fire making, midnight hikes and catching up with friends. On Friday night, Abrm McQuarters gave a talk on the story of Jesus walking on water. He challenged everyone to bring their fears, challenges, and misconceptions to Christ because he is big enough to handle them and desires to do so for us. A big thanks to Joel Lefferts and Phil Lee for organizing an awesome time, and also to all who came and took part in the fun!

This February, CRC went on a service trip to the NETS (New England Training and Sending) Center in Williston, Vermont. We took a team of 27 people (11 adults and 16 youth) for a 3 day trip in order to help NETS renovate their campus. Our projects ranged from demolition to painting to moving to completing inventory to framing, and more. CRC was the first church to be planted out of the NETS Center. It was good to be able to give back to an organization that has done so much for CRC.

Not only did we do manual labor, we also took time during the evening to talk about the gospel as it relates to the issue of belonging. We did so through a series of three talks led by Pastor Don and Abrm McQuarters. The three areas we covered were belonging to God, His people, and His mission from Philippians. It was great to see our own team refreshed by our talk times after a long day of work. Moreover, it was great to see the number of kids engaging with the gospel.

In between work and learning we did a bit of playing too. The youth and adults played a “youth vs. wisdom” basketball game, with wisdom winning the day (as usual).

This November, about 60 youth and adult leaders took part in Christ Redeemer Church’s Fall Youth Conference at Singing Hills on November 17th and 18th.

Kasey Leander and Matthew Mittelberg, two speakers from the Ravi Zacharias Ministry, joined us and led us in exploring the topic of identity during two main talks. The first explored the cultural problem of creating our own identity, and the second explored the idea that we are made in the “Imago Dei” or image of God. Students were also able to choose two of three breakout sessions that explored the topic of identity as it relates to major issues they might be facing today: Doubt, sex and gender identity, and race ethnicity and culture.

There was lots of fun had during our meal times, our annual game of capture the flag, and our impromptu night of dancing. Many thanks to all of the adult leaders and volunteers, worship leaders, and Matthew and Kasey for an awesome weekend!

“The main point of the whole conference was to help us understand that no matter what we choose to put our identity in, we will always hunger for more unless we put our faith in Jesus Christ.”

~Emilie Marshall, Junior

For a full recording of Emilie’s comments about the Fall Youth Conference, click here.