New Look On Sundays For Crash (9th-12th grade) at Shoal Creek Community Church

For those of you with a "Crash" (9th-12th grade) student, Sundays are going to look a lot different than before. After a year of having our Crash program in the Attic, and after a couple months of discussing how to connect the best with high school students on Sundays, our Crash Team has decided to try utilize the Sunday services in the Auditorium to connect with the high school students that call Shoal Creek home, instead of trying to recruit them "out" of the Auditorium and into the Attic for their own service.

Or, to put it another way. The more we talk to students and get an understanding of what they're looking for in a Sunday morning service, the more we realize that we don't need to "compete" with what's happening in the Auditorium, since most of the adult services are still completely relevant and meaningful for 9th-12th graders. Over the last year we've been finding that what happens in the Auditorium on a Sunday is just as attractional to teenagers as it is adults, since the level of musical excellence and culturally relevant videos and dramas all are still able to speak into a teenager's life. Instead of trying to draw high school students "out" of the Auditorium, we want to try to connect with high school students "in" the Auditorium.

So, what this means practically, is:

• From 10:35am-11am each Sunday, the area we call "The Attic" will be open and there will be free food and coffee for high school students that want to come get a donut, muffin, or other treat, and meet the Crash leaders and other students that call Shoal Creek home. 
• During the 11am Shoal Creek service, instead of Crash students doing their own program in The Attic, the high school students will all go sit together in the balcony to watch Shoal Creek's very culturally relevant service together.  We will have leaders "floating" through the Auditorium in between services, inviting high school students to come get food and coffee in the Attic each week, and also inviting high school students to come sit together and meet other high school students that regular gather in the balcony. 
• Once a month, the Crash students and leaders will also go out to each lunch directly following second service to try and continue to build authentic relationships between each other. 

Each week there will still be small groups for the high school boys and girls that meet mid-week. We will still be doing other "just-for-fun" activities with the students as the opportunities present themselves. So not much else outside of what happens on Sunday morning changes, and Buya (6th-8th grader program) remains the same.

We're just looking at this change as an opportunity to go where the high school students are naturally more drawn to, and deciding not to try to "extract" them from where they already are wanting to be. We are going to work hard to create opportunities to build relationships outside of Sunday mornings, since sitting through a service together lends itself to being a little more passive when it comes to relationship building. I'd advise you to contact me and let me put you on my weekly contact list so you can be in the loop about all the upcoming events, hangouts, and service opportunities that we regularly create for students at Shoal Creek.

If anyone has any questions or concerns at all, please contact me and I'd be more than happy talk you and walk you through the process and the conversations that have taken place over the last year that have brought us to this point.