The best Kept secret on the east side

On the 1st and 3rd Sundays of the month my wife and I are youth leaders. We kind of got volunteered to do this this year, since my wife has been part of the youth group the past couple of years and because I am a teacher. Our pastor has been the youth group leader for the past several years. He decided that he need to step back and have someone else run the program. He chose us.

at first I wasn't sure what to think. I thought the pastor was going to still be there and we were going to lead from what his plans are. Nope we had to come up with the entire plan. My wife took it on herself to come up with the plan. She chose to follow the God Rocks theme. (If you haven't seen the Gods Rock video they are great) She did a great job setting everything up.

We discuss and interpret a bible verse with the kids. There are a good handful of kids and they range in ages of 4 years old (my son) to juniors/seniors in high school. The kids seem to really like the format that has been created. There are also two other adults who attend youth group with their kids. They are there as kind of support if we need them.

This past Sunday my wife and son were unable to make it to youth group. They were visiting relatives in Arkansas. I was left solely in charge. I started the class by reviewing what the kids thought they saw as a need for the community. They came up with feeding the hungry, raking leaves, painting houses. That sort of stuff. Well after hearing the lecture, oops I mean the sermon from the pastor that day and counting the 31 people in church that day I decided that we really needed to look at our own congregation and try to revitalize it.

See our church has slowly been dwindling. The congregation has been getting old and dying off. They are also the elders of the church and do not want to do things to try and attract new blood to the church. The pastor has been trying to do things but feels like he has been banging his head against the wall. The same people are the ones that do everything for the church. It will die off if something is not done. I have been sitting off and on in church for the past 6 years and have finally decided that something needs to be done. Many of the older members want to keep with a traditional service. The younger members who are starting to out number the elders want a more contemporary service. More upbeat music, visual aids, and instruments. The human voice can be a wonderful instrument but when it sings the same droning songs it can be horrid.

What a better way to try and do a community outreach than to start within and trying to help our own church community. Our church is situated on the East side of Des Moines, Iowa. The church has been there for over a hundred years. The Chapel inside is just beautiful and the church needs to survive. If not for the peoples sake than it needs to survive because it has touched so many peoples lives. It can't just die off.

For many years the East side of Des Moines has gotten a bad rap. People believe that there is a lot of crime and poverty on the east side. In actuality if you read the paper there are more crimes on the south and north sides of Des moines than on the east side. As far as drugs goes the richer areas of Des Moines can afford them. Sure the east side is poor. But they will give the shirts off their back to help each other out.

Any way as a youth group, with a little guidance from me, we decided that we needed to blanket the east side of Des Moines with leaflets. It seams that the East side hardly even knows that the church exists any more. The leaflets will be placed in peoples mailboxes. On the leaflets it will say "The best kept secret on the east side" Next to this it will also have 3 pictures and say faith, community, friendship. On the back side it will say the secret is out and list the attributes of the church. Next Sunday the youth will go out with adult supervision and begin putting the leaflets in mailboxes. If we can just spark an interest and get people to just walk through the door we can get them to stay.

Once we start getting more people in the door we can possibly increase services by having an early traditional service at like 8am and the contemporary service at 10 am. But first we need to work on attendance.

Hopefully this little bit will help. It couldn't hurt. If we put forth an effort and put things in the hands of god, who knows what can happen.

Wish us luck.. better yet come check out Grant Park Christian Church on the east side of Des Moines.