Youth Group returns on September 12th and we are excited to restart weekly connection with you! Here’s everything you need to know:

Leadership

The core of Youth Group is great Small Group Leaders and we are lucky to have a great team of them serving and leading our youth this year! Click here to get to know them.

Lower Grades/Upper Grades

Like last year, we will have two separate hours of Youth Group. Unlike last year, we will be splitting the grades up a little differently this year. Instead of our usual middle school/high school split, the split will look like this: lower grades (6th & 7th graders) and upper grades (8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders). The reason for splitting grades this way is pretty apparent when you see our small group breakdown:

Lower Grades Small Groups:	Upper Grades Small Groups:
6th Grade Girls	8th Graders
7th Grade Girls	9th & 10th Graders
6th & 7th Grade Boys	11th & 12th Graders

A traditional middle/high school split would have meant a lopsided 4 small groups at middle school and 2 at high school, but a balanced 3/3 means that we have plenty of room outside for everyone and enough rooms with doors/windows we can open for when we meet inside.

Safety Protocols

• Meeting outside whenever it’s not raining/snowing
• Masks optional outside, masks required inside
• Inside gatherings limited to 60 minutes and in rooms with doors/windows open to the outside

Timing

Like last year we will shift Youth Group times with the time change so that we’re meeting as late as possible while still light in the fall/spring and meeting when it’s warmest during the winter:

	9/12 – 10/24	11/14 – 3/6	3/13 – 5/22
Lower Grades	4-5 pm	2-3 pm	4-5 pm
Upper Grades	6:30-7:30 pm	4:30-5:30 pm	6:30-7:30 pm

Food

Our hope is to be able to provide snacks during Youth Group, but we will be waiting until COVID numbers in our area are lower and we get the green light from DCPC’s Medical Advisory Team. Big thanks to Laurie Sepulveda and Stephanie Glaser for volunteering to be our snack coordinators for the year!

What to Bring

1. Outdoor chair
2. Clothes & footwear appropriate for the weather
3. Mask

Program Format

We organize our Youth Group year into series and in each series we’ll be exploring a theme for several weeks. The way we explore the theme will alternate between content weeks and connection weeks. Here’s what those look like:

• Content Weeks are split up into two parts: big group and small groups. We’ll start off by gathering in a big group for a game and a message from a speaker. Those messages are meant to be springboards to the conversation that will happen in small groups where small group leaders (SGLs) lead discussions and activities to help make the big ideas come alive and take root in our everyday lives.
• Connection Weeks are meant to help us create deeper connections with each other and with God. We’ll use games, team-building exercises, art, and creative prayer to help strengthen those connections.

This Year’s Theme & Series

New this year is a theme that you will see running through everything we teach: Knowing Jesus changes everything.

We will be exploring that idea in a variety of different topics that we give a name and call a series. While we may teach on a similar theme in lower and upper grades, the actual approaches are specific to the ages of students in both groups and that’s why the same theme will have different names for lower and upper grades. Here’s the 2021-2022 lineup:

Lower Grades	Upper Grades	Theme
Into the Unknown	Even If	Dealing with change
Trending	I Have Questions	Money
It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas	Christmas Countdown	Advent
Real Talk	The One	Dating & sex
Trending	I Have Questions	Racial tension
Never Give Up	Never Give Up	Hope