The youth at Cedar Grove Baptist Church are committed to making God's name great and enjoying him daily. Echoing the Cedar Grove congregation's mission statement, we are disciples making disciples for God's glory and our joy. We enjoy serving the local church and others abroad. We desire to equip the church of tomorrow with biblical literacy, sound theology, and a passion for evangelism and missions.
Beginning with our children, we teach the big stories of the Bible and God's mission of building a kingdom for Himself reaching to the ends of the earth. For more information about Great Commission Kids and our children's ministry, visit our Children's Ministry page.
When the kids reach middle school, they join our youth group and begin to see how all the stories fit together into one big redemptive storyline. This storyline shows how God has worked all through history to accomplish His plan. The middle school youth work through curriculum such as The Story of A Kingdom, What Jesus Demands From the World by John Piper, Teach Me Your Way by Children Desiring God ministries. They also study systematically through big portions of Scripture or individual books of the Bible. They compete weekly with the other youth in our Bible Memorization challenge. This challenge equips them to know the main themes of the books of the Bible.
At the high school level, the youth take the Biblical Theology they have learned in their middle school years and begin to see how it relates to the world around them. They begin to study apologetics (defending the faith), hermeneutics (interpreting the Bible correctly), and issues in theology. They continue to participate in the Bible Memorization Challenge.
All of the youth receive a balance of biblical/theological training and of spiritual growth encouragement. Our desire is to have youth who both know God and love God. We emphasize continual growth in personal spiritual disciplines and holiness.
The youth are also exposed to a host of experiences in the area of missions and evangelism. We feel strongly that our youth trips should communicate the same message as our teaching. For this reason, we do send our youth to camps that revolve around them and their own entertainment. In our trips we send our youth out to serve others and preach the Gospel. Our trips have included: hurricane Katrina relief, assisting a church plant in local outreach events, preaching the Gospel to families and school children in Brazil, feeding the homeless weekly in the summertime, ministering to the disabled (partnering with Joni and Friends Ministries), and sharing the Gospel with our own neighbors at local fairs and events. We also long for our youth to be exposed to solid biblical teaching and so we have attended conferences such as the Give Me An Answer Conference at Southern Seminary and the Legacy Disciple Making Conference in Chicago.
