Breakaway Ministries

Breakaway Ministries is the official name for the youth program at Silver Valley A/G. We named it the beginning of 1998. The new year was the start of a lot of new things for the youth program. We started meeting on Monday nights, as well as keeping our usual Wednesday/Sunday schedule. We had been thinking about adding another meeting for a long time. However, we weren't sure what the kids in the youth group would think about that. Then, out of the blue, the kids were asking us if we could add another meeting. We are also more active than we have been this past year. We have more parties, trips, and outings planned. One thing we started hearing more and more was "There is nothing to do here in the Silver Valley" (For those of you not familiar with this area, the Silver Valley is made up of about eight tiny little towns. The biggest town has a population of 2700) We want to provide the kids with alternatives to the usual things kids turn to when they are bored. But, we are not just here to have fun parties and baby sit teen agers while their parents are in church. Discipleship is our main goal with "our" kids. We want to help them grow in their relationship with God.

We are also going door to door, passing out flyers about Breakaway, and inviting kids to come. We want to reach as many as possible. We realize, though, that passing out flyers and inviting kids to come to us, is not the only thing we can do to reach the kids. We have been praying that God will open the door for us to meet kids in a natural setting. In their environment, so to speak. To say it more effectively, I will quote from The Battle For A Generation by Ron Hutchcraft.

Jesus did not go to the synagogue and say, "Saturday night we are having a big rally, so everyone come and hear what I have to say." Yes, he had some public meetings, many of which seemed to spring up spontaneously, such as the Sermon on the Mount. It is still important to have meetings, and we still need to have out-reaches. But the point is that the real ministry of Jesus was on the dock, at the wedding, at the party, at the dinner, on the street. This is a God who comes to where we are, not one who asks us to come where He is. We need to reach kids the way Jesus reached people. We need to go where they are.