August 2025 LYF Update
Click here for Calendar, Registrations, and Other Links
Goodbye, Sweet Summer. Hello Fall
The summer rhythms of lyf have officially drawn to a close for 2025. This means we’ll be going back to the school-year Wednesday schedule of having a bring your own dinner together at 6:00 and youth group from 6:45-8:00. Dinner is provided on 4 for 30 Wednesdays and on Roots!
You can click here to download the Fall Calendar! Here’s a brief explanation of what some of the terms mean:
4 for 30 - A monthly Wednesday LYF event where we meet from 6-8. We have 30 minutes to eat, 30 minutes to serve, 30 minutes to connect with each other, and 30 minutes to connect with God.
Roots - A monthly Wednesday night gathering for the whole church to share a meal, worship, and conversation together. LYF won’t meet on Roots Wednesdays as LYF students and families are encouraged to fully engage with Roots.
Leader Night - A monthly gathering of both student and adult leaders in LYF to share a meal, pray together, worship together, and work on improving LYF together.
Late Night LYF - A monthly late-night hang out time on Friday nights. These will be roughly from 10:00pm-1:00am and largely unstructured. The idea is that high school students can have a safe and fun place to bring their friends on Friday nights after their school football games. Middle school students are certainly welcome to join as well!
Jesus Practice: Teams - The same Jesus Practice we know and love but with a much stronger focus placed on small group time together. In the past small group discussion has been a 20-25 minute tag on to the end of Jesus Practice events. This semester we’re hoping to allow at least an hour of small group time for students and leaders to pray for, encourage, and challenge one another to live out the text for the week.
August Focus: During August we’re going to spend some time diving deep into Laurel’s mission statement, and how that will create a vision for our youth ministry moving forward. We’ll be specifically talking about a new explicit focus on facilitating the coming of God’s Kingdom in our students and communities. I’m very excited for this!
August Dates
8/7 - GG Retreat Deadline: In order to be guaranteed a spot on the upcoming guy/girl retreats you need to register by this date!
8/13 - 4 for 30: 6-8! See explanation above
8/15 - Late Night LYF: 10pm-1:00am. Explanation above!
8/17 - Leader Night: 4:30-7:30
8/20 - Roots: 6:00pm! Explanation above!
8/22-24 - Guy/Girl Retreats: The guys and girls will be having separate weekend retreats the weekend of August 22-24. The cost will be $60 per student which includes lodging and food. We have two cabins reserved, one near Gatlinburg and one near New Tazewell. The vision for this weekend is to be a very casual time focused on building relationships. It will be a great opportunity to make new friendships and strengthen old ones!