Hello Parent,

We at The Verge just wanted to take a few minutes of your time and let you know that it is an honor getting to know your student(s). We've have a blast with them on Wednesday nights and it is our prayer that we made a lasting impression that will leave them coming back each week for more.

The Verge is the Student Ministry of the Edge Community Church. We meet every Wednesday night @7pm at the Street Side Cafe on Old Spartanburg Road. We are a ministry designed for Middle and High School students. At the Verge we focus on three things and only these three things: Wonder, Discovery and Passion. They ultimately affect everything that we do. We all give ourselves to something -good or bad- in order to experience those three things. As a Student Ministry we believe in helping students find wonder, discovery and passion in the context of their personal relationship with God.

Let me break it down even further.

Wonder: I am created to pursue an authentic relationship with my Creator.

Discovery: I belong to Jesus Christ and define who I am by what He says.

Passion: I exist every day to demonstrate God's love to a broken world.

Our Purpose is to create a safe environment for your student to come and explore who they are, what they stand for and why, so that they can influence the world around them for Christ.

We want to instill 4 core values into them.

Love: Loving God, loving themselves and learning to love others.

Relationships: With God, their friends, their parents and the world around them.

Accountability: To Christ and to each other.

Growth and Change: Taking steps towards their purpose.

We plan on doing this in four ways.

By making community a priority, developing leaders, mobilizing students to be active in ministry and through interaction with you, the parent.

We can't change the life of your student one night a week but with God's help and standing along side of you we can instill things in them that supersede college and continue into their adult life.

To the left of this page is an article we would like to share with you. When you have a minute please take the time to read through it. We believe, as parents ourselves, that these steps are just one way we can work together for the good of your child.

Also on the site is an overview of what we are currently teaching at The Verge. Over the next 3 weeks we will be in a series titled "Love sick". The 4th week of every month we have what we call Party week! This is the perfect oppurtunity for your student to invite friends that maybe aren't to sure about church. On the 5th Wednesdays we do an outreach event of some kind, be it a concert or serving in our local community.

We want to encourage you to to stay involved in your teen's activities. Take a look around the site and let us know if we can be of any assistance to you.

On behalf of ourselves and the other leaders at Verge we want you to know that it is an honor to have your student as part of The Verge Wednesday nights and we look forward to seeing them each week.

Jeremy and Lauren McCall

A DIFFERENT KIND OF FAMILY VALUES

By Carey Nieuwhof

A person's values expose what is most important to them: If we value sports, our garages will have more than a few gloves, balls, cleats, helmets, and clubs. If we value art, our walls will be graced with prints and frames, and the kitchen will likely have an easel and fingerpaints ready for our five-year-old whom we hope will catch our passion.

The five values listed below are ancient. Based on Deuteronomy 5:1 and 6:4-7, these values can help you as parents foster the kind of environment where the things that happen at church happen at home, and they also happen in the lives of your teenage sons and daughters.

Parenting Value 1 | Imagine the End

No child comes with a manual attached. And as diligent as you are, parenting can be overwhelming. The urgent can overtake the important.

How do you keep your focus on the right things as a parent? Part of it is learning how to ask the right question. More important than "What do I want my child to do?" or "Where do I want my child to go to school?" or even "Who do I want my child to marry?" is this question: "Who do I want my child to become?"

"Who do I want my child to become?" defines the end parents need to bear in mind. It values character over competency, and it inevitably leads parents and children back to the core truth of Deuteronomy 6:4-that the Lord, our God, is one. Nothing . . . nothing is more important than our relationship with our heavenly Father.

Family Value 2| Fight for the Heart

Rules. Relationships. Families are a mixture of both. Sometimes, though, in the midst of dealing with rules, families can lose the relationship. When you lose the relationship, you can lose your child's heart.

The more parents fight for the hearts of their children, the stronger the family will become. After all, God is passionate about our hearts. As Deuteronomy 6:5 says, it's all about a love relationship with God. As parents fight for the hearts of their children, ultimately they're opening up the way for a child to also pursue a relationship with God, which can lead to obedience. Why? Because we tend to listen most to the people we love most.

Family Value 3| Make it Personal

When you sign up for parenting, you sign up for sacrifice. But there is one thing a parent should never sacrifice. In fact, if you do, you may lose the thing that will ultimately be the most important thing in your child's life as well as in yours.

Your child needs to see you make relational, emotional and spiritual growth a priority in your life. If it's not personal for you, it may never be personal for them. In Deuteronomy 6:4, Moses reminds every church leader and parent that we have to commit ourselves what God has given us. Our kids will be deeply influenced by whether it's personal for us or not.

Family Value 4 | Create a Rhythm

So if you are going to develop your children's spiritual and moral character, how exactly do you do it? More specifically, how do you do it when your family schedule is already full? Parents who make spiritual formation a part of everyday life (Deuteronomy 6:7) discover something that works faith and character into the rhythm of our lives.

Family Value 5 | Widen the Circle

As much as most parents want to be the primary voice in a child's life, healthy parents understand that they shouldn't be the only influence. When parents widen the circle of influence in their children's lives, they find surprisingly powerful results. Parents who seek out mentors, small group leaders and peer groups who would say the same things that a parent would say discover they have given their children an incredible advantage in learning how to make wise choices. Church leaders can help parents immensely with this through a healthy group structure.

Closing Thought

As a church and as a student ministry, we know that the parental influence doesn't end after 5th grade. We know that what happens at home continues to be the most significant influence in a student's life. No one has more influence on the life of a teenager than a parent. And God seems to be okay with that reality. After all, He arranged us in families.

As a student ministry, we know that we can either compete with parents or cooperate with them. But we believe that by cooperating with parents, we give you and your teenager a chance to succeed that could never happen if a church (or a parent) tried to go it alone.