The Regional Youth Council invites you to join them on the road with Jesus through Lent this year. RYC members will take over Michael’s blog during Lent and post weekly about their favorite parables and the parables that challenge them. Click here to learn more.
The story says that the shepherds went with haste to see what God had made known to them. What did they talk about on the way?
What is your favorite Christmas Carol, hymn, or song? Why is it meaningful for you?
The Regional Youth Council invites you on a journey through Advent as we take time to ponder, wonder, and experience the meaning of Christmas. This devotional is written by members of the Regional Youth Council and appropriate for all ages.
This year the devotional is in two formats, PDF and ePub. Yes, you can print it as well so you can use the coloring opportunities as a part of your Advent journey.
This year, slow down during Advent. Say “yes” to opportunities that will bless others and make space for silence so you can hear the echo of the angels and go see what God is making known to you.
The links below will take you to a Dropbox file that you can download to your device.
Click here to download the devotional in PDF format.
Click here to download the devotional in ePub format.
The CYF Koinonia Campout was a fantastic overnight (Oct 18-19) during fall break. The event, planned and led by the Regional Youth Council, welcomed ten congregations that sent high school youth to Red Rock Canyon Adventure Park. Yes, it was a campout: tents, meals prepared over the fire, hiking, games, and just slowing down. For some of the group it was their first tent camping experience and they were treated to thunderstorms during the overnight.
Did our phones work? Yes, but being outdoors made phone life less interesting or necessary. Several youth and adults commented that is was “good to be still.”
Rev. John Wheeler, FCC Arnett, keynoted the event offering words about the year’s theme, Live in Me, focusing on John 15:4. Friday night worship included a labyrinth walk.
In 2020 the RYC plans to offer weekends focused on spirituality, slowing down, listening, and screen free. The Regional Youth Council will host Qahal/Koinonia Campout during fall break 2020. Plan now to get a tent and bring your Chi Rho and CYF groups.
This is Our Prayer
The Commission for Children, Youth, and Young Adults is EXCITED to announce 2020 Summer Camp Dates and other opportunities during the first half of 2020.
Summer Camp
More in 2020 . . .
For the past eleven years, Oklahoma Conference of Churches has become regionally known for a project with a focus on middle/high school youth education—in the form of the Interfaith Youth Tour. As part of this tour, students visit three diverse houses of worship to gain understanding and appreciation for other faith communities.
Registration is now OPEN! Please plan to be a part of this year’s experience on September 15, 2019! Register HERE
This year’s locations:
REGISTRATION INCLUDES: event entry, event t-shirt, and snack
NOTE: An ADDITIONAL $10 for each person needing transportation. Due to increased charter bus prices, if you are able to provide your own transportation for the tour that would be appreciated.
The event will begin at 1:00 pm @ OKC First Church of the Nazarene
Annual Partners: Don’t forget – you get a discount on all OCC programs and events! Use your discount code when you checkout. Not an Annual Partner? Click here to become one today!
Registration ends on Sunday, September 01, 2019
We were all uncomfortable at some point of the trip. Mission Camp Road Show returned to Oklahoma July 13, with sore muscles, stories, some skills we didn’t have before the trip, and a different understanding of what it means to care for creation. We were able to take the Oklahoma standard to Texas City, TX, through the generous support of our financial sponsors without whom this trip would not have been possible. Thank you!
Charter Bus Seat Sponsors
Trip Sponsors
MCRS participants discovered neighbors in south Texas. The gracious smiles, offer of pizza or water, and “thank you” from home owners are imprinted on our group. We went to serve, and in some instances, received more than we gave. You probably know that feeling. Working with Reach Beyond Mission and Disciples Volunteering, ten (10) Oklahoma congregations sent youth and adults on this first Mission Camp Road Show. The people our group met and stories they heard were heart breaking and inspiring. Some of our group were frustrated for home owners who, three years after the Tax Day flood and Hurricane Harvey, are still trying to get their homes and lives rebuilt or restored. Only a few sites were near the water. The majority of the homes our group worked on are inland where the days of rain from Hurricane Harvey overwhelmed storm drains, drainage ditches, and people’s lives.
Houses our group worked in, or just passed each day, still had water line markings on the outside. Some of the sites were homes stripped to the studs and concrete. In neighborhoods concrete slabs are markers where a home once stood. One work team spent three days carefully putting down floating flooring that they had to pull up first. Portable air conditioners worked hard to cool the inside air to 87 degrees not counting the humidity. When they left Wednesday, bedrooms, bathrooms, the living room, and part of the kitchen were no longer bare concrete. There is still a long way to go for this home to be a living space.
One group worked for a family living in a home with sheet rock walls ready for paint. Towels or sheets hung in place of inside doors. Concrete floors are stacked with belongings creating paths to navigate from room to room. A mom, kids, and pets are doing their best to cope and live. They embrace the help of unknown neighbors, like our group, who are in and out of their house daily, if they are lucky, putting together a home flooded twice in the same year. “Hard as it is, you get over being to proud to ask for or accept help.” On Thursday, the hallway is no longer bare concrete. It led the way to bedrooms where our work group moved furniture onto new flooring they had laid. A bit of normalcy.
Some groups worked on several projects during the week. One worked at First Christian Church in Texas City helping paint two walls in the fellowship hall, and repainted the lines in the parking lot. That same group laid flooring, baseboards, mowed the lawn, and painted at a woman’s house the rest of the week.
Another group helped repair a fence, added a door to a shed, put up guttering, painted, and many more smaller projects to complete her house and take it off the list. Another worked at one house all week trying to get it finished, but a plumbing issue created by another well meaning group prevented them from completing that project. That group did finishing work, put up cabinets in the kitchen, painted and installed baseboards and molding, and mowed the yard.
Two groups visited Seeding Galveston, a community garden in Galveston complete with chickens, turkeys, and goats. There they helped weed beds, clean pens, and some learned about composting. Yes, that was a smelly morning. A few took a turn at milking a goat. Another group helped at the Regional Food Bank in Texas City, creating bags of food for children, learning about hunger in Galveston County, and then helping clients who receive a selected basket of food each week.
Both of these groups also spent thirty minutes picking up trash at the Texas City Dike. They went from the recycling and reuse of the community garden to picking up after consumer culture. In just an hour the two groups picked up an estimated 80 pounds of trash from an area about 30 yards by 300 yards. The dike is an access point to the Gulf of Mexico where people fish, earn a living, and play. It protects the oil refineries and Texas City. It was different from the beach in Galveston on Thursday evening.
We give thanks for the adults on this mission trip. Without their time, talent, and willingness to accompany their youth this trip would not have happened. We also give thanks for the Co-Directors of MCRS: Pastor Eula Hledik, Rev. Colton Lott, and Pastor Tara Dew. These three worked alongside me, Rev. Michael Davison, as their congregations New Covenant CC Oklahoma City and First Christian El Reno, co-sponsored MCRS with the Region. Click here to see a selection of photos from the week. More added soon.
Thank you, Christian Church in Oklahoma, for the ways you are a voice of gospel in your communities and through the covenant we call the Region. Summer Camp happens because you are involved. Stay centered.
Congregations @ Mission Camp Road Show
The last two years our International Affairs Seminar groups have had the opportunity to study with a poet for 90 minutes during the second seminar day in Washington DC as a way of processing what they have learned and seen so far. Participants create their own poetry and prose then share those words with the group. Some have offered their words for publication.
new year new me
by Tabitha Phillips (First Christian Church Sulphur)
how can you say new year new me when it’s only a new year but a same year.how can you go into a new year while are sons and daughters are being sold and our brothers and sisters of different backgrounds are being put down.how can you say new year new me.how can you help ruin the lives of others and let it slide or go undetected, how can you beat those who frees you and leave those who need you.how can you say new year new me.how can you be apart of groups who hate instead of groups who love, how can you treat people so poorly yet say you need them, you love them.how can you say new year new me.maybe you say it to be like everyone else, maybe it’s only lust of greed, maybe you crave that change, the thought of a new person. but how can you say you’ll do better by only saying new year new me.
I am a Christian
by Beth Felkner (First Christian Church Norman)I am a Christian
“Oh so you hate me?” they say
I question why
Then I see the pain in their eyesYears of rejection
Painful reflection
“You’re going to hell”
Say, “you’ll never live well”
And that rages my soul
In my heart puts a hole
That is not ChristianBut I am a Christian
God calls me to justice
I see this, I must this
Still so much work to be done, so much love to beLooking for love
So the Bible we hold
But it’s hate we read of
Til we say “we’re done”There’s Amnons among us
Try to bring down and shun us
But I am a Christian
I am not
Til God’s love has won
She is Someone
by Rev. Shannon Cook (First Christian Church Norman)She is someone.
She is someone’s daughter, sister, niece, friend, beloved.She is someone.
She is not an object, commodity, product, punching bag, receptacle, pin cushion.She is someone.
She is someone’s hope, light, joy, hero, inspiration, love.She is someone.
She is not forgotten, blamed, irreparably broken, dismissible.She is someone.
She is created by God in God’s image, loved and accepted beyond measure, a vital part of creation, worthy of respect.She is someone.
Who was she to you?
Who is she to you?
Who will she be to you?
Brothers and Sisters
by Bart Hanna (First Christian Church Norman)I, don’t know what to write.
My brain has been opened for a fight.
With knowledge comes anger, and the urge to smite.
Because what we do to our brothers and sisters is not right.Their struggles and toils go mostly unseen,
We benefit from their labor and think them disgusting and unclean.
Because what we do to our brothers and sisters is obscene.What can I do, I am just one man?
How can I help other see this isn’t God’s plan?
I will speak up and out, I will make changes grand,
Because what we do to our brother and sisters is such a sham.
These Christians
R. Kayeen Thomas (poet)
A poem created from Mr. Thomas’ listening to all the poetry and prose read by IAS participants, March 19, 2019These Christians, these Christians dodge hate birthed on misunderstanding.
These Christians, these Christians stand on new ground during New Year’s and declare themselves different.
These 38 feet seem so far away looking behind at the you you’ve outgrown,
Hearing cries that you can’t answer and questions you can’t answer.
When being you is its own rebellion you just smile.
You swing punches with your grin and your love may hurt but you keep on.
You stop for no one.
When five minutes equals a lifetime, and you wear your guilt like sackcloth, sometimes there are no words and heroes hide away.
But these sisters are people. They are somebody despite the despair the traffic brings.
When will we be fed up enough to be stoplights, to break apart the traffic piece by piece?
When will we see God’s image in their tears and know our friends are falling and catch them?
The International Affairs Seminar trip returned home March 23, 2019 after eight days of learning, walking, conversations, sights, sounds, and laughter. This annual study trip offers juniors and seniors in high school the opportunity to travel and study within the comfort and challenge of community.
We give thanks for the adults that went on the trip as conversation partners, co-learners, and guides. Thank you: Rev. Shannon Cook, Travis Carlson, Rev. Pam Holt, and Bart Hanna.
We also recognize the congregations that supported their youth participants through prayer and financial support. We give thanks to the Oklahoma Disciples Women for sponsoring the Sunday buffet breakfast for the group and to the Oklahoma Disciples Foundation for the grant that sponsored Wednesday dinner for the group.
Photos from the trip are posted at the Region’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.
The Regional Youth Council invites you to work the parables during Lent. Members of the RYC have begun the journey with Jesus through Lent by creating a devotional book that works with some of the parables that Jesus told. These teaching stories remain relevant for followers of Jesus as we live in and proclaim the already, but not yet, empire of God that Jesus once described with what could be considered the greatest riddle ever told.
Which commandment is the first of all? Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ Then the scribe said to Jesus, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’
Mark 12:228-34
There are two formats for the devotional this year.
The Commission for Children, Youth, and Young Adults invites all families with children 5 years old and older to the Science Museum of Oklahoma for an overnight on March 15. Yes, we will camp out in the museum after a program featuring fun with a Star Wars theme. Click here to register.
Cost
$25 per person
$80 for a family of 4
$100 for a family of 5 or more
Bring your sleeping bag, inflatable mattress, cot, pillow, and join your Disciples siblings in faith from around the Region for a great overnight of fellowship and worship.
Questions? Contact Rev. Michael Davison or Sally Wheeler (Chair, CYYA)