Spiritual Intelligence

When helping members capture a vision for the lost, we have to give them baby steps they can handle. This process is what we call our friendship evangelism challenge. While it is more of a verbal challenge than an actual program, we still refer to it as the primary program we use to reach community members.

One of the best ways to complement the Friendship Evangelism Challenge and reach community members is to help our community during times when teenagers most likely need a place to go. Times like New Year's Eve, prom night, graduation night, and Halloween--any night when community members will be on a party hunt. The Fellowship will provide support to the community by sponsoring an event that will draw unchurched members away from unwholesome parties and/or trouble to a safe, fun place. Hot nights serve as the perfect alternative for our regular members who have a tough time bringing community members to our crowd program. Our plan is to have three to four Hot-night events during the year at various locations simultaneously.

Our worship services are mostly youth-run although adult hosts will be in attendance. Our weekend services are about an hour and ten minutes long. Initially we will offer one service but gradually increase as the demand increases. Our services are on Sundays at 2:00 PM EST.

Once a month we host a class for new believers that cover the basics of the faith. Our new-believer curriculum has six sessions, and we teach one session per month and encourage new Christians to return for the other five classes. This class is also in a workbook form for members to do on their own and then discuss in their small groups.

This is a weekly meeting for members struggling with all different types of temptations-often chemical related. Our Ministry has established a Christian recovery program with enthusiastic volunteer leaders who have brought the recovery concept to the youth and young adult level.

Any member can join a ministry team at any time. Each team is overseen by a student ministry team leader. We presently have thirty ministry teams which serve others in some capacity.

Each ministry team sets their own date and time to meet. These teams offer a fun and easy way to get members involved. Some teams will have adult supervision, while others are led by our core members.

This is our new membership class and one of four classes in our life-development process. During this class the basics of salvation and the biblical principles of our ministry are taught. The five core values, our programs, and how a member can support our ministry are also discussed.

Our small groups meet at homes in their community. These weekly meetings are called Area Bible Studies (ABS). While the ABS have a time of Bible study, most of the time is spent building small-group community. The strategic positioning of our meeting places throughout the community allows us to reach more members who can't get a ride to the ministry events.

After members have taken Class 101, we offer Class 201, which focuses on the habits Christians need to develop in order to grow in their faith. During this class we teach about the HABITS (see Discipleship Tools). At the end of the class, members are given an opportunity to commit to the habits of spiritual growth and are given some of the tools that will help them grow. During this course, we also assess our personalized, individual spiritual growth and development plan, introduced in New Believers Class and Class 101.

Jesus Plus Nothing introduces the significance of Living in Jesus Christ under the New Covenant. Its primary focus is to teach and support young adults to live in Christ Jesus; to develop a mind of Christ; and how to become effective disciples of Jesus Christ. Our objective is to provide a solid foundation in the Word of God. Our intention is to enable our young people to go wide with the gospel as they grow deep in the truth of God’s Word.

The New Covenant, encompass grace, we will not only teach grace, grace is God’s operating system. Within the New Covenant the old self dies, and we become new people in Christ. Within the New Covenant we are totally forgiven of all of our sins. The biggest thing to grasp in the New Covenant is we are not in the equation, its Jesus Plus Nothing! We are merely beneficiaries through grace.

We introduce a Basic Discipleship Series for the New Christian in order to teach God’s purpose. This is an eight-lesson series for new believers or for Christians not as familiar with the Bible as they would like to be. This series provides a solid foundation in the Word of God, the one true faith. Satan's strategy is to deceive, distract, and destroy. Satan lives to keep the unsaved lost and believers ineffective in reaching the lost and ministering to each other.

Sharing the gospel with someone else is like taking them on a journey with six stops along the way. This journey begins in Genesis chapter one with the creation of humanity and concludes with the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation chapter twenty-two. Through this series, young adults will gain an understanding of the storyline of the Bible and it will provide six easy definitions to the word gospel.

Before any one of us can become effective in sharing our faith, we must get educated on the different worldviews we may come up against. This series will effectively help young adults to share their faith with someone from a totally different world view. It focuses on fourteen predominate worldviews and uses them to equip young people to better understand where their friends are coming from and how to effectively launch into spiritual conversations.

Soul Fuel gives young adults fuel for the mission! Soul Fuel teaches trains and equips young adults for the mission of sharing the gospel. This weekly resource will teach biblical truth in an engaging, friendly style through movies, music, TV and trends; helping them to develop an evangelistic mindset. Soul Fuel is organized by 30 key questions about some of the core truths of Christianity. Soul Fuel will help to mobilize our young adults to relationally and relentlessly reach their generation for Christ.

Dare2BUncommon enhances its curriculum by instituting social networking avenues such as various activities and educational seminars. With the help of the internet, we will fully utilize the power of social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter to promote our group and to help get our message out.

We set aside time when our entire agenda is to honor God through praise and prayer. It's not heavily promoted, but many committed members who want to express themselves to God through an extended time of singing. Since our singing time is limited at our weekend worship services and we don't sing at Area Bible Studies, some members hunger for a longer time of worship in song.

On a monthly basis, we conduct some type of formal or informal missions’ project in our community or in another country. When we are not taking a mission’s trip, we are participating in two student-run ministries called World Shoe Relief and Jackets for Jesus.

We offer the Bible Institute to provide our committed members with more in-depth education. Once a month, we teach one three-hour class on the Bible, Theology, or Apologetics. We have twenty-four classes under those three main headings. In the Bible classes, we teach an overview of all of the books and major passages in the Bible; Introduction to Theology; in the Apologetics (defense of the faith) track, we study truth that will help members tell others why they believe what they do.

After members take classes 101 and 201, they take Class 301, in which we help them identify their spiritual gifts, temperaments, and talents to see how God has shaped them for ministry. This is the class they must take if they want to begin their own ministry in the fellowship.

When members complete Class 301 and fill out a S.H.A.P.E. profile (see Student Leadership for explanation of S.H.A.P.E.), they usually either start a ministry or become the leader of an existing ministry. These leaders also become the liaison for communication between the members on ministry teams (see Ministry Teams) and our adult leadership. As with student leadership, leaders in our ministry take the role of servants.

At Dare2BUncommon we make it very clear that we raise our expectations for the members we entrust with the title leader. We believe that the teens and young adults we place in roles of leadership need not only be committed to attending (crowd), committed to other believers through a small group (congregation), committed to growing spiritually on their own (committed), and committed to ministry (core), but also committed to a lifestyle that pursues godliness, honors God, and is above question.

We also help members discover their gifts. We teach our entire fellowship body that God has uniquely "shaped" every individual to do something in ministry. We teach them the five elements that can help them discover their personal ministry by using the acronym S.H.A.P.E.