Our Mission — Love, Grow, Go
Our mission at Bridgeway Youth is to Love, Grow, and Go. This, in fact, is what we are doing right now and what we believe we must continue to do to achieve our vision of the yearly launch of fully-loved and fully-formed young adult disciples.
Love — The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). We are receiving the love of God through our union and friendship with Jesus. We are receiving the love of God through others, like peers, parents, and small group leaders. Then, Lord willing, out of the overflow of that love, we are giving that love in return. We are loving God with all our heart, mind, soul, and our neighbor as ourselves (Matt. 22:39). We love because He first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19). We give love freely because we have received love in abundance.
Grow — We are growing up in every way into Jesus (Eph. 4:15). The Holy Spirit is growing us (2 Thes. 2:13). We are encouraging one another toward growth. We want to see teens simultaneously experience physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual growth, which is an apprenticeship to Jesus.
Go — We are living ‘on mission’ together (Matt. 28:18-20). We are going to our classmates and neighbors. We are bringing our classmates and neighbors into our weekly rhythms as a youth group. We are responding to the Lord's call to the nations right now by prioritizing evangelism of the youth He has surrounded us with. We are becoming fully loved and fully formed young adult disciples who fully love and fully form others as disciples of Jesus.
Vision Statement
Our vision at Bridgeway Youth is the yearly launch of fully loved and fully formed young adult disciples.
Why is this our Vision?
As disciples to the Lord Jesus, we have been commissioned by the Lord himself to go and make disciples of all nations. For us, that means making disciples of young people right here at Bridgeway Church and in the city around us in the hopes that as they walk with Christ and grow in maturity, they will leave our care as fully formed and fully loved young adult disciples.
By "fully formed", we mean that to the best of our ability, we have imparted all the appropriate tools for them to grow as disciples of Christ for a lifetime.
By "fully loved", we mean that we, as their brothers and sisters in Christ (their leaders, peers, and parents), have shared the love of Christ with them to the extent that they can leave knowing God and His people truly love them.
By "young adult", we want to highlight the transition of our teens from childhood to adulthood. Discipleship is a lifelong process, and as they graduate from High School and move on from Bridgeway Youth, they are entering into the next phase of their life with Jesus.
We are grateful to God that we get to live life alongside Jesus, our leaders, teens, and their families here at Bridgeway Youth.
Values
If our mission is what we are doing, and our vision is where we are going, our values are those pillars that will keep us on the right path.
1. Family-Church Partnership
We believe that both the household and the members of their church body should have a vital role to play in the overall discipleship of their youth. We believe that parents are the primary disciple-makers of their children and that the church is called to co-labor alongside parents in that same discipleship process.
We are a team called to work together by our Lord Jesus to ensure that our teens are fully formed and fully loved by the time they leave our care. For the teens who are discipled at home, we want to give them a venue to do ministry. For the parents who aren’t confident in their ability to disciple, we want to partner with them in training and support. Our desire is for both the family and the church to be fully equipped and to partner together to raise up the next generation of disciples of Christ.
2. Gospel-Centered
The message of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ is the core of everything we do. We are not ashamed of this gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes it (Rom. 1:16). This gospel has the power to transform any youth, inside or outside the church.
3. Word & Spirit
As the youth of Bridgeway Church, we, too, believe in the authority of the Word of God and the power of the Spirit of God. See Bridgeway Church’s “Who We Are” for a more extensive definition. We encourage our youth to live in the Word and walk by the Spirit!
4. Relationships
Our goal in emphasizing relationships is to highlight the necessity of both youth-to-small group leaders and youth-to-youth relationships. Life transformation happens in the context of safe relationships. The vehicle for these relationships is our small groups that, Lord willing, will travel together for the seven years they grow up in this ministry.
So many of our teens’ relationships with adults outside the home are brief and performance-based (school, sports, arts, etc.). We (Bridgeway Youth staff) focus a lot of attention on recruiting, screening, and training the best-of-the-best small group leaders to walk with teens as a safe, trusted adult who cares more about who our teens are than what our teens can do for them. Also, brotherhood and sisterhood amongst their peers is radically necessary and often doesn’t happen naturally elsewhere. We can’t force relationships to happen, but we can foster an environment where they can bloom.
5. Mission
As we give and receive love from God and from one another, we will naturally begin to love the world around us. Our passion is to disciple teens through their being on a mission together. Small groups serve many purposes, and one of them is to be an evangelism team. We seek lost teens in our schools, on our teams, etc., and desire to bring them to Christ and into the core of our youth community. As this becomes a rhythm in our daily lives together, young people begin to form the skills and passion to go out into the city and eventually to all nations.