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Youth attendance booming at Friday Night Skate
By KRISTEN SHUEY
Ephrata Review
Published: May 08, 2008 10:49 AM EST
EPHRATA - Since October 2005, New Life Fellowship has been opening its doors to youth
every Friday night. But the church isn't just opening its doors to them,
they're opening their parking lot as well-to skateboard.
Known as
"Friday Night Skate," this unique youth ministry is finally beginning to
see all its efforts pay off. Initially, only a handful of kids would come
out to the church on a Friday night. Recently, however, the ministry has
boomed, with close to 100 youth at the church on any given Friday. There
were so many kids, in fact, that the ministry needed to bring in more
volunteer staff members. As of early March, the ministry now has 22
volunteers that represent a total of eight different local churches. The
staff is split into two teams, alternating each week.
"Previously,
we had been dropped by numerous different insurance companies, which forced
us to close down the ramps for brief periods of time," executive director
Dave Knowles said. "But we have been running constantly since then. We are
now seeing pieces of the puzzle come together. We are starting to see our
dreams come to pass."
Friday Night Skate, located at 420 E. Fulton
St., Ephrata, is open every Friday night in January to May from 7-10:30
p.m. and in June-December from 7-11 p.m. The only Friday that the ministry
is closed is the Friday over the Christmas and New Year's holiday.
Currently, NLF's youth group funds the ministry, although it is the hope of
the church that funding will begin to come from other sources as
well.
"We desire for this ministry to go far beyond the boundaries
of NLF and involve other community churches," Knowles said.
The
ministry is geared towards sixth-12th grade students. A majority of those
youth who come out to the skate park, however, are middle school students.
Skateboarding isn't the only activity offered to the youth.
"I would
say that we would have just as many non-skating participants as we do
skating participants," Knowles said. "We have video games, board games, in
the summer time there is usually a football game going on outside, there
are food and drink, and some people come just to hang out."
Keri, a
14-year-old girl of Ephrata, comes out to Friday Night Skate on a regular
basis to do just that, hang out with her friends.
"I get to see my
friends and I like the people here. They're nice people; the staff are
really nice," She said.
Sean, a 13-year-old also of Ephrata, does
use the skate park facility.
"I just skate around the parking lot.
It's a lot of fun to skate with friends," Sean said.
While much of
the responsibility for the ministry falls upon executive director Knowles,
there are also two other directors, Joshua Brown and Vern Strohl. Brown and
Strohl take turns being in charge of the overall operations on
Fridays.
"They are attracted to a place where there are answers to
questions they might have. We can point them to the answer: Jesus," said
Brown, adding that he enjoys devoting his Friday evenings to the ministry
because he enjoys seeing what is happening in their lives.
Strohl,
like Brown, values the ministry as well. "It has just blown up," Strohl
said. "I love it!" Using his own past experiences from his young adult
years, Strohl mentors some of the kids at Friday Night Skate through a
small discussion group where the issues of growing up are
discussed.
"TNT (Friday Night Skate's partner ministry) changed my
life. If I didn't get my life changed, I would probably be dead or in
jail," he said.
TNT, the youth ministry that so strongly influenced
Strohl's life, is similar to Friday Night Skate and has been around since
2002 at Ephrata Mennonite Church, 510 Stevens Road. Similar to the growth
of TNT, Friday Night Skate has started out small and is blossoming into
more than the staff.
Both ministries desire to change lives for the
sake of Jesus Christ, yet TNT tends to draw in more high school youth and
young adults.
"It has been an exciting journey to watch us get to
where we are now," Knowles said.
For more information on Friday
Night Skate, contact Dave Knowles at dave.knowles@nlfephrata.org.
For more information on TNT Youth Ministries, contact Mike Wenger at mwenger@ptd.net.
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