The prevailing philosophy of youth ministry in the current evangelical culture is often unbiblical and ineffective. The idea of dumbing down the Biblical instruction while increasing the party atmosphere is neither spiritually instructive or mutually edifying. Furthermore, the plan to isolate the youth away from the rest of the church body only contributes to such fleshly inclinations as selfishness, pride, and lack of desire for serving others.
Anniston Bible Church seeks to have a God-glorifying, spiritually-encouraging, service-oriented ministry to students and through students. Our focus is the Gospel. We want to equip and encourage Christian students to do the work of the Gospel ministry. And we want to clearly preach and teach the Gospel so that unregenerate students will be compelled to give their lives to Christ. We treat all our students like the young men and young women that they are, rather than immature children in larger bodies. We expect our students to rise above the lowly cultural expectations of immature behavior to the Biblical expectations of loving God and loving others.
We give our students consistent opportunities for Biblical instruction and fellowship. These opportunities include: Sunday School, Sunday Morning Service, and Wednesday Night Service. In addition to our regular times of worship we also enjoy Tuesday Night Ultimate Frisbee (seasonal), Friday Night Youth Night (seasonal), Thursday Morning Bible Study (summer), Thursday Outreach (summer), Youth Camp (June), and various trips throughout the year (e.g. bowling, rafting, ice skating, etc.).
Beyond the times of instruction and interaction, there are opportunities for community outreach and evangelism. We contribute heavily to the Ignite! Calhoun County community outreach. We have served at the Salvation Army, Sav-a-life Center, and the Angel Tree kids camp. We also worked in the Williams community for tornado relief after the April 27, 2011 tornado.
The Christian students at Anniston Bible Church are not the “future” of the church. They are very much part of “the church”, and we recognize their worth as believers in Christ and co-heirs with us in the grace of life. Therefore, we also expect them to “walk in a manner worthy of their calling to which they have been called.” And by God’s grace, our students have and will continue to fulfill their ministry.
