Youth & Kids

Ellis Avenue Church currently has a very sizable group of youth and children that attend our service.  In fact,  often a very strong portion of the congregation for worship on Sunday is under 25 years of age.   We recognize that the young people are an amazing gift and we encourage them to participate in all aspects of our service.

Ellis has several specific programs to meet the spiritual and educational needs of the young people in our community.

For middle school and high school students we offer:

• Participation in the church youth choir.  The Young Voices of Ellis meet for rehearsal most Wednesdays from 5:00 – 6:oo p.m. at the church.  The choir sings during worship several times per month.  We also have a mixed choir – adults and youth together – that sings on average once per month.
• A Sunday school class – held from 10:00 – 10:45 a.m. on Sunday mornings – that focuses on issues of Christian discipleship and basic Biblical literacy.  We have one class for our ‘middlers’, grades 5-8.  we have a separate class for our high school students.
• Other regular Youth Group activities.
• Special worship services led exclusively by the Youth.  Twice per year we have these ‘Youth Sundays’ where all aspects of the worship service are led by children and youth.  At our most recent Youth Sunday the service included two pieces by the youth choir, a praise dance done by the young women and a mime performance by the young men, poetry, and a sermon preached by one of our current college students.
• Participation in our church mentoring program.  When young people reach 4th grade they are assigned an adult mentor in the congregation.  Mentors are encouraged to plan an activity with their youth several times per year.  We also schedule large group mentoring outings where all of our mentor/mentee pairs go together to do a large group activity.  Our first large mentor group outing this fall will be a trip to the Sweet Sounds of Gospel Choir Competition in September.

For the youngest children among us we offer:

• A children’s story taught by the pastor during most Sunday morning worship services
• Children’s Church, a more traditional Sunday School program including Bible stories and arts and crafts, for kids ages 4-10 that takes place during the final half of the worship service (children are released for Children’s Church prior to the sermon).
• A fully staffed nursery for children 0-3 years old
• In addition to the programs outlined above, the church supports the STRIVE afterschool tutoring program and summer day camp that is housed in our church building .  To read more about this church ministry click here.