About EDL

The high school ministry at Calvary Church exists to provide a place for students to begin a relationship with Jesus, through which they will discover who God made them to be. Everything we do is with this purpose in mind. As a part of the high school community here at Calvary, our hope is that they graduate from our ministry with a love for God, a heart for others, and an understanding of their role in the story of God.

We teach our students that the gospel reaches into every area of their lives, both physical and spiritual. Walking with Jesus means that we are continually interacting with him in our everyday lives, seeking his will, and learning to care about the things he cares about. This transformation happens in community when we are surrounded by others who encourage us, challenge us, laugh with us, pray with us, mourn with us, and who simply share their lives with us. Students need to not only know that they are loved by God, but that they are also loved and accepted by their peers. God has shown us the power of people in our lives by becoming one of us. Jesus spent much of his time pouring himself into a small group of men and women. His ministry philosophy was to make disciples, not simply converts to a particular belief system. Our Lifegroups and Wednesday gatherings give students a place to come and be known, cared about, listened to, challenged, and accepted.

The ultimate aim of our ministry is to have every student join a Lifegroup. Everything that we do points them in that direction, from meeting on Wednesday nights, to evangelistic events. Our greatest desire is to see students develop meaningful, honest, transparent relationships with godly men and women, and for them to find their meaning in life rooted in service to Christ and his Kingdom. Our Lifegroup leaders are shepherds to their students. For that reason, we regularly offer training in counseling basics, preparing our leaders for the questions, issues and struggles that our students go through. Our small group leaders can’t lead students to a place that they haven’t been themselves. For this reason, our leaders must be passionate followers of Jesus. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul invites his fellow workers to “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”

To join God in the redemption and restoration of our world, we provide frequent opportunities for our students to serve their community. Someone once said that we are never more like Jesus than when we serve those in need. In addition to the frequent local opportunities we provide our students, we also offer international mission trips each year. Participation in these events not only shows the love of Christ to those we are ministering to, it also transforms the lives of the students who are engaging in the story of God.

We work to provide students with a practical and relevant foundation of theology that lines up with the life and world they encounter every day. Our goal is to offer them practical ways to study and live out God’s word. Students at this age are beginning to ask deep and profound questions about the way the world works. Our responsibility to them is to communicate the truth clearly, teaching them to ask the right kinds of questions, while encouraging them to have faith in God when there are no immediate answers. Dallas Willard says it well in “The Spirit of the Disciplines” when he says, “Every Christian must strive to arrive at beliefs about God that faithfully reflect the realities of his or her life and experience, so that each may know how to live effectively before him in his world. That’s theology!”. We invite our students to actually live the way that Jesus did, caring about the things he cared about. By doing so, their beliefs about God become supported by personal experiences, as his story becomes their story. They discover that their power, joy, and faith are made possible by Christ, who is living his life in and through them.