What is the Bridge?
Bridge Ministries has both a direct ministry to teens and a secondary ministry to teens where we offer our facility to other ministries that also help teens. In our primary outreach each facility houses a staff of missionaries€(mostly volunteer)€who seek to build relationships and share God's story with teens.€ Click here to view our ministry plan.€ Additionally, any ministry that needs space for work with teens, we are happy to talk with and determine if we can work together to share our space at no cost to that ministry.
The Bridge is an activities center dedicated to Junior High students.€ Stephanie Pittman is studying youth ministry at Ozark Christian College and leads our team of volunteers in The Bridge to create weekend fun for Junior High Students.€ The Bridge is open from 6-11 on Friday and Saturday night and has plenty of space for basketball, climbing, gaming, ping-pong, big group games and more.€ The ministry staff visits schools weekly, is developing a core group of students into a student council and works to create a safe, fun environment for students each week.€ Each team member is dedicated to our mission and ministry plan.€ We work to appropriately live out the Christian Faith among Junior High students and their families.€
Autumn Ramp Park
Autumn Ramp Park is a ministry to riders. Led by Ministry Director, Jeremiah Anderson Autumn is open Tuesday through Saturday and offers one of the most progressive ramp surfaces in the United States. Autumn staff and volunteers offer support and friendship to teens interested in BMX, skateboarding or roller blading.€ Living out our Faith alongside teens is important to us. We don't simply want to teach parables to teens, we want to live alongside them and join them in their interests and let them see a living example of Faith. In addition to our weekly ministry, Autumn Ramp Park also hosts rider competition events the largest of which is the JOMOPRO. At events, we host worship services, hand out scriptures and work to genuinely connect with the people of the Action Sports community.The Foundry
The Foundry is an environment designed for High School students. Coffee, live music, pool, free wi-fi and comfortable living room groups and booth seating allow for community and conversation among teens and staff members. Ethan Greer, youth ministry student at OCC, leads our team of volunteers into local High Schools and is in charge of building community and ministry among teens at The Foundry. The Foundry is open from 6-11 each Friday and Saturday night.
Bridge Ministries Strategy
A natural progression for deepening relationships is enhanced by programming. In ministry, we recognize that it is not human nature to trust and befriend up front. Therefore, each program and offering is designed to coincide with and compliment the progression of human relationships. The force that causes the progression of deepening trust between people is the God-given desire for relationship built into each human. First, we realize that God is always drawing people to Himself. Second, we share our lives and offer hospitality and friendship relying on the Holy Spirit to check our motives and lead us to healthy relationships with teens that reveal Christ's Gospel, the Church, the Bible, and prayer. Below is an explanation of how our€missionaries€works to attract and welcome teens and connect them to Christ.
1. Invite
The first step in any relationship is always some sort of invitation or introduction. As we see it, our facility and its activities and events affords us the opportunity to meet students from all over our region and even the United States. By providing space in this community that is fun and relevant to teens and to those that also work with teens - we get the amazing opportunity and privilege to interact with the next generation. It is absolutely critical that we remain dedicated to teens no matter what they believe, but that we never allow the fear of losing a relationship to keep us from being who we are in Christ. The actual steps we take to act on this part of our strategy:
1) School visits weekly
2) Publicly broadcasted invitations
3) Offer the facility to other ministries and for use by schools for free or greatly reduced pricing
2. Introduce
When teens enter our facility it is our responsibility to get to know them and for them to get to know us. Our first priority is knowing names and beginning to really get to know the students that honor us by choosing to spend time at our place. Through sharing fun experiences and interacting over offerings at any one of our venues our missionaries can befriend teens which, at some point, should result in a new reason for a teen to come. What is offered at the facility should become less important because teens and our staff become friends. It is important to us that teens know that they matter to us and that we support them and love unconditionally. Things we do that prove these values:
1) We host a student council
2) We prepare activities and space with teens in mind and with relationships in mind
3. Befriend
At this stage, acquaintances become friends as a common bond that includes interest in God develops. This happens because our contact work in schools and in our venues produces shared memories of adventure, fun and a genuine faith life. Here our staff will begin to meet families and learn about hobbies grow in knowledge and understanding of each individual student. And we will appropriately open our lives to them too! At this stage students must really begin to see our Faith lived out and must truly understand that we are in their corner no matter what they believe or do.
4. Disciple
Discipleship is a very broad term that is BEST applied to what the Church should be doing with individual believers. Therefore, our job as evangelists and members of the Church is to be genuine in our beliefs. We teach unconditional love and we should expect that in return from our friends. Naturally, what you believe is what you live out and communicate. Therefore our staff and volunteers are all asked to be active members of a local Church with a healthy attitude toward teens. Also, our staff are taught to communicate some things to their friends that every Christian should have a hard time NOT talking about:
- We share God's word with our friends (yes, we literally give it to them in written form)
- The Gospel summarized by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15
- We pray with people
- We invite our friends to our Church
Each of these four communication points is packed full of power for living life.If our staff can reveal these things through relationships, we can accomplish our mission and equip our friends to seek and find God - even if they transition out of our community.
5. Faith Community - Peer
Ultimately our goal is for our friends to become productive members of the Body of Christ - peers with us in accomplishing HIS purposes. It is not our ultimate goal to regenerate workers back into this ministry, rather we want to fill God's Church! Therefore, we must teach our friends that the purpose of Church is ultimately fulfilled when its members find their calling in God's Kingdom and begin fulfilling it. We remain seekers for our entire life if we're good Christians.