September Newsletter

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By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established.

Proverbs 24:3

Families

Hi GBC Families!

Happy September! 🍂 We hope you had a wonderful summer and are settling back into a good rhythm as a new school year begins. We’re excited for all that September has in store and can’t wait to see you and your family around GBC! Be sure to check out everything happening below and mark your calendars. We’re looking forward to growing, learning, and doing life together this fall!

Starting September 18th, join us on the 1st and 3rd Fridays from 9:15–11:15 AM. MomCo encourages and equips moms of young children to realize their potential as mothers, women, and leaders in relationship with Jesus and in partnership with the local church. Come find community, encouragement, and a place to grow alongside other moms!

Contact Beth Kraus to Join

We’re kicking off our MidWeek Program on Wednesday September 23rd! Join us for a family dinner at 6:00 PM, with programming beginning at 6:30 PM. GraceKids will begin their Rocky Railway adventure, Youth will head to the gym for Youth Group 6:30-8:30pm, and parents will gather for Parent Small Groups led by Dr. Todd Mangum. There’s something for the whole family, come eat, connect, grow, and kick off a great season together!

MIDWEEK Sign Up

You are warmly invited to our 7th Annual Bonfire and Chili Cookoff. Please bring a lawn chair and enjoy an evening of fellowship as we look forward to this year’s chili lineup! Use the link provided to sign up and let us know you’ll be joining us for this special event.

Chili CookOff Sign Up

Youth

Hey Students! Happy September :)

The countdown is officially on.. Youth Kickoff is September 9th! We can’t wait to see everyone and kick off another exciting year together!

We hope you had a fun and refreshing summer and that you’re settling back into the rhythm of school, activities, and all that comes with a new school year. As we begin this new season, we’re excited for all that God has in store for our students!

This year, our hope is to see students grow deeper in their relationship with Jesus, build meaningful friendships, discover what it looks like to live out their faith, and have a whole lot of fun along the way.

We’ll see you September 9th! We can’t wait to kick off the year with you! 💙

Youth Kickoff September 9th @6:30 PM

We’re kicking off a new year of GBC Youth, and we can’t wait to have you with us! Join us for a night of worship, connection, games, and growing together in our faith. Come ready to reconnect with friends, meet new people, and discover what God has in store for this year. We’ll see you there!

See You At The Pole September 23rd @7:00 AM

Join students across the nation as we gather around the flagpole to pray for our schools, teachers, classmates, families, and communities. See You at the Pole is a student-led time of prayer and an opportunity to boldly live out our faith together. Come ready to pray, encourage one another, and ask God to move in our schools!

Fields of Faith October 6th @7:00PM

Join us for Fields of Faith a night for students from across our community to come together, worship Jesus, hear God’s Word, and be challenged to live out their faith boldly. Come ready for an evening of worship, encouragement, connection, and a powerful reminder that we are never alone in following Christ. Bring a friend and come be part of what God is doing in our community!

Every year, we invite our students to fill out a Prayer Card and then we ask a member of our church family to pray specifically for them throughout the year.

On Sunday, September 20, members of our congregation will be given the opportunity to “adopt” a student and commit to praying for that student throughout the year. This is a special opportunity for our church family to support, encourage, and pray for you!

Please fill our your Prayer Card by Sunday, September 13. We can’t wait to see how God works through this year of prayer! 💙

Student Prayer Card

Fellowship of Christian Athletes October 1st 7:25AM

First FCA meeting of the school year for Souderton Area School District is - Thursday, 10/1 at 7:25am in the auxiliary gym at SAHS

GRACEkids

Greetings parents!

As you probably have noticed, Eden has been practicing the song and the dance moves for the Forest Frank song, “Your Way’s Better” with the children when you arrive to pick them up at the end of the Sunday school hour. There is a link you can use to help them practice at home too. Or if you just google the title, you will find many options. There will also be some sixth grade girls I have invited back to join us. It was this group of girls who planted the seed for this to happen. I realize the dance moves can be quite challenging, so please keep it fun. If your child ends up doing their own dance, that its absolutely fine. We are not performing, but worshipping God. Our goal is to involve the children in the worship service.

We are also learning this verse from Isaiah that matches the lyrics really well.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:8-9

The date for this presentation is Sunday, September 20 . Please plan to arrive early so we can get everyone lined up. Let me know if know if there is any way I can help. I love your children!.

Linda Moyer

Lyrics and Verse

Your Way is Better (Video)

Introducing our New Curriculum- Brite!

Parents!

We’re kicking off September with something new! This month, GraceKids is launching a brand-new curriculum called Brite, and we couldn’t be more excited!

Brite is designed to help kids know God, understand His Word, and discover what it means to live out their faith every day. Through engaging Bible lessons, activities, videos, and meaningful conversations, Brite gives kids opportunities to learn about Jesus in a way that is fun, memorable, and relevant to their everyday lives.

Our hope is that Brite will not only help our kids grow in their knowledge of Scripture, but also encourage them to shine the light of Christ wherever they go. 💡

We’re so excited to begin this new journey with our GraceKids families and can’t wait to see how God uses Brite to help our kids grow in their faith!

September - Rock Solid

God made the same promise to Abraham’s

son Isaac that he made to Abraham. Isaac and Rebekah had twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Isaac intended to bless Esau, but Jacob deceived him and received the blessing instead. Esau was angry, so Jacob fled. On his journey, Jacob dreamed of a ladder reaching heaven and heard

God reaffirm the covenant. Despite Jacob’s deceit, God revealed His plan and faithfulness through His promises.

Jacobs Dream (Genesis 27-28)

Jacob tricked his father Isaac and took Esau’s rightful blessing, so he ran away. On the journey, Jacob dreamed of a ladder to heaven, and God reminded him He was still faithful and keeps His promises.

Brite Idea: God never changes.

September Brite Family Calendar

Download

BRITE Family Resource Calendar

Want to keep the conversation going at home? Download our September BRITE Family Resource Calendar and follow along with what your child is learning each week! Each month includes simple ways to talk about, practice, and apply what we’re learning at church throughout the week. We hope this resource helps your family grow together and keeps faith at the center of your everyday moments!

Parent Resources

https://www.gracebiblesouderton.org/parent-resources

The Village Voice

Stewarding an Ecosystem of Influence

When they say it takes a village, what they really mean is...

No, they really mean it. It actually takes a village.

Being a parent in a post-COVID world is exhausting. Perhaps social distancing accelerated something already underway. Maybe social media laid the bricks before that. Maybe our increasingly individualistic culture, where self-sufficiency is synonymous with strength, did it.

Regardless of what got us here, many of us have absorbed the crushing notion that to be a good parent, we must be everything our kids need: their teacher, counselor, spiritual guide, safe place, culture translator, coach, protector, and single source of wisdom. And, if something goes wrong, it must be because we have failed at one of those jobs.

Don’t hear us wrong: we do inhabit all of those roles as parents. But inhabiting them doesn't mean inhabiting them alone.

And a teenager with exactly one trusted adult in their life isn't necessarily more protected. They may simply have nowhere else to go.

We've become accustomed to thinking about outside influence primarily in terms of risk. Who is talking to our kids? What are they teaching them? Do they share our values?

Those are important questions. But if we're not careful, protecting our kids from the wrong voices can slowly become protecting them from all voices. Vigilance can curdle into isolation, and isolation is not the same as safety.

Scripture's vision of formation is remarkably communal. Again and again, growth toward wisdom and maturity happens in relationship with other people. Paul gives us perhaps the clearest picture when he describes the church as a body in 1 Corinthians 12:15–20.

“Now if the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.”

We usually read that passage as a lesson about belonging in the church, and it is. But it is also a profound truth about our dependence on one another. No single person contains everything another person needs. Our limitations are often invitations to depend on the rest of the body.

Nowhere in Scripture do we find God asking a lone parent to white-knuckle their way through their child's adolescence. We find the opposite. Titus 2 imagines older believers deliberately investing in younger ones. Proverbs assumes wisdom will be gathered from many voices. Paul, for all his authority and influence, continually names Timothy, Titus, Priscilla, Aquila, and others who carry the work of formation alongside him. Scripture seems remarkably comfortable with the idea that we need more than one teacher to become wise.

Part of being our child's teacher is recognizing the other teachers God has placed around them. This means we have to be willing to partner with the trustworthy adults who already have a window into our kid's life.

Get to know the coach who sees how your son responds when he loses. Invest in the youth leader who hears the questions your daughter is hesitant to ask at home. Talk with the teacher who recognizes a gift in your teenager and knows how to draw it out.

Tell these adults what you're seeing. Ask what they're seeing. And where trust has been earned, give them room to speak wisdom into your teen's life. Sometimes the best thing a teacher can do is recognize when another teacher has something to give.

Adolescence is, in part, the years-long work of becoming someone distinct from your parents.

Teenagers are figuring out who they are, what they believe, what they stand for, and whether the things they've inherited from us are things they will eventually choose for themselves. And as much as we might dislike it, some of that work requires distance from us—or, at the very least, more than just our voice.

Parents, we get to be the curators of our child's community.

Look around your church, neighborhood, extended family, school, and friendships. Who already loves your kid? Who believes in them? Who embodies something you hope your teenager will one day become? Cultivate those relationships intentionally.

Yes, this requires trust. Someone will eventually say something you would have phrased differently. They may give advice you wouldn't have given. But they might also notice something you missed.

We don't invite other wise adults into our children's lives because they are extensions of us. We invite them because they aren't. They bring experiences we don't have, perspectives we can't manufacture, gifts we weren't given, and credibility in moments when our own voice is difficult for our teenager to hear.

You are still your child's parent. You are still their greatest influence. Your voice carries a weight no coach, youth pastor, teacher, aunt, mentor, or friend can replicate. But primary doesn't have to mean solitary. In fact, one of the wisest uses of our influence may be to surround our children with other people worth listening to.

Because the goal of being a good “Teacher” in our kids' lives isn't to raise teens who agree with everything we say. It is to help form a person capable of recognizing what is true and good even when we aren't standing beside them. And if, one day, they wrestle their way toward convictions of their own and find themselves standing on solid ground, we may look around and realize that ground was built by many hands—a village, if you will.

With you in it,
The Axis Team

CONVERSATION STARTERS

For you to ask yourself:

What did I need to hear from someone other than my parents when I was a teenager? Who said it, and why was I able to hear it from them?

For you to ask your teen:

If you could steal one character trait from someone you know, what would you steal—and from whom?

At Axis, we know meaningful transformation happens through authentic human connection and storytelling. That's why every Axis resource is researched, written, and edited by our team of real people, drawing on real expertise, human experience, and deep care for the families we serve.

Made for people. By people. Created on purpose.

With purpose.

For more help connecting with teens, check out our website!

Axis equips parents with practical, Christ-centered resources to help navigate today's culture and lead meaningful faith conversations with their teens. Subscribe for conversation guides, culture updates, and biblical encouragement.

Grace Bible Souderton

Mission - Transformation - Prayerfulness

Grace Bible Church is a community of people on a journey to become like Jesus in our relationships with God, one another, and the world.

Sunday Worship Service 9:30 AM | Sunday School Hour 11:05 AM

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423 North Main Street, Souderton, Pa 18964 United States

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GBC Family Ministries- GRACEkids, Youth, & Parents