Can we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior of the world, God in the flesh?

It is pretty rare to hear of people who do not believe in what is known as the "historical Jesus." In other words, most scholars and historians agree with the Bible that there was a man named Jesus, whose parents where Joseph and Mary, and lived in Palestine in the 1st Century AD. But when you ask those same historians if they believe that Jesus was who he claimed to be in the Bible, you will get many different answers.

But what should we believe? Can we believe that Jesus is God?

Our student ministry has been given the great opportunity to run the concession stand at a local soccer league (Upward Soccer) every Saturday from April 13–May 25, where all proceeds will go directly to our student ministry for camp scholarships. However, we need all hands on deck.

Here are my two favorite internet monitoring apps to help you know exactly what your teen is doing online.

This past Sunday Night at SM, we started a new series called, "Real Talk." In this series, we are going to be talking about some of the biggest issues/disagreements in today's world, including:

Camp is just around the corner! To help off-set the cost of camp, we are providing up to $100 in scholarships to every teen that is going to camp. We will be doing some other events that will go towards reducing the cost for everyone, but in order to guarantee this $100 scholarship, each teen going to camp must complete the scholarship requirements.

We're going to Showplace 16 in South Bend (by Chippewa Bowl) as a student ministry to see How to Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World. Here are the details, cost, and general information:

Watch the Official Trailer here:

Last week, we said that we were having to leave the company that enables our text alerts (Remind) because of a conflict between Verizon and Remind. Thankfully, they just announced that their differences have been settled. Long story short, we no longer need to change our texting service!
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We apologize for announcing the change and then backing out of that plan, but I am thankful that we no longer need to leave Remind. 

There are some teens (and maybe some parents) who do not receive our text alerts, and we would greatly appreciate it if you can check in with your teens and help them sign up for our text alerts.

Camp is just around the corner! We are excited about camp this year, and it is our desire to have every teen who calls our church "home" to attend! To help every family, we are offering some great scholarships, but before we get to scholarships, we need to talk about registration (we'll talk about scholarships here over the next month).

To register your teen for camp, you need to pay their downpayment by February 23, but for all teens who register by January 31 (this Thursday), their name will put into a drawing to win an exclusive SM t-shirt. To register your teen for camp, click the button below.

We will be doing a blind-drawing for the shirts during Sunday Night SM on February 10. 

If you have any questions about camp, please visit www.southsidestudentmin.com/camp. Thank you all!

Starting next Monday, January 28, you will no longer receive SM text alerts.

Sadly, we are needing to change to a new texting service (reason listed below). Because of this change, everyone needs to subscribe to our new texting service (we cannot import everyone's name and number).

​Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. James 1:27

As Americans, we are very comfortable. This is just a fact. Most American's families live in a nice house, own multiple cars, eat three meals a day...plus a late night snack, have cell phones for every member of the family, and watch TV without commercials (praise Jesus for Netflix!).

But here's the deal, Christians were never called to be comfortable. In fact, we are called to be just the opposite. We are called to take risks, to take leaps of faith, to forsake everything for Jesus, and ultimately, to be difference makers.