Youth groups statewide work to give students a sense of community and opportunity to connect with others on personal level. Rock Harbor’s Anchor High program is working with young leaders to make this community more accessible for a wide range of students. With the help of Anchor students within the West Ada School District, they aim to create clubs that are open to anyone within the school community that take some stress out of the school day to give students a bible centered break from their day-to-day grind.
Students like senior Emma Stephens and junior Lleyton Vierra were excited to work with Rock Harbor to make this club a reality for Eagle High.
“Our anchor leaders came to us with the idea,” Stephens said. “We talked to O’Brien about using his room and we just started up. We’re learning as we go, but it’s been going really well, and we’ve been able to meet a lot of people.”
The club meets every Tuesday at lunch after advisory, and the first lunch they met, they were overwhelmed by the lack of chairs.
“I thought we were going to have maybe 10 people, but we had upwards of 50 people, and the next week we had around 70.” Stephens said. “It’s just amazing and it makes me really know that God’s working.”
But the students in attendance of the first meeting were confident in the turnout.
“I wasn’t surprised at all; I knew the Eagle Mustangs were big with the lord,” said junior Hayden Williams.
The club focuses on student-led sermons and invites students within the club to speak.
“Having another student speak, over a teacher is better because not only do the people who are listening get to learn, but the people are speaking are just like us,” Williams said.
Vierra recalled that the whole idea for the Bible Club started as a prayer.
“We started reposting about it, then we did an introduction week, and it went really well. The turnout was insane. We had over 50 kids,” Vierra said. “Week one we gave a sermon and kids just continued to show up every Tuesday after that.”
The leaders have cultivated a community-oriented space where students and staff can have open and genuine conversations free from judgment. They do this with the help of small broken-off groups after the students run sermon where students can reflect on any questions and collaborate with one another to support and discuss one another’s ideas.
The Eagle High Bible Club is roughly two months in and is going strong.
“The Lord wants a relationship with you. So, I advise all people to try it out. All ages. All groups of people. It’s not just limited to high schoolers,” Vierra said.
“We started it from the foundation of Rock Harbor, but it is not exclusive. Any church can go, any denomination,” Vierra said. The club’s main goal is to inform people through community-oriented relationships and open honest conversations. They value and involve a wide range of students at the weekly sermons in the upper east hall, room 211 at 11:07 where students can take notes, grab a snack and discuss any curiosities.
