LifePoint Student Families,

Published May 23, 2021

By now, you may have heard some exciting news regarding our student ministry from our Pastors. As you know, LifePoint Church is one church with multiple expressions. We share leadership, resources, vision, and mission. We mutually desire to operate together as one church to reach our neighborhoods and the nations. Our heart is the same as scripture: that we maintain the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

At LifePoint Students, we want to provide the highest level of ministry without overlap or duplication of resources. LifePoint Students’ main heartbeat is to equip and disciple students in Middle and High School. Because of this, through prayer and many conversations, our Pastoral Team and Ministerial Staff feels now is the time to regionalize our approach for student ministry. This means that for mid-week gatherings (starting after Camp Whatever on July 14th), we will be combining our Smyrna campus and our Creek Campus to have a centralized space to adequately minister to students and families in Northern Rutherford County.

By sharing resources between local campuses and expressions, we hope to accomplish multiple objectives:

  • Our desire is to have a 1 to 7 ratio (or smaller) for more effective discipleship not only inside our walls, but outside as well. The current student/leader ratio at LP Stewarts Creek is 1 leader for every 11 students.

  • Over the past few years, our Creek Campus has ministered separately to our Middle school and High school students on Wednesday nights. As we combine, specifically in the fall, the Smyrna Campus will also move to meeting at separate times to provide specific ministry opportunities for Middle and High School students.

  • When it comes to space, our Smyrna Campus has adequate space to minister and disciple students not only from Smyrna and Stewarts Creek, but also from future potential church plants to which God may call us.

  • Students will also have access to additional staff leadership that can disciple, pour into and equip them no matter their age, gender, or school they attend.

  • Lastly, this will open up the Creek Campus to have more discipleship opportunities for adults.

This will not affect our Riverdale Campus student ministry. However, as God puts potential LifePoint campuses on the hearts of our pastoral team, our desire would be that Riverdale may be a centralized ministry location for students in the future.

Please know, we are not married to one specific model for ministry. If there comes a time, where the circumstances change, we will change. We will prayerfully consider whatever model is most effective in getting to the end goal: leaders and students being discipled. Our heartbeat is to make disciples who Find Life in Christ and Live Sent in the World. We cannot wait to see what God is going to do, not only in the future of our student ministry, but the future of LifePoint Church as we follow God’s lead!

We will be updating our lifept.org/students page in the near future with full details of timelines and FAQ’s. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at ryan@lifept.org and let me know how we can help minister to you and your family!

Ryan Garrett
LifePoint Church Lead Student Minister