Reaching Youth

I've been seeing a lot on Facebook lately about youth group. Here are two articles that caught my eye:

33 Ways You Know You Were A Youth Group Kid

Top 10 Reasons Our Kids Leave The Church

All this talk has made me think back to my own youth group experience. I think I had your "normal" youth group. Sunday night meetings that included embarrassing games, Bible lessons, small groups, loud music. Ski trip, Fall Hike, 30 Hour Famine, Pizza Parties, Bowling, Amusement Park Trips, Luau, Freshman Kidnapping, Youth Group Wars, Leadership Retreat. Wednesday night leadership meeting, being encouraged to share my faith daily and reach out to new kids at youth group.

In all the business, I was the wallflower. I was the quiet, homeschooled, pastor's kid. And being a pastor's kid, I already knew all the stories and lived my life all the right way. Being homeschooled, I wasn't meeting with unbelievers daily to share my testimony with. Meaning, I wasn't the target audience. That being the case, I was kind of passed over.

It took planting a church with my family to make me break out of the youth group scene. I never realized how enjoyable it was to hang out with the grown ups! I've learned so much from the women at my church and I've built some awesome relationships! Dearest Carl and I still go there, even though there isn't really anyone our age, but it's great! We get to tap into all kinds of wisdom from people who have lived through more than us! Yeah, I do kinda miss having a lot of friends my own age, but our church challenges me and grows my faith. It's real and true, more than youth group ever was. I'm getting the answers now that I needed then and I'm realizing that faith is more than a feeling. It REALLY IS a relationship!

It makes me wonder how we'll share our faith when we have teenagers ourselves. No matter what the world says, I want to make sure that they have a high school experience that grounds their faith and teaches them what it's really about. I don't want them to be afraid to ask the hard questions. I want them to be curious about their faith, doing their own research and looking for their own answers. I want them to have mentors (besides Carl and I) who will help them take their relationship with God seriously. I want to encourage them to eat the meat of this faith, not just stick to the milk.

What's more, I want to be the older woman who gives young women an example to look up to!

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. ~ Titus 2:3-5

I pray that I can be an example to my sisters and other young women in my life. And if God uses me to help teach one of them, "I shall not live in vain." (as Emily Dickinson said)

What are your thoughts on today's youth and how we should minister to them?

You are loved so stay happy!