Youth News

(This article was published in the March 2008 Peace Prints.)

At our Annual Meeting I was honored to be given an opportunity to discuss with the church community what is happening with the youth group at Prince of Peace. As some of you were unable to attend the meeting, I’d like to let you know what we discussed.

Last summer, as part of an amazing group of dedicated adults, I took on the task of working to establish a firm youth group at Prince of Peace. Our first summer event brought us over 18 kids (14 of whom were from Prince of Peace) out of about 40 identified youth at Prince of Peace between the ages of 11-18. As the summer progressed two things became readily apparent. The first was the need to hire a full-time Youth Ministry Director. The second was to have one person serve as the “face” of our youth ministry until the right Youth Ministry Director could be found. I volunteered to become that person. It was not a job I was trained for, however, I have a love for youth, a daughter in the youth group, and I wanted to try to help establish a foundation for the next Youth Ministry Director.

In January, Fr. Rand had a dream he shared of what he wanted for each member of Prince of Peace. He wanted each of us to do “audacious, culture defying, and seemingly impossible things for Christ”, to bring someone across the line of faith, and to reorder our finances to reflect God’s proper position in our life. Amazingly, this is what our youth are doing right now through a growing faith in Christ and in recognition of their importance in God’s plan.

Each of our youth participating in the youth group has, in the last six months, brought at least one friend to a youth event. Many of those friends are now regular attendees. Our youth are bringing people across that line of faith with absolutely no hesitation and are becoming serious evangelists. This easy evangelism has given us an average attendance of 13 kids at our events/educational series. This is a number we have not seen in years and should be appreciated and encouraged.

Our youth are now active participants in how to spend our youth budget and are beginning to look at how they can give back to the church in productive ways (hosting a Babysitting Night and a Pancake Supper) and to the greater community as well (30 hour famine to raise awareness and funds to alleviate hunger in Africa).

The youth are asking for educational series on peer pressure, relationships, Heaven, and for an understanding of who we are as Christians. They have formed a leadership council so they are not dependent upon the personality of any one adult who takes charge of the program, but are dependent upon God and where he leads them to go with their ministry. We are getting calls now from parents of High Schoolers asking for programs for their age and we are planning on expanding that sooner than originally scheduled.

The Youth Ministry Team and I can do a lot. But, we cannot grow this ministry without your help in both time and funds. We need to pay an individual to do this job and do it well and we need to grow our Youth Ministry Team. The kids want to have a Homework Club on Wednesday nights. We could use older parishioners who are teachers or are knowledgeable in a subject to volunteer. (We already have our first volunteer: math whiz, Lex Barker!) We need people to help chaperone events, babysit (for no charge) the younger children of adults volunteering with the youth, drivers to take kids to and from events, people interested in having Bible studies with our high school youth, accountability adults who, when we see kids missing church or events, will call them, people willing to pray for a youth on a regular basis, people willing to help with snacks (youth eat a lot of food) and monetary support to help us hire a full-time paid Youth Director.

I hope you will join me, and my fellow Youth Ministry Team, in stepping out and doing something “audacious, culture defying, and seemingly impossible for Christ” and letting God lead you to help us in any way you can to make our dreams, and I believe God’s, come true for the youth at POP and their friends.

Blessings to each of you. Lisa Michael ✞

Interim Youth Director