Youth

For several years, St Clare’s youth have been participating in the Journey to Adulthood curriculum as the basis for our youth programming.  Youth, parents, volunteer leaders, and staff have all found the program to be a mixed bag for our church.  Some elements, such as the pilgrimage, Rite 13 ceremony, and Urban Adventure, have met with great success, bringing our youth closer into Christian community and building them up in faith.  Others, most notably the classroom format of the lessons and the division into three separate groups, just aren’t providing our youth with the kind of faith formation and relationships that you deserve from the church.

In light of this, we are saying goodbye to the Journey to Adulthood curriculum and moving in a new direction this year.  Depending on how closely you watch, you may notice a number of changes in the youth program.  Three of the most important are:

• Junior High and Senior High youth groups will replace the Rite 13, J2A, and YAC designations.  Youth in grades 7 and 8 will continue to meet as the junior high youth group, while grades 9-12 will combine to meet as one senior high youth group.
• A new youth council will begin meeting once a month to make many of the programming choices for our youth ministry.  All 11th and 12th graders will be invited to participate in this group, as well as one representative from grades 9-10 and one from grades 7-8.  Adults working with the Sunday night groups will also be invited to participate in this group.  This council will choose topics for Sunday night activities and discussions, as well as decide which special events the youth group will do this year. See your student’s letter for more information about this.
• Each student will be matched with an adult prayer partner. This will be someone different from their Sunday night group leader – someone whose job is just to pray for and get to know that one youth. Your student’s letter should have the name of their prayer partner, and that adult will contact them soon. Prayer partners commit to praying daily for their youth and checking in monthly to see how things are going.

In all this newness, we want to avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater.  Therefore, the curriculum and concepts from Journey to Adulthood will not disappear; rather they will become some of our many resources for programming.  We will keep treasured aspects of the program such as the pilgrimage, while allowing space for activities and explorations that better suit our youth and their spiritual needs.

We hope that this new direction will strengthen your teen’s experience of God and of church, that it will give both youth and adult volunteers new opportunities to be involved in our youth ministry, that it will relieve some of the stress and frustration that both youth and adult leaders have expressed with our former curriculum, and above all that it will make room for our youth ministry to be about relationships - among youth, between youth and caring adults, and, of course, between youth and God.  If you have questions or want to get involved, please contact me (beth@st-clares.org or 662-2449) and I will be thrilled to talk with you about it!

Namaste, Beth