SPIRIT-SUSTAINING COMMUNITIES ABOUND
March 2005
article for The Collect, publication for St. Thomas Episcopal church,
Medina
When I began my task of building up the youth program at St. Thomas, I learned that this church has a characteristic similar to many other Episcopal churches: it’s overflowing with young kids. But the number of kids over age 10 is smaller, and the number of kids over 14 is minuscule. Like parents in many other Episcopal churches, we faithfully bring our kids with us to church. But when they get old enough to assert their own opinions and priorities, they drift away.
Now, I don’t believe it’s an absolute necessity for people to remain churchgoers from the cradle to the grave. In fact, my own story includes a “dry spell” of several years while I was in college. I wasn’t sure I believed in God after all, and even if I did, I didn’t think the church had much to offer me. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that I might have something to offer the church. In the end, this period of my life proved to have been rich with spiritual growth.
But while church is not always the prime method for sustaining people’s spirits, I am passionate in my belief that people’s spirits always need some form of sustenance. We are creatures of community. If we don’t have a community to give us acceptance, support, and even discipline, we can become either lonely and depressed or self-centered and cold.
So the church is not the only community God uses to sustain us. What other communities do our kids belong to? School often provides one or more communities, including sports teams, performing arts groups, and casual gangs of friends. Good parents keep an eye on these groups to make sure they’re positive forces in their kids’ lives.
But if school can provide more than one support system for kids, church can also create multiple places for our kids to belong. I believe our weekly youth group and monthly Kids’ Club meetings are starting to take on this role, and I’m excited about it. But that’s not all that’s available.
Even if you can’t get your kids to come to church with you on Sunday mornings, and even if they’re too busy to commit a weekly chunk of time to a youth group, our diocese provides a series of regular events that can create a positive network of support for your kids. HYC is a weekend event that occurs three times a year at various churches in Western Washington. It even gets an entire week, called Six-Day, at Camp Huston at the end of June. HYC, available to kids in grades 9-12, combines worship, music, games, and discussion groups into a structured, busy event. The program has been active in our diocese for decades.
JYC is patterned after HYC, but it is specifically geared toward grades 6-9. Kids in the 9th grade can go to either event or both; this overlap is intentionally placed to accommodate varying levels of maturity at that age.
What do HYC and JYC do for our kids? They provide yet one more spirit-sustaining community. I recently attended a wedding in which the bride, the groom, and most of the attendants were HYC alumni. A number of my closest friends are young adults who came up through the HYC program. I also know a high school senior whose parents met at HYC in the 1980s; now she, her brother, and two cousins attend every event they can.
No, HYC and JYC are not church. They are age-specific communities created by the church, and they are not a substitute for a multigenerational congregation. But the more we can involve our kids in church-based programs such as youth group, HYC, and JYC, the more opportunities our kids have to internalize and live out the Gospel message of love in community.
Those of you on the HYC mailing list have already received a blue tri-fold brochure titled “Blueprint.” “Blueprint” is the theme for the next HYC, which will be held April 8-10 at St. Margaret’s, Bellevue. Please encourage your 9th-12th graders to block out that weekend. Then have them fill out the form, sign the permission slip, and return it. If you didn’t get a form, you can download one at http://olympia.anglican.org/youth/hyc.cfm.
If you have kids in grades 6-9, watch for a JYC brochure in the next few weeks. It’ll be held April 29-May 1 at Christ Church in Puyallup. Since the bulk of the St. Thomas youth group is in this age group, I’ll be making a big push to get kids there. The number of youth at St. Thomas is pretty small, but when we get kids together from all around the diocese, we scatter our seeds over a wider area. Many of these seeds will grow into lifelong friendships and an ever-deepening commitment to Christ.