I was approached this year by the parish to consider leading a youth group to provide an opportunity primarily for the youth who would be completing the sacraments through RCIC this Easter to continue learning and growing in the Catholic faith. It would of course be open to any youth who wanted to take part. We currently don’t have a coordinated youth program in the parish, so it would provide a larger scope of people to work with that just the RCIC kids.
I was pretty excited about that and started working on plans to see what might be possible. And then I was approached to try to do something similar for the same reasons for the adult group from RCIA. Again to be open to whoever may want to take part in it, but all the same needs to address.
This is all happening as Russ and I were working out the plans to roll out our men’s group program Finding the Holy Spirit. That one is up and running already. But the other two are not yet. Mostly due to timing with the weekly RCIA and RCIC program not being completed yet. But the time is upon us now and I want to share with you what I’ve been working on in case anyone else wants to join or even help lead either of these programs. I’ve been praying lots about them and it’s also time to ask for prayers from you guys too. The rubber is about to meet the pavement.
The adult group is set to start on Friday May 16. The plan is to meet once per month, but if I can round up some leadership help we could meet more often. There is some thought that meeting weekly would be more beneficial than monthly. I agree with that, however at this point there isn’t a leadership team to rely upon to spread the work out. So to start with it will be monthly and we will see where it goes.
I’m going to name the adult group SHAMELESS CATHOLICISM. My intention with this group is to dig in to challenge the concepts and teachings of the church, and try to fortify people with the skills to properly get answers to questions that will come their way. Why do Catholics worship Mary?, Why do we have a Pope?, Can’t I confess direct to God and not a priest?, Why aren’t there women priests?, Does everything the Pope says become infallible?, Why is our Bible 7 books longer that my neighbours?, How does the church come up with moral teachings and why do we need to listen? There is a ton of things to go over so we wont run out of topics. I already made up a short list to start with that I posted on the webpage that I added to our site for this group. And there is no end of questions to dig into. So we will pray, open discussion, review a question, find resources to explore it, review scripture and church teachings around it then try to think about it for a while between meetings so we can keep chipping away at the questions that come up along the way. It would be super helpful to have a couple other people to help administer this program and lead, but it’s already fleshed out enough to get started. I’ll be putting the invitation out to the parish after Easter weekend. If anyone is interested or willing to help out, please speak up.
The Youth Group is a little more work to pull off though. I need some people who can help so that it’s not just me with a bunch of kids. But everyone that does help out would need to check off the protection boxes that are required for working with youth. There is an online program with the Knights of Columbus that we would need to do. The church volunteer coordinator Ireland Kowal has a program that the diocese requires of us, and we would need to provide a criminal record check to the parish so they have it on file. Ireland is going to host a class around the 16th or 17th for this at the parish, but there is the option to get links sent to you so you can complete the course online. Thats how I’m going to start so that I can get ahead of it, but I’m also going to try and be at any training the parish puts on also. I’m sure there will be more opportunities to take the training along the way, but if you want to come on board with me as a leader with the youth, then don’t sit back and skip them when they come along. I’ll keep everyone updated as this develops.
The format for the youth group will be to meet once a month (again if we deem that more often is an option at some stage we can increase like with the adult group if need be). We will pray, have a talk about faith, God, the church and how it is relevant in their lives, then hopefully a video and a game. Likely we will need to have food for a group of teenagers or they will be distracted. So they may need to do some fundraising here and there. I was thinking of maybe having them host a pancake breakfast during the summer months if we as Knights would be ok donating supplies.
The other thing I have been toying with is a summer campout at the parish. It would be like a retreat starting Friday night, with talks, movies, food, maybe even a fire pit with smores. Talks the next day, games, Saturday night mass. It could end after mass or we could roll it forward another night and have them work a pancake breakfast as a fundraiser. Busy weekend though and it would require more than a couple sets of hands to pull off.
It would be amazing to be able to take them on trips to things here and there too. I haven’t really given that too much thought yet but those are the kind of things that stick with people later in life.
I haven’t settled on a name yet for the Youth Group. I’m partial to Up-ostles, but its a work in progress, and it might be better to let them find their own name.
I wanted to start this group on Friday May 2, but with the required sign offs for group leaders it just can’t happen that soon. So now it will likely start June 6. But we should be getting the word out sooner than later for it. We would really only have one meeting before summer, so not a lot of time to work with them. I’ll be adding a page on our site for this group too. It will fall under the Community Program menu so watch for that.
If you are able and willing to help out as part of a team for either of these groups, please let me know. Any help would be welcome even if its not able to be available for every meeting, but just a few.
