My Experience and Thoughts Regarding Youth Group ~ Guest Post by Lavender Bleu!

Hiah! 

This post is by a friend of mine, a fellow youth and writer by the name of Lavender Bleu. Her blog is Always Write The Good Write, so go check her out and show a youth some support once you're done here! 

As always, you're welcome and encouraged to leave a comment with your own experiences/thoughts/questions, just remember to stay respectful. ^-^ 

And now, I leave you in Lavender Bleu's capable hands. Enjoy!

- EJ

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 Hi everyone, I’m Lavender Bleu! 

Before we get around to the important stuff (which is why you’re here) I figure I ought to introduce myself a little more. As I already said, I’m Lavender Bleu. I normally don’t blog about this kind of thing (my own blog is about writing) but I really love what E. J. is doing, and she was nice enough to let me guest post, so here I am! ^-^ This is pretty much a response to her post about youth group, more or less, it’s to help contrast her experience with mine. So! Let’s get to what you came for.

First off, I come from a smaller church than some of you probably do. If I remember correctly we can either house 300 people in the auditorium, or that’s the size of our congragation. It’s one or the other. Anyway, that’s to give you an idea of our church body. Our youth group is even smaller. We have a sunday school class for 9th grade and up through…well, pretty much until you either get engaged/married or drift away because you’re at that age. Usually there would be at least 20 people in that class. I think our youth group has had up to…40? 50? Something like that. So we’re smaller.

Going into the youth group, I was pretty terrified of people. I had just aged out of the junior youth, which was for middle grade kids, and it had been a pretty wild ride. And there were all those teenagers in the youth group! Scary, right? XD My biggest problem was my own fear, honestly. There are a lot of lovely people in my youth group, and while it did take a while for me to get comfortable, I did get there eventually. Over time I’ve been able to get to know different people and become friends with pretty much everybody. Often going to youth group feels like hanging out with cousins. Which isn’t much of a stretch since everyone is either 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th cousins. (In our area, everyone is related to someone.)

Everyone is quick to be friendly and courteous, and try to include others. I think this is, in part, due to how there’s an atmosphere around our youth group to try and strive to be the best we can for Christ. It’s definitely reflected in our sunday school lessons and Bible studies. Some of which are lead by teens, actually.

Onto the adults. We have a youth pastor, who is in charge of all the pastoring and ministering, and it’s a long-term job. I can’t remember a youth pastor before the one we have now. He does a lot of stuff for us. He organizes mission trips, plans out Bible studies, and buys McDonalds’ food for a herd of crazy teenagers. It’s a hard job, and I think he does spectacularly.

Then we also have youth sponsors. Youth sponsors are elected on new year’s eve (which is also when we vote for officers, but I’ll get to that in a minute) and do a term of 3 years. Youth sponsors are rotated out, so we elect a new couple as sponsors every year instead of 3 once every third year. Youth sponsors are also required to be married couples, and can be re-elected as well. They are always nominated by the youth and then voted on by the congregation. They are then asked if they want to be youth sponsors, so they can always back out before a commitment is officially made. Because of that, we have 4 married couples overseeing our entire youth group.

We also split our youth group into 4 smaller sects called StudLea groups for Bible studies. The whole youth group does a study together, then we split up for prayer and discussion time in our smaller groups. This is really nice, since no one wants to share something personal with 20+ teens all at the same time. It’s also easier to talk about things more deeply than we might be able to otherwise. Each group has a leader or two, usually an older youth, and at least one leader in training. And anything said in a StudLea group, stays in the group.

We also meet a lot. Sunday nights are casual and fun. We go to someone’s house for dinner and to hang out. Tuesdays are girls’ and guys’ accountability groups. Fridays are official events. Some people hang out during the week, and sometimes we do Sunday fundraisers.

Quick recap: small youth group, was nervous at first, but then people are really friendly. It’s a nice youth group and feels like having extra cousins. We have a pastor, youth sponsors, and StudLea groups. We also meet like 3 times a week.

Anyway. I think we really have something good here. People passionate about God, both casual and not casual meet ups, good sponsors…

All that said, one thing that drives me crazy is how there are so many couples. We’re a smaller group, so there are less options, I guess, but a lot of people pair up, and are either being sweethearts, dating, or engaged. Probably almost all of the married couples in our church met at youth group.

So, that’s what I had to say. I hope that you enjoyed it, and can learn what from this and apply it in ways that are beneficial. The thing is, application is everything. Remember that.

I’ll see you all around! ;D

 - Lavender Bleu