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All Saints' Episcopal Church All Saints' Day School Holy Child Filipino Ministries Iglesia Episcop�l deTodos los Santos 4201 West Washington Avenue - Las Vegas, NV 89107 (between Decatur and Valley View) 702 878-2373 - Fax: 702 878-1829 - Email the Parish Office Some pages on our site require "Adobe Reader�" or equivalent software - get "Adobe Reader�" through this link |
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Southern Mission District Youth Workshop � Sep 13, 2008
The following is a summary of a mission district youth workshop was help at All Saints� with 17 people in attendance representing 6 Southern Mission District congregations.
Karen Johanna, Trinity, Reno, and Kathy Hopner, St. Paul�s Sparks were the presenters. Karen is the Youth Missioner for Trinity and the Northwest Mission District and Kathy is the Christian Formation missioner for St. Paul�s and NMD.
They described the work they do with children and youth in their parish setting and with several of their mission district congregations who work together in youth and children�s ministries.
Each congregational representative was asked to describe their own parish programs for youth and children. Some described active programs and others have few children and youth and no programming.
The focus was on what we can do together to support each other and combine resources particularly for middle and high school youth.
The challenges that seemed to be common concerns with all those attending were:
Participation by youth - Getting them to church and to youth programs - How do we make church welcoming for youth and children so that they want to attend - How do we get the youth together to develop programs that interest them (without become just a source of entertainment)?
Support of parents - Patents seem to not be interested in having their children involved in the life of the church - Other activities are more important than faith development - Parents themselves do not have a foundation in the Christian faith and do not see church as an important part of their life. - Ed Lovelady observed that his experience working with multi cultural ministry that other cultures (Asian and Hispanic) seem to have a stronger commitment to their personal faith and the importance of their children learning the faith and participating.
Adult leaders - Children and youth programs cannot happen without clergy and lay leadership support - Qualified and talented adults who will provide leadership is essential - Not everyone who wants to do youth ministry has the gifts for this ministry. - Must have men and women leaders and an appropriate ratio of youth to chaperone.
Program Structure: - Fund raising, babysitting, and using the youth as a �clean up� crew is the death of youth programs - Programming needs to include faith formation as well as entertaining and recreational activities
Part of the discussion focused on the responsibility of the diocese to provide for a leader for youth ministry; however, we acknowledged that our diocesan budget has no resources for any additional ministry development.
A solution might be the approach that Karen and Kathy described in their mission district of several congregations combining resources to hire a youth missioner.
A concern about resources for leading youth and children�s ministries and Karen and Kathy said they had some resources and would provide a list of these for distribution.
We greatly appreciate Karen and Kathy taking the time and effort to come from Reno to lead this workshop, and hope this will lead for more discussions and development of greater cooperation between our several congregations.
Activities in the works:
High school age youth getting together and attend worship in different mission district congregations. Matthew Pokorny is working to coordinate this activity.
A New Beginnings weekend is being scheduled to take place at Camp Galilee and a Happening is being planned for the southern part of the diocese.
Everyone is encouraged to share their ideas and resources for children and youth ministries and to invite youth from other congregations to participate in their special programs and activities.
Information about youth activities should be sent to Ed Lovelady ([email protected]) for distribution to the Southern Mission District and placement on the SMD web site (www.allsaintslv.com/SMD)
Bishop Dan has asked that all congregations provide his with a list of their youth with contact information. Only a few congregations have done this � if yours hasn�t � do it soon!
We hope to continue this discussion with regular meetings to coincide with the quarterly mission district meetings � the next meeting is Saturday, Nov 1st at 10:00 am at St. Matthew�s, Las Vegas.
Yours in Christ,
Ed Lovelady, Southern Mission District Convener. |
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