Pastor Adrienne challenged me last year to gather information and to start building the foundation for the youth groups to be built again here at Sardis. She wanted me to
research youth space along with April and to see what youth groups do now. It has been a long time since I was in a youth group at church and times have changed from the time I was in youth group to now.
One morning Pastor Adrienne called me on the phone and I could see the excitement in her through her voice. She told me of an
opportunity that was available in Hickory at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. Their youth director Van VanHorne had just taken the
Executive Director position at Lutheridge and they were looking for someone to fill in for a short period of time while they formed a
committee to start the hunt for their next youth director.
I met with Pastor Chris Webb one morning for breakfast at the Snack Bar. We talked about the position and about the church and about me and what my goal was. He met with a couple of other people as well. He got back in touch with me in late December and told me that I would be sharing the position with another person that was younger and had been a camp counselor named Nathan.
From January to April, Nathan and I
partnered up doing the youth groups at Holy Trinity. We worshiped at Holy Trinity. After worship service there was always lunch
available for the youth. The youth then had rotations based on what they wanted to do of bells, liturgical dance, and choir. After the rotations we met as the high school youth group.
We always started each gathering with the highs and lows of the week. Highs is
something good that happened this week, Lows was something that wasn’t good.
Hearing about their life and how things were
affecting them truly helped us to get to know the youth and appreciate them. When we
finished with that we had fun and fellowship and played games. At the closing of the meetings we always tried to have a prayer to send them out into the week.
On Wednesdays we had middle school youth. For the first hour they had rotations of bells and choir depending on what they chose to do. Then we met as the middle school youth group and followed the same protocol for them. Highs and lows, fellowship and fun, and then closing prayer. We also started to challenge the middle school youth to be leaders and lead us in prayers, and to look harder for the good stuff to outweigh the bad stuff.
I am truly thankful for the opportunity that was given to me by Pastor Chris Webb and Holy Trinity. I hope when we get our youth up and going here we can partner with our friends and neighbors at Holy Trinity for some activities.
Thank you to my church family for supporting me
during this
journey. I have stepped way outside of my comfort zone and am learning to stay outside of my comfort zone and have a great time doing it.
Sardis Lutheran Church
Sardis Lutheran Church 6103 NC Hwy 10 W Hickory, NC 28602 US
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