Parent Resources
Below shares what we believe and our philosophy about youth ministry in our congregation. For resources in regards to what has been covered this semester for your adolescent please click on the sub links on the left for Middle School Parents or High School Parents.
MISSION STATEMENT
We empower young people through a peer faith community to be disciples of Jesus Christ in their world today.
VISION STATEMENT
We
are a vibrant community of the young Catholic Church. We grow in our
faith and hope in Jesus Christ through peer community, utilization of
our unique gifts to others, and discovery of the Gospel that lives in
conversation with modern youth culture. At the heart of our ministry is
the family, so we engage the entire parish community in this
evangelization of our young leaders of the Catholic Church.
Curriculum
To
cover faith formation of our middle school adolescents we use a program
entitled "The Edge" that we receive from Life Teen Inc.
(www.lifeteen.com). As a youth ministry curriculum we combine our
6th-8th grade community into a large community, averaging at about 80
students per night. During a MSYM night we will have four parts to our
evening- a gather, proclaim, break, and send. The gather consists of
welcoming, prayer, and game or ice breaker activity that touches on the
theme for the night. After the gather, we have the proclaim, which is
a 10 minute high content teaching on the topic for the night, then we
transition from the proclaim into the break which is small group
communities where middle schoolers can discuss what they heard with
each other and an adult youth minister. Finally we conclude the night
with the send where we regather into a large group community for a
prayer experience. The prayer experience summarizes experientialy
what we covered for the night and draws everyone closer to God.
Each
week as a parent of the program you will receive a "parent resource"-
each resource will summarizes what is covered for the night and give
you the parent some questions to talk to your son or daughter about and
practical activities to do at home to reinforces their learning. Our
primary goal in youth ministry is to support the domestic church, the
family. Please let us know how we can best serve you.
Youth Group & C.C.D. verse Youth Ministry
Most
parishes that you grew up with as an adolescent and some churches today
operate with two programs for adolescents, youth group and Faith
Formation (formerly CCD). However society has changed and the youth
ministry team and the parish staff decided to move in different
direction of programming. Youth Group provided teens with an
adolescent community in the church and faith formation supplemented the
education of faith provided by the family. We believe learning can be
integrated social environment of faith sharing and discovery and that
the family is the primary educators of an adolescent's faith.
Between 2009-2011 it is our goal to establish
a program of youth ministry that involves the entire church with
families as the primary support system for adolescent faith
development. Moving into a fully realized youth ministry program that
is done with, for, and by young people. More information on family
ministry can be found here and to see what teens are capable of look at
the peer ministry section of High School.
It takes a community of believers to raise
adolescent disciple of Jesus Christ- Are you ready for your child to
have a life changing experience of Jesus Christ?