Living and approaching youth

[Charalambos Andrew Geo]

does anyone have any good ideas how to encourage youth in the teenage years, in the UK in my church there are many old people, a few middle aged young familes and not so many people of age 17+, it would be nice to see them attending church more often and others and get to know the life of the church, i started this thread somewhere else but this might be a more appropriate place, there are some camps that are for the orthodox around the UK and it also has people from other countries i.e france called GOYGB here is a link to where i went in the summer

http://www.antiochian-orthodox.co.uk/rookie_camp.htm

they also have a web site that may work , we have a hall in our church but it is used part for the Greek school, church events and for the youth club that we wish to start we only have a pool table there is not enought youth coming to do any form of football team and in the hall it is quite inapropriate,

Any ideas, pray for us

our parish has a sunday school that should start up soon again but most members are less than 16, our web site is Saintdemetrios.org.uk i think or something like that we are in London, will start English liturgies,

In Christ
Harry

[Owen Jones]

Young people need to be properly catechized. I say this as a failure in catechizing my own childrend properly, so take it from me for what it's worth. Unfortunately, when kids are catechized at all, it is done in such a way as to bore them into a state of stupor -- with a smattering of Church history and dogma. Missing are the necessary "experiential" elements that excite true desire for God. I'm not aware of any particular catechism "manual" that does this, or can do this, since it depends almost entirely on the teacher(s). But there is a very simple, excellent program based on St. Theophan the Recluse's book on how to pray. It has a companion piece developed by an OCA priest. And what it does is, it not only teaches people how to pray, but turns that into a journey of spiritual progress,individually and as part of a group. It is so effective that my priest quashed it in my old parish. (cynical comment but unfortunately true). If you contact the OCA in the U.S., I'm sure someone can get this to you.

[M. Rallis]

I certainly agree that young people need to be catechized, and that our hope for them would be that they become lit up with a true desire for God. I, like Owen, wonder how we could improve on our current model of catechism, as is currently in use in the United States.

I also agree that the degree of success enjoyed by individual parishes in their “Sunday School” program is very dependant on the cooperative effort between parish priest, Sunday school teaching staff, and parents, as to how enlightening and experiential the Sunday school program can be. My concern is that we may be missing the boat, and giving out the wrong message, in a more subtle way than in our choice of text or study guide.

Potentially wrong message number one is that our children need to study and learn and be taught about the Orthodox Faith, and thereby enjoy a deeper experience of Orthodox worship and life, but that we, the adults in our parishes, don’t need to continue learning and being taught in an organized manner. Don’t most of our parishioners feel that whatever they learned in Sunday school is sufficient Orthodox study to last them a lifetime, yet, even with perfect attendance through high-school, they will have never studied at an adult, college-level, the treasures of our faith.

Potentially wrong message number two is that the Sunday school experience is more important than participation in the Divine Liturgy. All the parishes, that I’ve been a member of, excuse the youth at some point during the Divine Liturgy to go and attend Sunday school. The logical next step is to not attend Liturgy regularly, or at all, once graduated from high-school. I would argue that participation in the Divine Liturgy is more of a catechism than the best Sunday school could ever be, especially in terms of the “experiential” aspect that Owen so rightly mentioned.

At a national Clergy-Laity conference, I was part of an informal discussion about this very subject, and one of the Clergy said that the model in his parish was for the entire community to worship together for the entire Divine Liturgy, then, instead of going right for “coffee-hour”, both youth and adults would go for Sunday school!

[Owen Jones]

I know a monk who describes coffee hour as "spilling the grace." IF something awesome has just occurred, we ought to depart in silence to try and let it sink in. When you immediately go to mundane chitchat, then the eucharist is diminished.

I'm not absolutely certain about this, but as far as I know, the whole idea of Sunday School is a borrowed from Protestantism, which, of course, has a seriously degraded worship experience. In fact, the whole point of a protestant "service" is that you sit passively and listen to instruction. You don't actually worship at all. So Sunday school is just a logical extension of what has been going on in the sanctuary. The classical catechetical school was designed to be very demanding, kind of like a Christian boot camp.

So, IMHO, worship is the everyone. And schooling, while some of it can be done in the parish, should best be done by going off to catechetical schools for intense experiences (not conjured up like group therapy sessions -- but grounded in serious moral instruction and instruction on how to pray -- in a step by step learning process). It takes a couple of days for people to lose their worldly anxieties and even begin to focus on heavenly realities, and I am skeptical of efforts to bring about serious instruction for young adults and adults in a half hour in the parish. But then, you do the best you can with what you've got. I'm just speaking of the ideal here.

I mentioned a course devised by an OCA priest that is designed to go along with St. Theophans book on how to pray. It is the best I have seen. It's simple. It's not intellectualized. It is designed to be worked through together. And when you go through it, you start over again at the beginning. And any newcomer can hop right in at any point.

I think most people feel frustrated in their prayer life, and the purpose of this course is to help people experience real success in their prayer life, and I think that is the key to everything else. It teaches simplicity, attentiveness, inner contentment -- some of the classical ascetic virtues. It doesn't drag people down with normative goals that they cannot achieve and therefore feel defeated. It's focused on bringing about an inner change, which is the key. I think one of the practical results is that people learn how to pay close attention to the words, and learn how to internalize their meaning.

[George Hawkins]

In our Parish in Auckland, when a Priest comes to serve Liturgy, after the Liturgy we have lunch followed by a Spiritual Discourse, and also we can ask questions of the Priest. Apart from the small children, who usually go out to play, older children, and teenagers stay with the adults, and we all benefit much from these talks. Apparantly, the Parish only started doing this from about a year or so ago.

I have mixed feelings about Sunday School, but I do agree that the children should be at Liturgy. Maybe Sunday School could be something held after Liturgy, while the older poeple have a Spiritual Discourse with the Priest.

Unfortunately that would be impossible at our Parish - our 'hall' is a small room under the Church itself, overflowing with people after the Liturgy!

George

[Ken Hendrickson]

Owen,
Could you share the specific citation on the companion program to St. Theophan the Recluse's book? Is it generally available or was it only privately printed? Thank you.
KH

[Owen Jones]

I forget what it's called. Probably, if you were to e-mail the OCA offices, they would be able to point you in the right direction.

[John Wilson]

I'd like to mention that all the churches I have been involved with in Greece, have "Sunday school" either on Saturday or immediately after the Divine Liturgy on Sunday.

John

[Charalambos Andrew Geo]

What about people my age who don't really come that much, the people who are part of are body and who would benefit in their lives so much more, they have not really been catechised but only God knows fully to what extent they love him or not, i will check out the book, there are camps but on a weekly basis how can we attract those people who are part of our body yet don't seem to come, without trying to sound judgemental as God knows all and loves all without partiality, and God wants them in His Church, and does in a mystery what God does for them, so i guess the question could be how can we partake in God's grace in bringing people whom God loves to his liturgy and a fuller life in Christ, for those like ourselves who may go church we must carry on struggling with the help of our siritual fathers and i know its no right to think as one of you mentioned that we are ok becasue we went Catechism and we go church as is tempting to think, Prayer is important, I know that in my parish in the UK there are lots of kids at the greek school approximately 400 but wouldn't it be beautiful if they came to church regularly, some of them do i suppose but if all went to church as much as they could bear, as a teenager, it would be nice to see others my age, and more from other cultures and all age groups at church.

sorry about being long winded, if you could give advice on being more clear it would appreciate it, also to answer the main points raised,

In Christ
Harry

[Fr John Wehling]

Harry,

This is a difficult issue, because there are so many variables involved. We want people of all ages to be more involved in the life of the Church, but how to motivate them?

Unfortunately, I think most of us know more about what doesn't work or what isn't helpful. For example, in many Protestant denominations Church Growth is all the rage, and a basic marketing approach is taken to try and draw people in. In other words, give them what they want--upbeat worship, classes and small groups on subjects that might not have anything to do with the faith, etc.--and then hope that those that come in feel inclined slowly to move more deeply into "discipleship." For example, I once had a Protestant bishop tell me that if he had to wrap Jesus in red ribbon and blue paper to get people "in" he would do it. Like I told him, unfortunately the Jesus wrapped in red ribbon and blue paper is not the Jesus of the Gospels and the Church.

So, marketing the Church is one thing I don't think we can do. I think, however, that we do have to help people see that the Church really does meet their most basic human needs and aspirations. How do we know God? How do we resist temptations? How do we pray? How do we become the kind of people that we want to be, in our better moments? The Church can teach us all of these things, but as is always the case, we need people experienced in them to lead us to them.

So, practically, I would suggest taking the young people to Essex, to the monastery of St John the Baptist, or to meet some other person(s) who are experienced and knowledgeable in the spiritual life. Let them meet some folks who are experienced in the spiritual life and who can inspire them by their lives.

Also, I am convinced that young people today seldom respond to simple right and wrong sorts of declarations. We have to help them see that the faith works, that it can make them better persons, and not just tell them, "you should do this" (go to Church, etc.). This is not to say that I am a relativist (a big, bad word nowadays). But the faith, at root, is not about morality (although it clearly invloves being moral), so the modern temper which is set against right and wrong rather helps us in some sense, by causing us to go deeper and ask, why practice the Orthodox faith? Because it works. What I am saying will probably be misunderstood, and I will most likely get jumped for saying this. But so many "old" people look at the young today and are bewildered at their behavior and immorality and suggest that what they need is a strong dose of good old fashioned values. But some of these same people, who are admittedly very moral, are the ones that never push beyond the morals to a real keeping of the commandments that is life changing.

I don't know if this helps or not. In short, I would get these kids involved as much as possible with people who are really trying to live the Christian life and allow them to ask questions about the faith. Orthodoxy is nothing if not practical!

May God bless you in your struggle!
Fr John

[Rebecca]

I had a really good teacher in mid/late-teens who would give us homilies from Saints (remembering one by St. Isaac the Syrian on Love) to read and discuss. I didn't understand all of what the Saints wrote (still don't), but could tell that what I was reading was something really out of the ordinary that had a different flavor from what I was seeing in my every day life ...remembered that later on...

same teacher gave us lives of Saints to read in early teens...I remember reading Life of St Sava inspiring.