The Youth

[Boaz]

What are your youth groups doing ! We have to work with them . Our youth is living in a hard time . They need encouragement , they need our help .
I wrote a lot more but hit backspace and took it off . Our youth is given to deliver the message (sermon) periodically and be involved . This is just a short clip , they gave praise in music . The adults just step back .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5AM-6M2Q2E

[Blackwater]

Youth groups in our church mostly just try to prepare them for positions in the church, and to understand and obey the Lord, rather than the temptations of this world. There's also some good fun and games. My grandboys frequently play basketball with the pastor and asst. pastor long after everyone else is gone. It's in the "play" that attitudes are transmitted and learned, and attitudes are the great driving wheel of our actions and perceptions, so this is essential. Simple meals like grilling fun foods like hot dogs keep the interaction light yet meaningful, and everyone has a good time, which destroys the once common concept of "religion" being dour and strict and judgmental. They learn to help each other, do things for each other, in small ways, and occasionally in large ways. They become yet another sort of "familly," and a very good influence and support for their lives and attitudes and behavior. They learn reverence by observing it, and then immitating it, and when they've done that, the spirit moves within them.

Most of what and how kids learn is very subtle, and more is "caught than taught." Interacting freely and joyously is the foundation for their understanding the Word better, and learning the principles within the Bible. It's surprising to some, but if you can just get kids to DO the right things, they learn the reasons later, and the joy and benefits of obedience. They learn to pray aloud, and my grandboys both pray in open church at "early church," as ushers for the collection plates. This ain't no small thing!

I am so proud of my church and my son and daughter in law, and what they've done in raising the grandboys so righteously. They've both been a little too much like their grandad, and had "minds of their own," but the eldest has learned the true value of submission to his parents, and the younger is in the process of learning it now. This is the greatest gift an ol' granpa can ever have in this life! Many other kids in the community who have been disadvantaged in some ways have come to love going to these youth events, and I think it's changed a number of lives. All there treat them as equals and lovingly. It's hard to beat that as a way to lead people to the Light.