Chapter 1: Working With the Church Youth

This story may not be to everyone’s taste if you’re expecting something along the lines of most if my other diary entries. If you decide to read further, don’t complain to me - you’ve been warned!

All my life my family has attended the same Presbyterian church. It’s fairly typical of the old large protestant churches with about two thousand members on the books and maybe three to four hundred who attended regularly. Christmas and Easter the place is jammed but in between the attendance is much more sparse even though we still need two services to make it comfortable. The Sunday services are well organized and are usually quite boring with none of the arm raising or theatrical oratory that many new churches offer today. To be brutally honest, in many ways our church is really more of a big social club which includes just enough religion to appease everyone’s conscious.

Church has always played a central role in my life and I was been involved in a number of youth programs throughout my childhood and high school years. Now that I’m in college, I still remain involved in various bible studies and serve as a helper to the youth group leaders. It’s fun most of the time and challenging in many ways. Our big night of the week, like most churches, is Wednesday night when everything is catered to the kids and we make our biggest outreach to the community.