Changes dicussed at Meeting on 6/10/18

Starting this fall, I've been discerning reformatting the Youth Ministry program. There are a few aspects to this:

1. Creating a separate Jr. High ministry program. The dynamic for topics and conversation is different for Jr. High vs. high school. High school students are welcome to attend and help with the Jr. High program. We decided that the Confirmation retreat would be the "rite of passage" from Jr. to high school youth ministry. High school team members need to be involved in the confirmation retreat, give witness, and personally invite the Confirmation Class to the high school program.

2. Weekly meetings would be moved to Thursday (7:30 - 9 PM). We could follow a better planned and structured format for these meetings. Once each month we would meet somewhere off-campus (Panera, etc..). This would give you an opportunity to invite friends who may not want to come to a meeting at "Church."

3. One each month (maybe more) on Sunday, we would meet for a non-gathered event: Ex. guest speaker, Adoration and P & W, open gym, etc... Some would be open to both Jr. High and High School.

Several points were discussed at our meeting last night.

• Everyone liked the idea of creating a Jr. High program separate from high school.

• Everyone also liked the idea of meeting off-campus periodically. The suggestions was made to make these meetings less "theological" so friends would be more likely to attend/less intimidated. However, a spiritual component must still be present.

• There was initial concern expressed about sports and school schedules on a weeknight. As the conversation went on, it was brought up that there are other groups in the deanery/diocese (St. Jude-New Lenox, FOLLOW in Joliet) that meet on weeknights and successfully make it work.

• Several ideas were brought up about off-campus activities/events to plan. Miss Carrie has the list, who is responsible for researching it and getting the information to me. She will share that with me soon and I will send it out to everyone.

• Beth is going to look into and set up a group chat/app

• Gus is going to look into setting up a group website.

• I would like to schedule a couple parent/adult/teen leader meetings before implementing changes.

Changes dicussed at Meeting on 6/10/18

Starting this fall, I've been discerning reformatting the Youth Ministry program. There are a few aspects to this:

1. Creating a separate Jr. High ministry program. The dynamic for topics and conversation is different for Jr. High vs. high school. High school students are welcome to attend and help with the Jr. High program. We decided that the Confirmation retreat would be the "rite of passage" from Jr. to high school youth ministry. High school team members need to be involved in the confirmation retreat, give witness, and personally invite the Confirmation Class to the high school program.

2. Weekly meetings would be moved to Thursday (7:30 - 9 PM). We could follow a better planned and structured format for these meetings. Once each month we would meet somewhere off-campus (Panera, etc..). This would give you an opportunity to invite friends who may not want to come to a meeting at "Church."

3. One each month (maybe more) on Sunday, we would meet for a non-gathered event: Ex. guest speaker, Adoration and P & W, open gym, etc... Some would be open to both Jr. High and High School.

Several points were discussed at our meeting last night.

• Everyone liked the idea of creating a Jr. High program separate from high school.

• Everyone also liked the idea of meeting off-campus periodically. The suggestions was made to make these meetings less "theological" so friends would be more likely to attend/less intimidated. However, a spiritual component must still be present.

• There was initial concern expressed about sports and school schedules on a weeknight. As the conversation went on, it was brought up that there are other groups in the deanery/diocese (St. Jude-New Lenox, FOLLOW in Joliet) that meet on weeknights and successfully make it work.

• Several ideas were brought up about off-campus activities/events to plan. Miss Carrie has the list, who is responsible for researching it and getting the information to me. She will share that with me soon and I will send it out to everyone.

• Beth is going to look into and set up a group chat/app

• Gus is going to look into setting up a group website.

• I would like to schedule a couple parent/adult/teen leader meetings before implementing changes.