Middle School Youth Group

The Middle School Youth Group is ministry for children in sixth through eighth grades. We use the EDGE program The EDGE is a Catholic middle school youth ministry for early adolescents in grades six, seven and eight. The EDGE is designed to meet the educational, spiritual, emotional, and social needs of young adolescents.

The Edge combines the best of LIFE TEEN:

• Experiential
• The best of religious education program
• Each semester has a catechetical theme
• Small group model-middle school youth are paired with the same CORE members and other middle schoolers for the entire year.

Overview of the Program:

1. The EDGE Nights occur every week during the school year. The EDGE also has social and recreational activities designed to create a greater sense of community among our middle school youth.
2. Summer programming: in addition to regular EDGE nights at our parish, we will go to EDGE Summer Camps at our LIFE TEEN Camps in Georgia.
3. The EDGE offers middle school youth occasions to put their faith into action through a variety of service projects.
4. The parents' component is designed to assist parents in raising their middle school youngster. We offer educational classes and sessions on middle school spirituality, psychology, personality development, and physical development.

Goals of The Edge:

1. Foster a transforming spiritual experience of Jesus through the liturgy, allowing early adolescents to have a profound experience the Word of God and the Eucharist.
2. Create a positive experience of the Catholic Church for early adolescents.
3. Assist middle school youngsters in gaining an undertanding and appreciation for what the Catholic Church teaches as believes.
4. Incorporate the Catholic Church's vision of social justice and peace into their spiritual life.
5. Develop an identity in middle school youth and in The Edge ministry as being a vital and visual presence within the parish.

   

Further information may be obtained by calling the Director of Youth Ministry Regina Dougherty at 398-6618 x 207.

High School Youth Group

What is it?

LIFE TEEN is a comprehensive program designed to minister to high school teens of all faiths from a uniquely Catholic base. Reaching teens on spiritual, emotional, and social levels, LIFE TEEN responds to the need to be loved, offering meaning and direction and hope in a world plagued with indifference, aimlessness, and shallow materialism.

To provide this direction, LIFE TEEN encourages teens to embark on a journey of faith in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and His Church.

At youth group, trained youth ministers and core member lead the teens deeper into their Catholic faith in the LIFE Night experience. Teens grow as a faith community, growing in understanding of what it means to be young and Catholic in the world today.

LIFE TEEN follows the Church's mandate to make Jesus Christ the center of everything that we do. It is centered on Jesus, in particular Jesus in the Eucharist. To that end, LIFE TEEN is a total youth ministry program that tries to reach teens of all kinds. This means teens of different social and economic groups, different cultures and race, different interests, talents and spiritual maturity. LIFE TEEN ministers to the "churched" and the "unchurched."

LIFE TEEN is open to all high school teens freshman through senior year. It is important, however, to make a distinction between the junior high (middle school) ministry, and the (senior high) LIFE TEEN program. Proper and effective catechesis necessitates separating the two age groups. Failing to do so labels it a "junior high" program and hinders older teens from coming. However, teens of all faiths are invited to come.

No formal attendance is taken. There is no registration and no fees are collected. The reason for this is to more easily effect LIFE TEEN's goal of having teens come to a deeper, more personal relationship with Jesus. Teens cannot be coerced into such a relationship. In the same way, they come to LIFE TEEN because they want to come, not because they have to come.

Our Goals:

1. To empower young people to live as disciples of Jesus Christ in our world today.
2. To draw young people to responsible participation in the life, mission, and work of the Catholic faith community.
3. To foster the total personal and spiritual growth of each young person.

Our Mission:
The purpose of the LIFE TEEN Program is to create an environment, which leads high school teenagers into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and His Church.
This mission is accomplished in three ways:

1. Through celebration of the Eucharist.
2. Through the teachings of Christ and the Church.
3. Through an experience of being loved and accepted.