Your youth group

[King Butter Turtle]

Mine's called Spotlight. We meet every sunday night in our own building called the education building. It's pretty typical; brightly painted walls, band posters on the ceiling, liscence plate collection, ping-pong table, fridge. There's about 15 of us and a young couple from the church leads it, but we're too small for a youth-pastor. Our pastor teaches sunday school. What is/was your youth group like?

[KODY 105]

My youth group doesn't have a name, per se. We have around 40 regular folks. My youth pastor is a fairly young guy, but he does a great job. He started here about a year ago.

[J-man]

There are about.. 12 or 13 in my youth group.. We typically do stuff on Friday nights, once of twice a month. Currently we have two young (well, sorta..) couples as youth sponsors. One is due to stop this month, I think. It's getting to be more than they can handle, their family is growing..

[Mandy Straussberg]

My youth group has about 80 or 90 kids in it ranging from 6th grade through 12th grade (plus leaders). We have our service concurrently with the morning service (just like all the other children's ministries) and then we have a homegroup for the highschoolers once a week and a church group for the junior highers once a week. It pretty much looks just like the adult service except they meet and have small groups for twenty minutes in the middle of the service.

Mandy

[Jonathan]

We have our service concurrently with the morning service (just like all the other children's ministries)

Does that mean it takes place at the same time as the weekly Sunday morning service?

[violet flower]

We don't have a youth group or Sunday school or anything like that. All the kids play together. When even have kids playing from 4-20. Its always so much fun!

[Follower of Christ]

Our youth group is tiny-only 7 kids that come on a regular basis (my brother and I are 2 of them). We meet on Wed. nights for youth group, have youth AWANA on Sun. nights, and in the summer do youth days once a month. We also do lock-ins and ministry/serving projects every month.
Our youth leader in a middle aged man and sometimes we have a few other people help out.

[Mandy Straussberg]

Does that mean it takes place at the same time as the weekly Sunday morning service?

Yes. Here's how it works.

Sunday A.M. (10:00) service:
Adult service in the main sanctuary
Each age group has its own service (Preschool, 1-3, 4-5, middle school and high school)

Sunday P.M. (6:00) service:
Adult/youth service in the main sanctuary
Preschool and 1-5 have their own service

The Sunday night service is geared more towards the young adults and youth while the morning service is geared toward the middle-aged adult crowd. It's all a taste thing, I guess. Nothing to quibble over.

Mandy

[The Top Crusader]

No one is in my youth group.

But anyway... as for when I was a youth (*sniff*), when I was starting to go in Jr High it was decent sized for the church, maybe 60ish or so? We had a really awesome youth pastor.

But then our head pastor left (who had grown the church from 40ish to 300+ in a short time), and the youth pastor sort of was also the temporary pastor until a new one came, but shortly after we got a new head pastor, he left to go to some other church a few states away, and our attendance fell some (in both youth group and regular church) but was still decent.

So a few months later we got another youth pastor, and he seemed pretty awesome... but he basically up and quit without even telling the group... he was just gone one week, lol. So yeah, he apparently wasn't as cool as he seemed...

After that even more people left so we were probably down to 15ish or so? Maybe 20 on a good day but I think that's overreaching.

So a cool middle-agedish guy from the church took over for probably 2 or 3 years. He was a really nice guy who I think had formerly pastored a small church and had good lessons and would have us all come over to his house on Saturdays and spend the night and cool stuff like that. I liked him quite a bit. BUT he also had a fulltime job all week and so I don't think he ever really had the opportunity to do a lot of extra activities and come up with crazy ideas to get the group to grow. Plus instead of being fresh out of college like the other two, he was OLD!!!! So anyway he actually used to be a missionary, and he and his wife felt called to go back to the mission field so probably near the end of my junior year or so... and they went to Haiti!

After all that, with a couple of our group members being his kids that left, and a couple others going off to college, my senior year we were down to like... 4 or 5 regular attenders. Another couple in the church took over, and again, they were really nice... but unlike the last guy who had had pastoring experience and done mission work... they hadn't really done anything like that... SO... basically the group stayed that same size, and it was all well and good, but nothing earth shattering. Keep in mind, throughout all this the "new" head pastor (who had been there a few years by now) was pretty consistently driving more and more people away from the church as a whole, and no new families were coming in (other than maybe to visit once, then run for their lives! ).

But anyway throughout my senior year, while I considered that my home church and always attending Wednesday nights, which was the main youth group meeting, I had started attending another church that a few of my friends from school went to. So I think it was the end of the summer after I graduated high school that I stopped going to that first church entirely and started totally going to my current church... which I still go to to this day! Although all the friends of mine who were going there when I started have moved on to other churches or moved out of town entirely.

AND SO ENDS MY EXCITING TALE OF MY YOUTH GROUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Over the Rainbow]

We have a Youth team, called the "ATTIC". We have about 50 kids. Our youth pastor was forced to resign about two months ago because he got laid off because the plant he was working for shut down. He would have had to sold his house, car, etc. However, another company offered his a position with roughly the same income, however, the hours were on Sunday night and Wednesday night, the time when ATTIC meets. Therefore, he had to resign. Right now, we're goofing off, just playing ping-pong and eating pizza, no worship or any extreme service that gets us on fire for God.

To be honest, I did not admire him very well. I'm not saying he was wrong, we all have a different way of worshipping, but I didn't really understand his way of worship and it kind of creeped me out. We always had intense music and praying, like two hours every meeting. And people started fainting and speaking in tongues and I just didn't really understand everything. His sermons seemed rather dark and serious, always about the End of the World and such matters.

Anyways, ever since his department, we have lost about thirty people. But we should gain everyone back as soon as a new pastor is chosen.

[Termite]

My youth group's name is Revolution Youth. There are... 20ish? of us. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending if everybody is there. It's pretty cool. I'm jealous of the othe youth groups we met at youth camp, because everybody was really tight in their's. Ours needs a little more tightening up... <_< Our youth pastor's are awesome, and they relly try to bring us all together into one unit. I love my church, and my youth group, don't get me wrong... I just wish we were one big family instead of several smaller ones.
Oh, I forgot: We have Praise & Worship in the main sanctuary, and unless there's a guest speaker or something else special is going on we have our own service. And we have Wednesday night service, but I work with the kiddies every other week.

[DanP740]

Ours is called Youth Group and is on Friday nights, usually 20-25 people, although we've ranged from 13-32. Our youth pastor has a wife and is the son of our pastor he recently bought a new house, which we all helped him move in to. I run the sound for the music, which I also record. The age range is from junior high to a few people in college who still come.

[Dr. Watson]

My church decided to take a rather different approach and have multiple youth groups in one church. The church leaders split up the children by what families they were in, and then appointed the parents of each family over them as youth pastors. So, for example, the two children of the "Smith" family got put in one youth group with the "Smith" parents as youth pastors. And so on. I think we have 3 youth groups in our church now. It's church policy that the youth groups meet together often, all day every day in fact. My youth group goes even farther and eats dinner together every night (the junior youth pastoress usually organizes this). Many times my senior youth pastor will read a passage from Scripture at the dinner and expound on it. We often pray together as well.


Then, every Sunday, all our youth groups come and meet together.

[King Butter Turtle]

My youth group goes even farther and eats dinner together every night

No way! So, it's pretty much your family?

[fatlooy]

My youth group doesn’t really have a name…its just youth group lol… We meet on Wednesday nights the Jr. High and High school together… there’s anywhere from 10-30 generally closer 15. Our youth pastor is in his Mid 30’s and has a wife and 2 young kids plus he’s a school teacher plus he teaches Sunday school and Youth group every week. My youth group is insane but I love ‘em any who.

[KODY 105]

My youth group is insane but I love ‘em any who.

Whose youth group isn't insane?

[Danielle Abigail Maxwell]

My youth group is insane but I love ‘em any who.

Whose youth group isn't insane?

Mine ain't.

Oh, wait, I don't have one because my church... is too small... or something like that.

[KODY 105]

Oh, wait, I don't have one because my church... is too small... or something like that.

I used to goto a church that was too small for a real youth group. We had eight teens, but we couldn't (or didn't for sure) do much.

[Danielle Abigail Maxwell]

Oh, wait, I don't have one because my church... is too small... or something like that.

I used to goto a church that was too small for a real youth group. We had eight teens, but we couldn't (or didn't for sure) do much.

We have... usually about 7, but now that most all of us are at school (including me), there are only 2 left. And we have done things, but it is rare, and we all gotta be there (usually only during the summer, and well... that doesn't always work out with a few always off doing other stuff). I'm kinda jealous of one of my sister churches that has EVERYTHING. Mission trips, youth group, family group (every other Wednesday with dinner and classes to go to). But, well, I love my church because it is sooo much homier, so, I don't mind.. as much.

[Iron and Light]

The church I now attend has far too few teens for a youth group. There are only about four literal 'teens', and I believe one of them is about 19. Besides that, there are a few (about three) young adults (around 21 years old and the like), however they wouldn't come to a youth group, anyway. So.. no youth group .