“Taking the Time for our Youth”
By: Gizelle Baba Shadid
A Story of how Youth Directors Change Lives
I can remember those Saturday afternoons, when Deacon Tommy, (now Father Thomas Joseph) would come over to our house and spend time with us. He would carry his Bible Trivia game with him to Inwood Forest Dad’s Club and play softball with us, too. He spent time teaching us, getting to know us, and just being there for us. Knowing that I enjoyed middle school Theater Arts, Deacon Tom suggested I participate in the Oratorical Festival. “What’s that?” I asked. He proceeded to tell me about the Parish Life Conferences held each summer, of which I had no idea. It was enlightening, and I found a new door was opened for me. I ended up going to Tulsa that summer of ‘90 for the Parish Life Conference and happened upon a Teen SOYO meeting. “There’s a region? What’s this camp in Pennsylvania that I am hearing about?” I think to myself, “Yeah right, like I’m ever gonna get to go to Pennsylvania!” It seemed impossible at the time, but I soon learned that “with God, all things are possible” (Mark 10:27).
Now, with eight summers of camp experience and going on ten years being involved with Teen SOYO, I can look back and say “thank you” to that youth worker who took the time. I strongly believe that God uses his youth workers, among many other people, to help bring His children into the life of the Church. To make a long story short, I didn’t start getting involved in the Church until someone took the time to pull me in.
As of September 1999, I have been a full-time staff member at my church in Houston and have the awesome responsibility of being a Youth Director. This is the first time our church has had this position solely for the youth. The three years previous, I had served as one of the volunteer youth advisors. I find there is a tremendous difference in what we are able to accomplish, now that I am able to work full-time with our young people.
Let me say that the purpose of this article is not by any means to ‘toot my own horn.’ The aim is to use my personal experiences to help you realize the growing need for full-time Youth Directors in our parishes. Let’s face it, today’s society is much different than it was 50 years ago. A child is lucky to have one parent teaching them or even at home with them, let alone two. Think about it. The Church is competing with the media, with WWF and NWO, with video games, movies and entertainment, with the Internet and AOL…. and the list goes on! With all of these distractions and worldly images, how much time are our children making for Christ and His Church? Are they reading their Bibles? Are they being taught to read their Bibles? Are our children going to church, praying daily, fasting, tithing, sharing, and helping? Are they loving?
I remember last year and the years previous serving as a volunteer youth work where I felt so frustrated that a church as large as ours did not have a more active youth group. Sometimes I’d feel guilty, but I just didn’t have the time to do more than one or two activities a month with the youth. I had a full time job outside of the church as most of our youth workers do. I recall parents saying, “I wish our teens had things to do every weekend with their church friends. I wish they thought of the church as a place where they could hang out and be together. I don’t want my kids to be influenced their school friends…. When our kids come back from summer church camp, they are on a ‘spiritual high,’ then after a month or two, it’s gone.” It’s amazing what two weeks can do! What about the other 50 weeks in the year? What then? Camp should not be an exclusive experience where our children only feel close to Christ while they are there. Our camp directors have always implored us to take camp home with us. How do we do that?
Having a Youth Director allows for the year-round camp experience, where the kids are encouraged to sing Vespers and attend Christian education classes, among other things. I recall Fr. Michael Nasser, our current Camp Director, saying to the kids on the last day of camp (in so many words): “You are all crying right now because you don’t want to leave tomorrow, because you developed such close relationships with the people here and with Christ. Our goal is not to make this camp a refuge from the world or an experience you can only have here on this mountain in Pennsylvania. It is to teach you and to give you a model as to how to live your life when you go home. We want you to be so close to your church community at home that when you leave them to come to camp, you are crying.”
Now that we have an established youth program, not just for the teens, but for pre-teens and college students, we meet three, four, sometimes even five times a week! Our church is becoming a place where the youth can call their home. Our children are hungry! Let us feed them with the words of Christ! Let us fill their souls with the Holy Spirit, with love for one another, with fellowship. Let’s provide opportunities for them to go on trips together, to make pilgrimages to monasteries and taste the life of a monastic, let’s go to their homes and have Bible studies and play basketball together, go to their school functions, and just be there for them! Let us not forget about Christ those other 50 weeks.
All of this takes………..TIME.
When your church hires a Youth Director, you are sending your youth a message; we care about you; we want to invest in you. We want to keep you in this Church and make it a part of your lives now. We have to do something! For those of you who are thinking, “We can’t budget a Youth Director,” I will argue that it is cost effective to hire one. Once you get the kids involved, you’ll start seeing their parents coming to church. We have seen it in many parishes. The youth push their parents to go to church and to get more involved, and with it comes increased awareness and education on their part. Our parents also begin to experience how much the Church is there for their families and they eventually become active supporting members.
Now for those growing number of parishes who have realized this need and have done something about it, there are things to remember. The Youth Director is not the “Lone Ranger” by any means, nor can our parishes expect one person to do all the work that is needed for youth ministry. Each parish needs an intergenerational youth ministry team. We need young adults, married couples, and parents, even grandparents to get involved with the youth. The goal is to have at least one person on your Youth Ministry Team with whom each young person can feel some identification. We have to fill each other’s gaps. Christ Himself served as a perfect model, for He did not do all the work alone, He delegated. Christ appointed 12 disciples whose job it was to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). Thus, when He physically left this earth, His ministry did not end. Les Christie, a well-known youth worker writes, “The long-term effectiveness of youth ministry depends on the ability of the youth worker to develop a team of committed adult volunteers” (How to Recruit and Train Volunteer Youth Workers, 10). We should expect our volunteers to be available to our kids, to have a sense of calling, to like kids, and to be growing spiritually (44). Above all, youth workers who want to be effective in their ministry must pray.
It is my prayer that we as a growing Church in this country actualize the need for full-time Youth Directors in our parishes. In retrospect, it was those home visits by a youth worker that got me to want to go to church. It was a person’s love and concern for my spiritual state that eventually helped me to realize how much I need Christ.
Gizelle Baba was the full time Youth Director for St. George Orthodox Church of Houston, Texas, when this article was written. She nows serves alongside her husband Jimmy Shadid in Wichita, KS
