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Dear saints,
What did you do this summer? It's one of those casual and curious questions that lets us know that we are fast approaching Labor Day and so summer is something we'll soon be talking about in the past tense.
Let me share a little of what we did this summer. Four of our staff—with times away here and there—were holed up in a classroom with me week after week as we put our heads together to try to crack the code on a question that has been on our hearts at All Saints' for some time now: how can we build a community of high schoolers in this church?
If you don't have children in your life and/or you've never really had much to do with confirmation in the Episcopal Church, then you may not be familiar with the phrase "confirmation cliff." It's a bit of a startling image, but the concept is not unfamiliar. Youth will move along merrily in the life of a church, rising through the grades of elementary and middle school and then at the end of it all, they enjoy a wonderfully festive milestone as they are confirmed by the bishop, and then... for a great many of them, we barely seen them again. They fall off the cliff, so to speak.
The idea of there being a significant drop-off in engagement among youth once they hit high school is not unique to All Saints'. However, there are some challenges that we face as a church that other congregations may not. We draw from 20+ different school schedules across our 9th-12th graders. When friends from school or the neighborhood go to the youth group near home, trekking down to Midtown can feel less appealing. We do not house a large gym or sports league that can be effective in some cases in keeping older youth engaged.
Those are simply the challenges we know exist; they are not the limits of what we can do. This summer, the formation staff (Jenny, Kathy, Emily and Luke) and I have worked really hard to re-design six years of curricula for grades 6 to 12. We have established a series of new opportunities for high schoolers especially, including a youth vestry, youth vergers, a youth social media and photography team. We have also planned age-specific overnight trips. Plus we have planned a monthly rhythm of outings to compliment our already successful Sunday Night Live youth group.
The bigger change we have planned is for our staff to live out the vision we have for youth ministry here: to be the village that raises these children. Alongside the already incredible ministry of our lay staff of Kathy, Emily and Luke, the full-time clergy—myself, Andy and Jenny—will place ourselves in the room with our high schoolers as teachers and mentors and playmates on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings. Six of our full-time staff are saying to the youth of this church, "We are all in, for you." What we wish to say to the parish is this: "Will you join us in being the village for these our youth?"
As I said in church on Sunday, perhaps you are reading this and you're sure I'm not talking about you. You're wrong about that. I am. I am talking about each of us stepping forward. What presence might you be in the life of a youth at All Saints' this year? It could be one evening up in The Attic. It could be a group you host in your home, or at your vacation place. It could be an experience of something consequential in Atlanta that you believe our youth should have that you help arrange. It could be any number of things. Tell us. Step forward. Email me or Jenny McBride or any of our formation staff. Take a look at this youth ministries brochure and scan a QR code to get connected.
How remarkable this community would be, what a reputation we would have, if the word about town was that All Saints' is a place where the whole community truly embraces youth in authentic and loving relationship. That would be the kind of church I would want my family to be part of, whoever I was.
We can be that church. Will you join us?
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