I run a Catholic youth group and I would love your feedback good and bad so we can make the experience better. If you are not Catholic, would you consider letting your child attend?
Thanks so much.
I run a Catholic youth group and I would love your feedback good and bad so we can make the experience better. If you are not Catholic, would you consider letting your child attend?
Thanks so much.
Not religious and child-free: if I had a child and had made the decision to take it to religious youth groups, it would’ve been multiple so that the child finds out about the differences in beliefs. It would’ve been a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and whatever other religion I could find. If it were only Christian groups, then no.
A child should grow up to know that the world is diverse, learn how to think critically, how to question things, and how to think for itself. Once it’s adult, then it can join whichever group it wants. Introducing a child to a single view of the world would be counter-productive to its critical thinking skills and diversity of thought.
Thanks so much. We could have a day where all the faiths in our community get together and learn more about each other.
Why not make it an all-faith group? That way the children are always exposed to all faiths and experience diversity all the time. That could bring all people together.
Since we’re a Catholic group, we have to deliver on the expectations that Catholic parents have for us so I don’t think it would be possible to do it all the time.
I’m curious, what expectations do Catholic parents have and how would a multi-faith group not fulfil those expectations? This isn’t an aggressive question, I genuinely do not know what religious youth groups do. My guess would be reading their religious book, re-enacting parts of it, praying together, maybe even studying the religious scripts. So I am curious what your group does / would do.
We do a mixture of Bible readings, prayer and fun games but it can be hard to juggle because children like to play and be with each other but the parents want us to help their child prepare for Confirmation.
If we focus too much on Bible teachings than our attendance goes down and if we play too many games, we lose the Catholic identity of the group and the support of parents.
It’s hard to keep everyone happy.