Mission Statement

Our Mission:

We will foster a community in which our youth may experience and share the love of God.

Our Beliefs:

1. We believe that the way of Christ offers our youth a life that is abundant, flourishing and everlasting.

2. We believe that flourishing life is best nurtured in a community marked by love, covenant and participation.

· Love: A community in which all our youth, wherever they are on life’s path, are unconditionally loved and accepted as they are.

· Covenant: A community in which our youth share covenantal commitments to clear and understandable values and boundaries.

· Participation: A community in which our youth passionately participate in something larger than themselves: the great adventure of loving and serving in God’s name.

3. We believe that caring for our youth in a community of love, covenant and participation will equip them for a lifetime journey following the way of Christ and characterized by faith, hope and love.

Beacons

“YG has been my beacon in the storm of adolescence” - YG Senior Ben Honig, 2001

Our youth ministries pursue our mission and enact our beliefs by shining five “beacons” to help our youth navigate their voyage to adult life and faith.

Community

We welcome our youth into a community that is unabashedly and passionately counter to a secular culture too often characterized by self-centered competition, judgment and exclusion.  Our youth ministries welcome our youth into a community that fosters a safe space of unconditional acceptance and other-regarding love.  Here, a deep sense of Christian community grows out of shared experiences of fellowship, spirituality, service, and just plain fun.  In our youth ministries, every child can just be themselves.

Fellowship

Christ taught that God is known and experienced when we keep his commandment to love one another.  Our youth ministries understand that relationships are just as likely to grow in zany, exuberant play, as in deeply moving vesper discussions, as in urgent collective action to complete a mission. We gather our youth into small, relational teams, each led by a caring young adult.  Our teams draw kids into community regardless of grade, gender and social groups where they form lifelong friendships.  In our youth ministries, every child has a small group to call “home.”

Service

God calls all of God’s children out of cramped self-centeredness and into participation in God’s larger labor of love in the world.  When our youth respond - by feeding the hungry, by housing the homeless, by serving the poor, by seeking justice, by mentoring a child - God’s love flows through them and they experience God as channels of God’s grace.  Our youth ministries facilitate frequent, varied and age-appropriate opportunities for our youth to serve their brothers and sisters in need.  In our youth ministries, every child learns that God has already equipped them to love and be loved in God’s name.

Spirituality

Our young people don’t just want to be told about God, they want to experience God for themselves.  They have a passionate desire to encounter the living God who is passionately committed to being there for them.  Our youth ministries introduce our young people to powerful communal prayer, inspiring worship and music, ancient forms of Christian meditation, and revelatory stories of the faith.  In our youth ministries, every child learns the practices and traditions that will support their own ecstatic experiences of the transcendent.

Fun

Did we mention that our youth ministries are fun?  Again and again our young people have taught us that they are as ready to engage serious human need as they are to break into raucous, run-around games - as ready to share their deepest hopes and fears as they are to break into spontaneous dance.  Our youth ministries are characterized by a serious playfulness and a playful seriousness.  In our youth ministries, every child finds time and space to just be a kid.