If you know me, you know that I was super involved in my high school youth group. I was at every youth service, I sang in the worship band, I went on spring break and summer trips, I helped with events. I basically lived at my church from the time I was 16 until I moved in to my college dorm. During that time as a "church kid," I had a lot of awesome experiences, both spiritually and socially. Since I've moved away and made new friends in college, I've come to realize that there are certain universal truths and shared experiences that come with spending your teen years in the church. Here are 12 of them.
Your youth group has that one worship song that everyone loves, and it changes every few months.
When I graduated, my youth group was obsessed with the song "Reckless Love" by Cory Asbury.
You have at least one person that is just really, really loud all the time.
Them being loud isn't a bad thing, it's just a part of who they are and it's usually really entertaining.
Everyone in your youth group has taken the spiritual gift test from Lifeway at least once.
And at least one person probably got "exhortation" as their spiritual gift even though they couldn't pronounce it or didn't know what it meant.
You know the names of all of your youth pastor's children and/or pets.
Neither of the youth pastors I had during my time in the youth program had kids, but the both had animals, and you best believe we knew and loved them just as much as their owners did.
You know that youth events are usually the same time every year, and you plan other things around them.
My youth group did a spring break trip, a summer trip, and had a D-Now weekend every year, always at the same point in the year.
You have a youth group couple.
Whether they're on again/off again or they've been dating consistently for what seems like ages, every youth group has a couple, or at least a pair of close friends that everyone secretly thinks is a couple.
If your youth pastor finds out you can sing or play an instrument, you're probably going to end up in the youth band.
My youth pastor pushed a lot of people out of their comfort zones and straight into our youth worship band, but it ended up making all of us a lot more confident.
You have that select group of people that always prays.
One of these people is probably your "designated loud person," and probably at least one of them is in the worship band.
Your youth group has a few select games that everyone loves to play, and sometimes it gets extra competitive.
My youth group loves to play a game called "the cup game," in which two people basically fight to the death for a plastic solo cup.
You've probably been to some sort of Christian concert as a group.
Whether it's Winter Jam, another conference style concert, or a concert for a solo christian artist, you've definitely experienced some kind of mass christian music gathering with your youth group friends.
You know that when an event has free food, a ton of people that don't normally come to stuff will definitely be there.
However, this is totally okay, because part of the purpose of youth groups is to reach out to people that wouldn't otherwise come to learn about Jesus, and free food is basically a guaranteed way to do that.
You know that no matter where you go or what you end up doing, you will always have a group of lifelong supporters.
The friends you make in your high school youth group see you at your best and at your worst, but they love and accept you anyway.
Growing up in a youth group is not always easy. High school is hard already, and being a Christian just makes it that much harder. Just like with any group of teenagers, there will be arguments and drama. However, I am still so thankful for my high school youth group, and for the friends I made there. To this day, I know that I can still count on my youth friends as well as both of my youth pastors.
The minimum wage is not a living wage.
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