“Sorry, I was dropping my sisters off for a youth group meeting. What’s up?” is the text I send to a friend of mine to which they respond with a question about what youth group is. Their response is somewhere along the lines of:
“Oh, like a Girl Scout or Boy Scout thing?”
Or
“Oh, bible study?”
If only they knew that being part of a youth group is so much more than that. The experiences youth group gave to me is something I would not have been able to obtain anywhere else. Most importantly, it helped me grow as a person before I left for the crazy four (and more) years that would be college.
I joined my church’s youth group with a few of my close friends after eighth grade graduation because you could not join until you were fourteen years old. It was nerve wracking, but since I was not the only newbie in the group those feelings of anxiety turned into eagerness.
I loved going to youth group meetings, which usually consisted of talking about school, discussing future plans and meetings for the group and occasionally playing a game or two, board game or otherwise. It wasn’t long before the first meeting I attended that we started talking about fundraisers to help us pay for a mission trip. We reached our goal, and the summer of 2011 our group went on a week long trip and volunteered on a farm in Worcester, Massachusetts. I had no idea how hot Massachusetts summers were. Temperatures reached almost 100 degrees fahrenheit every day that week. Despite the heat stroke worthy weather and constant exhaustion we took our time judging what fruits and vegetables were the ripest and freshest because all of the food went to local food banks.
Our group had picked 9,000 pounds of food in that one week.
Those seven days of service reminded me of why I joined a youth group in the first place, which is probably why I got excited for our next mission trip to Omaha, Nebraska where we worked with the Ho-Chunk tribe cleaning PowWow grounds as well as the local school. For both missions trips, we worked through an organization called Young Neighbors in Action, or YNIA. Because it was an organization, we would hang out with youth groups from across the country, which was a really cool experience.
You probably think I'm going to go into a rant about how great service is, and you're sort of right. I would not have ever had the chance to experience the events I did if I decided not to join a youth group. It's a community that goes beyond talking about religion. It's a community full of friends who help you figure out who you are as you begin to journey into adulthood. Going on trips to Cedar Point and driving to the slopes to go snow tubing was always a blast, but it was the work I and the other members of the group did that left the biggest impact on me. I went out and worked. I learned to be mature enough to put my labors in perspective. I did not choose to volunteer for myself or to impress other, rather, I volunteered to better the environment around me. It always feels good to do a kind deed to others.
The transition to adulthood is rarely a smooth trajectory toward a predictable rite of passage (if only it were that easy). The milestones are not always well marked or even noticed until they are passed. So when I look back on what I have done in the past, I feel that satisfying wave of accomplishment and know how much of an impact being in a youth group was for me.
