Parents – this Craig’s Corner is not for you!
Please pass this to your child as you read this. Don’t read past this line. This message is for your kids, your grandkids, your nieces and your nephews.
Okay, now that I’ve got you alone, hello! If we haven’t talked in person, I’m the pastor of your church, Rev. Craig and I want you to know that YOU are important. Yes, you. The person reading this article. It is my hope and dream to make Berkeley Methodist United Church into YOUR church. Not your parent’s church. Not your grandparent’s church. But YOUR church. I want it to be a place you will have fond memories of far into your adult years. I hope one day as you reflect on your faith, you’ll look back and say, “I’m so glad my church cared about me and helped me to know God and Jesus.”
And your parents and grandparents agree! They want more than anything to know that you are grounded in your faith. That’s why we hired Angel Rivero to help us redesign our entire Youth and Children’s Ministry program. We want to make it relevant to our young people TODAY! You might be thinking we hired Angel so we can shuffle off the kids to him. But that’s not it at all. We hired Angel because we wanted to make sure you received the love and attention you deserve. You have TWO church leaders dedicated to you while the adults just have one. Angel and I will be working TOGETHER to improve what we do and how we do it. But we need your help.
We already had a Youth Summit with the youth of our church last November and that was great. That helped us to have some kind of understanding of what is important to you, but over the next four or five months we will be doing a lot of different things to help make this into a church that meets YOUR faith needs. Once a month, we will be going to different churches together to experience worship in different ways and we would like you to come (with free lunch afterward). Then we are going to try different Sunday School curriculum to see which one works best for you. And maybe you’ll decide meeting on Sundays doesn’t work for you. We can work with that, too. We’re also going to try and do at least one fun gathering a month. It might be bowling. It might be an escape room. It might be pizza night and a movie. But we’d like to know from you what YOU would like to do.
Our goals are:
- Make God relevant to our youth and kids today
- Build community together
- Have a place you look forward to coming to week after week
- Lay a foundation of faith that will last a lifetime
Does that mean we are going to abandon your parents? Nope. We plan to honor them too.
It just means we are serious about meeting your needs and most of all we want you to know that we care.
One way you can help is by coming to church! Participate. Talk to us. Show us what you like and don’t like. We will listen. But we can’t hear you unless you are there. So come to church and make a difference. The future is waiting for you.
You can hand this back to your parents and grandparents now.
Parents and caregivers, thanks for giving us the honor of being the church for your youth and children. We take that charge seriously as we know you do, too. When I graduated from high school, our class song was Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All” and the lyrics of that song has stayed in my mind ever since. “I believe the children are our future / Teach them well and let them lead the way / Show them all the beauty they possess inside / Give them a sense of pride to make it easier / Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be.” I do believe the children are our future and it is a future worth fighting for. Together let us make this mission a central tenet of what we do in this church and prepare our youth and children for a better and brighter future with God at its core.
Peace in Christ,
Craig
