Kirk Vander Pol

Hi all,  For what it's worth as the youth director I maintain a small library of books that I own and/or purchase on behalf of our youth ministry right in our youth facility (it's a small building right next to our church).  I have check-out cards in them and regularly recommend them to youth in general as well as when one of the youth has specific questions that a book we have addresses.  It seems to go in spurts as far as youth reading them, but quite a number have been read.

Paul,

I'm curious if the first youth group you spoke of was largely comprised of Christian school youth and the public school youth were having a hard time fitting in?

We struggle with that and have worked hard to consciously not solely base events on the dominate school's schedule (which in our case is a Christian school).  It gets difficult though as school breaks are all over the map.  In our case I think we have two strikes against us in that our Christian school kids not only share their life together 5 days a week and so naturally bond together, but they are also quite sheltered and have a hard time relating to kids that come from public schools--(the exception being public school students that are very active in the church and quite outgoing.)

We have worked hard to include talk of school events going on at all the schools represented even though the local Christian school kids are the largest group represented.  We have also worked hard not to talk as if the Christian school schedule is the only one we need to work around or care about.  This has taken some time and effort, but I think we are reaching a better place of being more "school neutral" and more inclusive of all students.

Kirk