Youth Ministries

St. James’s uses the Journey to Adulthood program, a Christian education curriculum created by St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Durham, NC, for adolescent members of the church. The curriculum is designed to nurture young people through the impressionable and formative years of young adulthood by addressing adolescent issues through the lens of our Christian belief system. The Journey to Adulthood program is divided into two component parts: Rite-13 and J2A.

Contact for all youth ministries: Chris Edwards, 355-1779, ext 34

Rite-13
Sixth and Seventh Grades
Rite-13 celebrates the gift of gender and focuses on all aspects of the individual: self, society, sexuality, and spirituality. One of the primary goals in this initial stage of the Journey to Adulthood program is building community. The second year of Rite-13 culminates in a liturgical Rite-13 Ceremony, a celebration based loosely on the Jewish bar mitzvah representing the separation from family highlighted in the rites-of-passage steps.

J2A
Eighth and Ninth Grades
J2A builds on the lessons learned in Rite-13, focusing on six necessary skills of adulthood: listening, assertion, negotiation, research and information management, partnership, and leadership. Members of the ninth grade class have the option of choosing to be confirmed by the bishop at his visitation in the spring as the culmination of their J2A experience.

Fellowship & Outreach

For the 2008-2009 program year, we will offer three distinct “Youth Groups” to promote opportunities for fellowship, outreach, and spiritual growth among our teenagers:

Rite-13 Youth Group (Sixth and Seventh Grades)
J2A Youth Group (Eighth and Ninth Grades)
EYC (High School Youth Group)

Each group will meet two Sunday afternoons a month at the church (or an off-site location for some bigger activities). The purpose of these groups is twofold: to provide opportunities for fun gatherings outside of the Sunday morning classroom, and to facilitate participation in outreach opportunities as a means of living out our communal call to seek and serve Christ in those that we encounter. Last year’s activities included bowling, a lock-in, a weekend retreat at Shrine Mont, a photo scavenger hunt, an IMAX movie, etc. St. James’s youth were also involved in numerous outreach projects, as well: they volunteered at the Special Olympics Basketball Tournament, helped with the Peter Paul Development Center (PPDC) Christmas Party, assisted in constructing new gardens for the PPDC, picked pumpkins for a local elementary school, and participated in Hope for Humanity’s “Walk for Sudan” to raise money for the new secondary school in Atiaba, Southern Sudan.

Summer Youth Mission Trip
Each summer, our high-school teens are afforded the opportunity to experience unfamiliar cultures and ways of life through a summer mission trip. The trip often highlights the difficulties regularly endured by the members of poorer communities to which we travel. The past four years St. James’s youth have been helping to construct a retreat center and campsite in Manley Hot Springs, Alaska. Other past mission locations include the Lakota Indian Reservation in Bear Creek, South Dakota, and the Crow Indian Reservation in Garryowen, Montana. The trip is open to all rising tenth graders through rising college freshmen.