Many
religions work hard to keep young people active in their respective faiths and
the LDS Church is no exception. There seem
to be at least two critical time periods when young people opt of out their
religions, the middle teens when youth begin to question everything and the twenties,
when important decisions are being made about developing skills for the job
market, finding employment and getting married.
Within
the LDS Church, one of several youth oriented programs is the Church Education
System (CES), which has Seminaries for high school students and Institutes for
the 18 to 30 year old crowd. The church
serves these two groups through a system that provides religious and ethical education
and the opportunity to socialize. As
missionaries, we are assigned to the Institute section of the CES program in
New Jersey.
Another
mechanism to serve the 18-30 age group, used by the LDS Church, is the
formation of congregations made up solely of Young Single Adults (YSA). These are formed by the local Stake President
(head of the diocese to some of you) with approval from Church
headquarters. The congregations may be
designated as Wards (125 to 225 members) or Branches (fewer than 125
members. These congregations provide the
YSAs with more leadership, teaching and service opportunities than might be
available in a family ward. So, except
for the member of the Bishopric (Ward) or the Presidency (Branch) all of the
members of these congregations are YSAs.
They meet every Sunday and do everything to make the congregation run
smoothly and effectively; give the sermons, form the choir, play the organ, teach
the classes, and organize the meetings, service projects and social
events.
So in
our stake the New Jersey East Brunswick YSA Branch was formed. The President of the Branch is a local man
named Peter Eck, and his two counselors are myself and Elder Sierer another CES
Institute teacher. This will afford us
as teachers many more opportunities to interact with the YSAs and help us
prepare lessons and discussions for our Institute classes that will more
directly address their needs. We've posted this picture before, but here it is again because it seems to best illustrate our branch population.
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| Some of the members of the East Brunswick Young single Adult Branch (Photo collage by Sister Sierer, 12/11. |
Dear Deanne and Roger:
ReplyDeleteGreat blog! I’m impressed with the stories, pics, and the wonderful CES work you two are doing. It brought back memories of my days as a University of Michigan Ph.D. student in Ann Arbor, finding young college age Mormons, beginning an institute class, growing our efforts, activating many and baptizing more until we had a hundred kids. I got approval to acquire a big sorority house just off campus which we turned into singles’ dorms, and the stake created a branch which I presided over. Still today I hear from some of those individuals about their lives since those special years when we sought to build our own little Zion—just as the two of you are doing today.
Thanks for both of your examples. Roger, you’ll be happy to know we finally signed off on the latest versions of HELP International’s new board structure, including the Trustees’ roles and responsibilities. We voted in new members Tracey Maylett and John Updike. We also approved the requirements and roles for the Operations Council, and have half a dozen new members for that group. So I wanted to let you know that all your hard work over the last year is finally coming to fruition.
May you both be blessed in the sacred work you are doing during 2012!