If you haven’t read Father Lance’s article in this months Tablet, I suggest that you do so after reading this one, for no other reason but to get excited for all that we have in store for the youth at All Saints, the surrounding neighborhood and for other churches in New England. For starters, we are finally at a point of launching our first RAYV, I won’t go into the details that Father Lance went into, but I will tell you about my own walk with getting to this point.
When I first started working here at All Saints, a renewal weekend for our high school and middle school teens was not even on the table. As things changed in regards to our relationship with TEC and the diocese of Massachusetts, our need for a renewal weekend for our youth became urgent. Two years ago, a group of us from All Saints went down to Texas to experience a true and orthodox Happening weekend. While our intention was to come back home and launch our own version of Happening as soon as possible, the reality of the situation was drastically different. Due to various issues ranging from logistics (such where to hold the event and what exactly we were going do) to financing (who was going to pay for this, how much would the weekend cost, etc). In plain English, we were not prepared to launch in the Fall of 2007. Some in the parish were beginning to question if we were ever going to be able to launch a youth renewal weekend, shoot I was even questioning if we would. However, God is good and he has continued to keep RAYV at the forefront of my agenda and Father Lances as well as others such Debbie Lowell and Mike Young.
Over the course of the next few months, I am going to be transitioning out of some of the direct services that I offer to the youth and will be taking on a more coordinator’s role, as outlined in my original objectives laid out by the youth committee so many years ago. With this transition, I will be able to focus more on the launch of RAYV and other pending projects for the youth here at All Saints. Those other projects include a round robin basketball tournament for our youth in 9-12 and for any other teen between the grades of 9th and 12th grade. This tournament is no mere tournament, it is going to feature prizes for the top three teams, a mid-day break that will feature a speaker who will focus on evangelizing and the event will be a lot of fun for all who are involved. The date of the event is July 18, so mark your calendars and if you know of any high school students who might be interested, pass along my email or cell phone number to them and I will be more than glad to talk with them.
As far as the younger kids are concerned, we will be holding our third annual Vacation Bible School the last week of August. Each year, this program has gotten better and I have no doubt that this year will be even better than last years. Our students between the grades of pre-K to fifth grade will travel back in time to ancient Rome and learn from the Apostle Paul about the underground church and what it meant to be a Christian then and now. I am extremely excited about this and so are the volunteers who are going to be helping out. Either Katie or I will be calling a select group of parishioners who we feel would be a great asset to the VBS team, so if we happen to call you please pick up and hear us out.
In closing, I would once again like to take the opportunity to thank you all for supporting me this ministry and my calling to go to seminary. I could not do any of this with you all, even those of you who do not have children in the youth groups. Every so often, I feel God is calling in a certain direction and currently I feel him calling me towards the role of coordinator more than the role of providing direct services. This does not mean that I will not have a hand in all the groups, I just means that I will be able to do even more our youth, both in their Christian walk and in their daily lives.
In His Name,
Ben Giuffrida
Youth Coordinator
401.368.0444
benjamingiuffrida@hotmail.com