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Sunday School/Youth
St. Peter’s has a
lively and successful Sunday School Program. Tailored to the needs of our
children we are not tied to any particular curriculum, but we use various
resources to teach the Faith to Christ’s little ones. In our Sunday
School, we seek to engage young hearts and minds through a combination of
music and instruction, group and individual class activities. Each week we
begin with group worship suitable for the ages present. This involves
singing, prayers, offertory and announcements. After our collective opening
the children retire to their individual classes. Instruction lasts from
10:30 to 11:20 a.m. At approximately 11:30 teachers and students join
parents at worship for the last half of the Holy Communion service. This
arrangement allows teachers to receive Holy Communion and the children to
receive the blessing. However, what we are most pleased about is that this
set-up fully integrates our Sunday School with the worship life of our
Parish. We thus avoid ‘ghetto-izing’ our children’s Sunday experience as
something wholly separate and segregated from the rest of our parish’s life.
This arrangement has also received great praise from our seniors who
otherwise would not see, let alone get to know, the children of the parish.
In essence it facilitates inter-generational worship and contact. The
children who, in some instances, live far from their natural grandparents or
who are estranged from them, now get to see and interact with caring,
friendly people their grandparents’ age.
Children as young as
3 may try-out our Sunday School with, of course, the understanding that
maturity levels vary. Once the children have matured sufficiently, Fr Hebb
teaches confirmation classes every second year to the 11 and 12 year olds.
Instruction begins in September and lasts until May with attendance in class
and at weekly worship mandatory elements of the experience. The goal of this
approach again is integration into the broader life of the Parish.
After the rite of confirmation, a
range of options are offered to our youth for further participation in
worship and Christian service. Training as servers at the altar, public
readers of Scripture lessons and as greeters/sidemen are all offered and
encouraged.
A special initiative
of our Parish is the annual Saint Michael’s Youth Conference. This highly
successful and very popular conference designed for youth ages 13 to 20
occurs each August. The very high retention rate speaks of its popularity
with the youth who return year after year – many of the older teens spending
their own hard earned funds to attend. Unique among ‘Christian’ camps for
its unapologetic emphasis upon teaching the content of the Faith, the camp
combines the expected recreational activities with three mandatory classes
each morning. The camp also stresses traditional worship with daily morning
and evening prayer an accepted and embraced aspect of this distinctive
camping experience. |
