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. We use various resources to teach the Faith to Christ’s little ones in a combined group setting for 4-12 year olds. Depending on the child’s maturity level, they may be able to start as early as 3 years old. In our Sunday School, we seek to engage young hearts and minds through a combination of worship, music, age appropriate instruction and class activities. Each week we begin with Parish worship in St Peter’s Church. After the service opening, the children, accompanied by a teacher, walk next door to the Parish hall where Sunday School begins at approximately 11:20am and ends at approximately 12:10pm. This arrangement allows teachers and students to join parents at worship for the first part of the Holy Communion service. However, what we are most pleased about is that this set-up fully integrates our Sunday School into 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 Parish 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.