Contellation Ministry Sleepover...or Wakeover

This past Saturday and Sunday at St Mary's Kerrisdale, 32 youth and leaders from six different Churches in Vancouver, Victoria and Coquitlam came together for another Constellation Ministry event. This was the second in a series of sleepover/worship planning events the first of which was held at St Philip's in January. Constellation Ministry seeks to provide youth with opportunities to explore their faith in a broader youth community that includes young people from different parishes and Christian traditions. The sleepover events include both community building through games, meals, and activities as well as spiritual formation through prayer, worship planning and leadership.

This past weekend, though the weather was threatening rain all day Saturday, the sun came through for a couple of hours giving the youth a chance to get out into Elm Park for some fresh air and games. To celebrate the good weather, the youth created dances celebrating the sunshine. They also played extreme versions of duck, duck, goose and rock, paper, scissors.

After the games were done, we returned to St Mary's and welcomed the Rev. Jeremy Clark-King, Rector at St Mary's, who taught the group about the Eucharistic prayer. After a brief introduction to the various parts of this prayer and why they are there, the youth were divided into smaller groups and asked to come up with words and ideas around the themes of praise, thanksgiving, remembering and offering. As a group they shared their ideas and then also developed gestures and actions for the four moments in the Eucharistic prayer: taking, blessing, breaking and sharing. Jeremy took all these ideas and combined them into a Eucharistic Prayer that was used at the 9:15am worship service.

After a few more song and games led by some of the older youth who have begun leadership training through the LEAP programme, we all sat down to a wonderful dinner of tacos prepared by volunteers from St Mary's Community meal. Dessert was a special treat of apple nachos which was greatly enjoyed by all.

With very full bellies we resumed our worship planning for the next morning by breaking into three smaller groups: one to prepare the music, one to prepare the readings and one to create paper prayer trees in the sanctuary. Once the work was finished we played a Church-wide game of infection (where zombies search the Church for delicious youth brains to eat). The day ended with snack and night prayer and then it was off to bed for sleep...or as much sleep as one can expect at a sleepover.

Despite all the night's activities, everyone was up bright and early the next morning to get ready for worship. The group had another wonderful meal, this time prepared by volunteers from St Mary's Men's breakfast group.

The service itself was a chance for many of the youth to offer leadership both by sharing their dramatic interpretations of the readings and by engaging in small group conversations with the rest of the congregation during the reflection time. One of the most wonderful parts of the service were the prayers of the people, where people were invited to write their prayers of praise, concern and thanksgiving on post-it notes shaped like flowers, leaves and apples which were then added to the paper prayer trees which the youth had made the night before. The trees became beautiful, colourful expressions of the Church's prayer and those attending the evening Taizé service were inspired to add their own prayers.