Weekly youth groups all over the place!

Attending weekly Church activities is a great way for young people to connect with their peers and share their faith. This is why this year, St Philip's has teamed up with several other local parishes who have established weekly youth groups to connect youth from St Philip's other young people to share their faith on a weekly basis.

The youth groups that we have connected with on the West Side include: West Point Grey Ecumenical Youth Group and St Mary's Kerrisdale Youth Group. There are separate meetings for junior and senior youth with occasional combined activities. We have also connected with a youth group at Lakeview Multicultural United Church who offer a few different weekly activities.

In West Point Grey, the junior youth group meets Friday evenings from 7:00-9:00pm with their leader, Margaret Evans and the senior youth meet Sunday evenings from 7:00-9:00pm with their leader, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff. Both of the groups rotate between one of three Churches in West Point Grey: St Helen's Anglican, West Point Grey United and West Point Grey Presbyterian. This youth group is already a combined effort and so they were happy to broaden their invitation to St Philip's youth as well. At the last Constellation event, we also discovered that many of the youth in this youth group attend the same schools as those who attend St Philip's. It was a nice surprise for the youth to see some familiar faces and discover that there are other people at their schools involved in faith communities.

At St Mary's Kerrisdale, youth group is held on Monday evening and led by their youth worker, Cameron Gutjahr and other volunteer leaders. The juniors gather after school from 4:30-6:30pm with their volunteer leader Lauren Byrne and the seniors meet from 6:30-8:30pm with the help of their volunteer leader, Kim Blair. Since we began working together on other youth ministry projects, I have also been attending youth group at St Mary's and lending a hand where I can. It is great to get to know another group of youth and hopefully this makes it easier for St Philip's youth to connect to this group. St Mary's and St Philip's have a lot in common with each other, and not just because we are in the same neighbourhood. Two St Philip's staff members, Parish Administrator Anne Richards and Communications Consultant Shaun McLean, are St Mary's parishioners. Plus, our choirs will be getting together to do some combined ministry in the next few months: on May 5th they will be singing a combined Evensong at St Philip's and on June 9th at St Mary's. It is wonderful to be able to collaborate with another parish in so many different ways!

I hope that the youth of St Philip's are able to take advantage of these opportunities to be part of a weekly youth group.