Youth Ministry Connection

On Sunday I went to Lord of the Mountains Lutheran Church again. I had been going there somewhat consistently until the summer, for some reason. I checked out a different church, I was out of town some weekends, and some Sunday mornings I just woke up too darn late to make it to church.

Anyway, back in the spring LOTM had a Theo Talk (discussion/presentation after the service) about youth ministry. Catie Greene, the priest for St. Francis Episcopal Church (which meeting in LOTM's building), was the presenter. We got in some discussion as a group and it was very interesting to me. I was happy they were talking about the importance of youth ministry, but it didn't appear to me that there was any type of youth program whatsoever. Maybe that was one of the reasons I wasn't too sure about becoming a member there.

So, I looked in the back of the bulletin at yesterday's service to see what the Theo Talk topic would be and, to my surprise, it was "10 Things You Should Know About Youth Ministry," again led by Catie Greene. What do you know? I went to the discussion and it turns out the LOTM and St. Francis are joining together to start a youth ministry program. They are currently in need of discussion leaders/mentors for the confirmation program!

I went to ask Catie a couple of questions after her talk and the man who was sitting in front of me the whole session asked my name. I introduced myself and he said his name was Bill. Bill is an older gentleman, perhaps in his 50's or 60's. He got very animated all of a sudden and said, "You're Ruth! You're the one who was here at the last youth ministry talk we had! I've been hoping you would return. When we were brainstorming about people to get involved, I tried to find out how to contact you. I remembered that you worked at Keystone, so I was planning on calling HR to see if they knew of any employees named Ruth, so that we could contact you about this. And, you choose to show up today of all days! This is meant to be!"

I was honored that they remembered me. In all fairness, I don't think this church has many people in their 20's, so that was probably one thing that set me apart in their minds. But, still, I was grateful to be there that day to find out about these opportunities and I'm happy about a chance to get involved with something that is really important to me. I've been feeling a bit prompted to invest myself in some area of service or participation in a church community, but I've been dragging my feet a bit. Not anymore! I can't deny the way things came together for me to find out about getting involved in this. Plus, it's pretty exciting to be a part of something from the very beginning. We'll see what happens.