On faith: Organizing youth group meetings

Shadi and Chris Nolen

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About a year ago, we decided to form a junior youth group in Gig Harbor for kids around the age of our youngest son, Linden, who just turned 14 this March.

We started with a group of Baha’i kids from 12 to 15 years old and any of their friends who wanted to participate. We decided to do this because some workbooks were recently made available for his age group that have stories teaching moral lessons.

The group takes turns reading from the story, then there are comprehension questions to ask the group to stimulate conversation. Each person gets a copy of the workbook, so they write the answers to the questions in their own book.

This type of meeting is also a way for youth to get to know each other and talk about things that matter to all of us but which we don’t often talk about if we are just watching movies or playing video games all the time.

We meet about 7 p.m. on the first and third Fridays of each month.

Before we start the lessons, there are a couple of other things we do first. We start after everyone gets settled in by picking something to read from a book we brought or find available to us. Some of these are poems or books of daily inspirational writing, and there are also books with selected quotes from various world religions, including the Baha’i Faith.

This is a calming time and inspirational, too. It helps us transition from the socializing that naturally happens when friends get together so we can focus on trying to learn some kind of lesson.

After that, but before we start the workbook, we do a few group games to get us relaxed and thinking and working as a group. An example is sitting around in a circle, whispering a phrase into the ear of the person to your left and seeing how close the phrase is when it gets back to you.

This also reinforces one of the reasons why we don’t want to spread gossip.

Another one is to have one person leave the room and then the group picks one person to do some kind of action or movement or sound which everyone else will copy. That person will occasionally change the action, and everyone in the group is supposed to copy them immediately so the person who was out of the room has a hard time guessing who the leader is.

After three wrong guesses, you can have another person leave the room and pick a new random leader.

The goals of these workbook study classes is intellectual and spiritual excellence. That means to acquire useful knowledge and practical skills to be useful to ourselves and to humanity.

Then to learn how to develop spiritual qualities (virtues) that benefit our souls and are also a positive influence on those around us. To round out the class, we have a fun craft or art project to exercise our creative side.

In addition, we plan various outings to be of service somehow. So far we have helped a local church serve free lunches, pulled up non-native ivy at a park, volunteered at the humane society and helped serve dinners at the Tacoma Rescue Mission.

The virtue of service is a prominent one in our faith. Here is a typical quote from the Baha’i sacred writings relating to service:

“Soon will your swiftly-passing days be over, and the fame and riches, the comforts, the joys provided by this rubbish-heap, the world, will be gone without a trace. Summon ye, then, the people to God, and invite humanity to follow the example of the Company on high. Be ye loving fathers to the orphan, and a refuge to the helpless, and a treasury for the poor, and a cure for the ailing. Be ye the helpers of every victim of oppression, the patrons of the disadvantaged. Think ye at all times of rendering some service to every member of the human race.”

Shadi and Chris Nolen of Gig Harbor are filling in for Dr. Chris Gilbert, who is on vacation this week. For more information, visit www.bahai.org.