Last night we had our first youth group meeting of the year!  A great group of high schoolers came out and we had a great time getting to know one another and thinking about our year ahead.

One of the exercises we did was to write a covenant together.  Our youth came up with a list of commitments, hopes, and expectations that they have for their youth group, which I have prefaced with a summary of our discussion.  They got to see me write their thoughts out on a giant note-pad in my generally atrocious handwriting.  Hopefully the format below is a little bit more legible:

Being a part of Saugatuck Congregational Church, we share the conviction that the presence of God in our lives compels us to seek ways in which we may follow the commands of Jesus: to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Saugatuck is an open and affirming congregation of the United Church of Christ, and as such we, its youth group, take seriously the statement “we welcome anyone,” regardless of their “race, ancestry, age, physical or mental ability, gender, sexual orientation, social and economic status, or religious background.”

We as a youth group understand these commitments to mean particular things for our life and community together.  Specifically, we expect from one another, as fellow members of this group, the following basic commitments toward each person in our community:

• Respect
• Trust
• Kindness
• Faith in one another
• Friendship
• Honesty

We as a youth group hope that, in our time of fellowship and community with one another, we will:

• Learn from one another
• Share and grow in our knowledge and in our ability for moral judgment
• Participate together in missions and outreach to the wider community
• Create an environment in which we can be open and honest with one another

We collectively desire that others who see and interact with us will say that our group is:

• Productive
• Inclusive
• Giving
• Kind and Caring
• A family
• Joyful
• Peaceful

We intend for this to be a community which is marked by:

• Love
• Compassion
• Responsibility
• Faith and Religious Belief
• Fun

For a chance to see this awesome group of youth in action, join us next Sunday at Saugatuck Church when the youth lead our worship service and share stories from their mission trip last summer to provide relief work to the victims of Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey.