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Huh!?
This fall, Youth Group offers another 8-week embodiment series, Sundays, 11:30a-1p (lunch provided), September 10-October 29.
What is this?
What the Phone!? will explore the pleasure and pain we experience through smart phones and other social/entertainment-driven screen technology. Wrapped up in our relationship with phones is our body-image, identity performance, how we nurture friendships and romances, how we seek entertainment, how we seek self-expression, how we digest and process information...the list goes on and on! We will use smart phones as the container to talk about what it could mean to be in healthy and mutual relationship with ourselves and others.
What's your angle?
This will not be a "phones are bad and we should all be totally freaked out by what they're doing to our brains" series. Nor will teens without phones be left out. Even if we don't have a phone, we definitely have a relationship with them. The desire to have a phone in our hand is what we will stay curious about. This series is intended to empower youth groupers to pay attention to the habits and norms of the culture and stay playfully suspicious about them as modeled by Jesus in the gospels.
How is this spiritual formation?
At the heart of this series, is the practice of holding safe space for people to express themselves openly and honestly without judgement. So much pain is nurtured by the shame that we are feeling anything at all! Our hunt for pleasure (so often in the form of accessible digital distraction) can be a tool to distract us from being honest about all the feelings we are experiencing. Christ invites us to be "embodied" which is to say, Christ invites us to be authentically us: Beloved and intricate creatures of God who flourish in loving communion with others and the natural world.
Who will be there?
Youth Group is for 7th-12th graders. Depending on the size, we may break-off into smaller groups of middle schoolers and high schoolers for more relevant conversation.
Director of Children and Youth, Diana Small, will facilitate the series accompanied by Youth Mentors Will Barring, Lexi Molloy LCSW, Tim Molloy, Dr. Rachyl Pines, Max Rorty LCSW, and Dr. Aubrey Toole.
We've got educators, artists, counselors, athletes, scholars, and people of faith leading the way (That is to say, modeling honest bravery that we're all struggling to navigate the world, but we have hope!).
I want to know more
Watch the video below as Diana talks more about last year's WTF, what's inspiring this year's WTF, and how we're doing this all together in community.
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