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My service hours each week are now dedicated to promoting a non-profit that holds orienteering meets where youth and adults use a map and compass to find control flags placed in unfamiliar territory. As part of this service, I do all the promotion of events, design of loyalty programs, and also put on free beginner’s clinics to introduce people to the sport. One group I’ve learned about is Trail Life. Apparently they are a split-off from Scouting by right wing groups who don’t support Scouting’s movement to more inclusive policies.
This go me thinking about the Church’s split from scouting, and its implementation of a new program for youth.
What do you know about this new program? And how is it working? What are its strengths and challenges?I was exiting church participation and the girls’ Achievement Day participation when the church was shifting to the youth program. I know what the Activity Day budget was in 2018 and 2019 as I was in charge of it and we didn’t do a ton of stuff with the boys. In 2020 – 2021, I was still in theory in charge of Activity Days, but we really didn’t do anything due to shutdowns. Fall 2021 I was exiting everything and “out of the Activity Day loop” from January 2022 to January 2024 when my younger child “qualified for” senior primary and Activity Days.
We haven’t gone to any activities (reasons), but I am in communication sometimes with the Primary Presidency and the leader. I get the emails now because it is important to me to see if there are any activities that will benefit my family by having my child attend (namely service projects). I am also plugged in to getting some of the youth emails, but the relationship my oldest has to the other teens at church is oil and water at best, acid-base reaction at worst (with a fizzling self-destruct element).
2-3 of my mom friends had boys of scouting age and they shared a little bit of what their experiences contained over the years. “Friend of a Friend” may be a generous attribution of the accuracy of my information. We live in the rural Midwest with a lot of “genteel farmers”, blue collar workers, educators, and paperwork administrators amongst a fair amount of churches.
Here is the impression I have of “what’s changed”:
– I knew how much the activities cost when I was running them. At some point in 2021 to 2023, My friend (who has been in the leadership of Primary programs for forever) made an offhand comment at the New Year after the BSA shift that the Activity Day program had more money in the budget. She was slightly selling it as a good thing / a good change (which I think it is.
– My mom friend with a boy active in Scouts talked about the adjustment of calendars and integration into a new pack as they joined a secular pack with several other denominations. There was nonverbal indications of unease because the mom and the son did not know the character of the other boys and the other leaders. There was also a sense of relief as my mom friend didn’t need to run the pack anymore for our ward. NOTE: I got the sense that this unease went beyond “kid sports” because our church organization has paid so much more attention to the scouting program then the sports programs to raise our sons – this shift to be more intentional in what our sons participate in and potentially join secular versions of the scouting program seemed to be more risky.
– In scanning the emails, I have a sense that most of the activities are combined with the boys. I don’t know if it is a function of our area’s resources or a deliberate shift into non-gender-segregated participation. The balance seems to be 60/40 or 70/30 in terms of “church-centric” activities branded as “spiritual” activities.
In terms of practical application, I feel that the young men do not have any youth program in lieu of scouts. There is no curriculum and it seems that the activities are just made up.
AmyJ wrote:
The balance seems to be 60/40 or 70/30 in terms of “church-centric” activities branded as “spiritual” activities.
I agree that often there are church centric activities. We visit the family history center and are tutored by the librarians. We have a presentation by the missionaries and have a mini role plays acting out a day in the life of a missionary. We have temple trips and service projects. And we also have basketball, pickleball, and other assorted activities.
I know that scouting was expensive and that it meant for a huge disparity in spending for the boys and not the girls. They are certainly more equal now.
I lost pulse on the new program right at the time when the church was making the transition and I think youth activities suffered quite a bit during that transitionary period. I could best describe it as a movement from something to nothing during that period. Today I think a lot of it comes down to the strength of the youth leaders. I know the new program is supposed to be driven by the youth themselves but in my experience kids that are enthusiastic enough to drive the program are the exception, not the norm. It still comes down to the youth leaders and how enthusiastic they are to have a calling to work with the youth.
I don’t have youth anymore so I can’t say where the program has settled now that it’s been around for a while.
nibbler wrote:
Today I think a lot of it comes down to the strength of the youth leaders. I know the new program is supposed to be driven by the youth themselves but in my experience kids that are enthusiastic enough to drive the program are the exception, not the norm. It still comes down to the youth leaders and how enthusiastic they are to have a calling to work with the youth.
The program was “always” supposed to be driven by the youth (in theory). At the youth level, I wouldn’t know.
In our family, we are celebrating the autonomy gains made in self-care, introspection, and community care (family level). And most of those gains were made possible by “boundary work” on my part, Ross Greene’s Explosive Child work, and KC Davis’s “Functional Neurodivergent Living” work [If I could, I would get each one of you a copy of “How to Keep House While Drowning” because it’s the book I needed 5-7 year ago].
For most teens, those gains are milestones reached at 7/10/12 years of age (and my 15 year old is comparing their experience to what they pick up about other teens and agonizing about it).
nibbler wrote:
I know the new program is supposed to be driven by the youth themselves
In my experience this becomes the perfect justification to turn the tables on anyone that has anything negative to say.
“You don’t like it? Did you know that this program is led and driven by you as the youth? We adults are just here to help facilitate. You should probably get busy planning better activities.”
Doesn’t seem like the suggestion box goes anywhere.
My own son visited another church youth group and they took all the youth to get frozen yogurt. My son asked me why our church doesn’t do FroYo? I told him that it was probably a fluke and that he shouldn’t expect FroYo often. He visited again about a month later and they did FroYo again.
😮 For my son, this question of why his church doesn’t do FroYo continues…
AmyJ wrote:
The program was “always” supposed to be driven by the youth (in theory). At the youth level, I wouldn’t know.
That’s true. I don’t know about YW but with YM at least Boy Scouts provided a framework. When it came to answering the question, “What do we do tonight?” it could be the difference between, “I dunno, that requirement for Star Scout I guess.” vs., “I dunno.”
Roy wrote:
My own son visited another church youth group and they took all the youth to get frozen yogurt. My son asked me why our church doesn’t do FroYo?
It’s not a charitable opinion but it’s an opinion. The church invests in many things, its own members doesn’t appear to be one of them. After tithing there’s not much left to go around for froyo and wards don’t get enough back by way of a budget for froyo.
I muscled through the “every activity must have a gospel purpose” years. I don’t know what the spirit of that approach was but in practice it felt like the church was only concerned with how everything that takes place at church helps grow the church, forgetting that growing the individual grows the church better than growing the church grows the church.
Having activities helps to build a community and activities require resources. Tithed members are lighter on resources. I’ll try to rein it in but billions in a bank doesn’t build a community. The rubber never meets the road if the rubber is squirrelled away in an investment portfolio. Building more temples doesn’t build a community either. The dead don’t enjoy froyos as much as the living.
nibbler wrote:
That’s true. I don’t know about YW but with YM at least Boy Scouts provided a framework. When it came to answering the question, “What do we do tonight?” it could be the difference between, “I dunno, that requirement for Star Scout I guess.” vs., “I dunno.”
When I was doing Activity Days, I created my own framework for activities that created space for me in transition and was in my child’s developmental range. We did paper-folding with the girls 1x and for most of the girls it was fine (they may have been slightly underwhelmed but figured it out and played around). It was not in my daughter’s skillset range (I over-estimated it), and it wound up triggering an anxiety attack (in essence) for her. This isn’t a “squishy mom” thing – it truly was outside her base autonomous capabilities and I didn’t know that then.
nibbler wrote:
It’s not a charitable opinion but it’s an opinion. The church invests in many things, its own members doesn’t appear to be one of them. After tithing there’s not much left to go around for froyo and wards don’t get enough back by way of a budget for froyo.I muscled through the “every activity must have a gospel purpose” years. I don’t know what the spirit of that approach was but in practice it felt like the church was only concerned with how everything that takes place at church helps grow the church, forgetting that growing the individual grows the church better than growing the church grows the church.
Having activities helps to build a community and activities require resources. Tithed members are lighter on resources. I’ll try to rein it in but billions in a bank doesn’t build a community. The rubber never meets the road if the rubber is squirrelled away in an investment portfolio. Building more temples doesn’t build a community either. The dead don’t enjoy froyos as much as the living.
This one has bitten me in the butt regularly over the years. I was privileged to attend a Catholic Marriage Encounter with my husband a few years ago. It wasn’t what I expected (and I had been doing my research to know what to expect). But one of the side take-aways I got was that men and women were volunteering for this experience to be assisting because they were personally and passionately “called” to the work of “making marriage sacred ground” instead of “battle grounds”. It was a teaching seminary daily level of commitment to complete strangers (who don’t even have to be part of the faith).
AmyJ wrote:The program was “always” supposed to be driven by the youth (in theory). At the youth level, I wouldn’t know.In our family, we are celebrating the autonomy gains made in self-care, introspection, and community care (family level). And most of those gains were made possible by “boundary work” on my part, Ross Greene’s Explosive Child work, and KC Davis’s “Functional Neurodivergent Living” work [If I could, I would get each one of you a copy of “How to Keep House While Drowning” because it’s the book I needed 5-7 year ago].
For most teens, those gains are milestones reached at 7/10/12 years of age (and my 15 year old is comparing their experience to what they pick up about other teens and agonizing about it).
This has always been the case. The youth are supposed to drive the program. But any youth leader who is worth their salt recognizes that the youth are all at different levels and need different styles of leadership for the program to be successful. In my experience, we could make the youth programs more youth-driven as a Stake Young Men’s president (due to a deeper bench of capable youth). But in most cases, I had to take the lead in planning the activities, the calendar and leading the boys youth organization.
It doesn’t sound like this new youth program has really taken root — are there recognitions in Sacrament meeting for youth who have achievements in the new program?Can anyone articulate what the new program even involves?SilentDawning wrote:
Can anyone articulate what the new program even involves?
I’ll give it a stab. Their new program has an unfortunate mnemonic/acronym. Physical Intellectual Spiritual Social. At least people with a
😈 mindset will arrange them in that order.When I say it’s driven by the youth I really mean it. It’s meant to be down to what the individual youth wants to work on and it’s all about setting and meeting goals in one of those four categories. They want to set a goal to learn the guitar solo from Comfortably Numb? That’s the goal. They work at it and report back on their progress.
Where the rest of the youth come in is that the youth with the goal of playing the solo from Comfortably Numb can suggest an activity for the youth as a group to learn to play the song as a “band.” Something like that.
That’s the theory but I can’t say I’ve seen much goal setting and goal reporting. Maybe that’s all taking place within the family setting.
nibbler wrote:
SilentDawning wrote:
Can anyone articulate what the new program even involves?
I’ll give it a stab. Their new program has an unfortunate mnemonic/acronym. Physical Intellectual Spiritual Social. At least people with a
😈 mindset will arrange them in that order.When I say it’s driven by the youth I really mean it. It’s meant to be down to what the individual youth wants to work on and it’s all about setting and meeting goals in one of those four categories. They want to set a goal to learn the guitar solo from Comfortably Numb? That’s the goal. They work at it and report back on their progress.
Where the rest of the youth come in is that the youth with the goal of playing the solo from Comfortably Numb can suggest an activity for the youth as a group to learn to play the song as a “band.” Something like that.
That’s the theory but I can’t say I’ve seen much goal setting and goal reporting. Maybe that’s all taking place within the family setting.
I got so mad at the video they used to roll it out. A cub scout kid was struggling with reading and made it a goal to practice every day.
- They wrote it down in the church paperwork goal.
- The mom and the siblings are specifically called out as reading with/to this kid most days to support the kid in their struggles.
Then because “they wrote it down in an inspired program”, the “improvement credit” is shared with the primary program [even though they may have been giving some community cheers and affirmations when they saw the kid].
In my book, it is downright rude to tell a story about a kid, family, and school success story as the rollout for a church program. I could not tell you what the church program did exactly for this kid except pushed his family to be the “home centric, community supported” model they were going for.
Related: I HATED the goal setting aspect. My child would fob off the goal-setting verbalization process to me and then if I actually came up with a goal – would proceed to fight me tooth and nail about it AND usually have a skill regression flare up so that in this 1 highlighted area, we had gotten further behind not closer to any goal or goal post. The few times I started any form of conversation about that, the leaders/parents shrugged their shoulders and were like, “My kid was super excited, so I can’t help you – maybe a smaller goal?”.
NOTE: My child deals with something called “Demand Avoidance” as one of their traits. It’s very common with ASD and ADHD and is a very “non-righteous” trait that offends the Protestant religious-work ethic we integrated into our culture at some point. There are different tactics that are useful in working with these kids – but “pull a goal out of your hat, let us know how we can support you, and have fun” is not one of them.
SHORT ANSWER:
I think that their primary youth framework is not “by revelation” enough to have provided robust enough supports to deal with this extreme demand avoidance in a positive way (if such a unicorn is even possible). I haven’t seen any YW activities (outside of stake service activities) that were worth me investigating them further.
nibbler wrote:
When I say it’s driven by the youth I really mean it. It’s meant to be down to what the individual youth wants to work on and it’s all about setting and meeting goals in one of those four categories. They want to set a goal to learn the guitar solo from Comfortably Numb? That’s the goal. They work at it and report back on their progress.Where the rest of the youth come in is that the youth with the goal of playing the solo from Comfortably Numb can suggest an activity for the youth as a group to learn to play the song as a “band.” Something like that.
That’s the theory but I can’t say I’ve seen much goal setting and goal reporting. Maybe that’s all taking place within the family setting.
Yes, I agree that this is how it was presented at roll out. My son and daughter both have goals and my wife and I are very involved in helping them to reach those goals. I can’t imagine how we as a family would go about approaching the church for help with these goals. In nibbler’s example “the youth with the goal of playing the solo from Comfortably Numb can suggest an activity for the youth as a group to learn to play the song as a “band.” Something like that.” I feel that if my child were the youth in question, then in practice it would fall to our family to organize the activity for the youth as a group to learn the song. It would just be adding more work.
AmyJ wrote:
In my book, it is downright rude to tell a story about a kid, family, and school success story as the rollout for a church program. I could not tell you what the church program did exactly for this kid except pushed his family to be the “home centric, community supported” model they were going for.
Right, it is basically just personal goal setting with a “return and report” structure overlaid on top. I personally would welcome somebody meeting with us as a family to find out about our kids, their goals, and brainstorming how the ward might help.
SilentDawning wrote:
It doesn’t sound like this new youth program has really taken root — are there recognitions in Sacrament meeting for youth who have achievements in the new program?
As I understand it, there are not achievements other than personal goal setting and success. I have not seen any recognitions in SM for these things.
nibbler wrote:
The dead don’t enjoy froyos as much as the living.
This reminded me of the bible verse Luke 20:38
Quote:He is not the God of the dead, but of the living
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