wfn.org | Youth worship service rocks

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Oct. 1, 2003  News media contact: Kathy Gilbert7(615)742-54707Nashville,
Tenn.	ALL{472}

NOTE: This report is a sidebar to story #469. Photographs are available.

A UMNS-UMC.org Report
By Kathy L. Gilbert*

FAIRFAX STATION, Va. (UMNS) - First they climb up on chairs and cover the
huge window in the sanctuary with black garbage bags.

Next they put away the flowers and plants around the altar and install large
highway traffic signs. 

Then come the candles. Lots and lots of candles.

Hot guitar licks and pulsating drum rolls spill out of the sanctuary while an
anxious crowd mills around waiting for the doors to open. The band is warming
up, and an intense young man in a white baseball hat belts out: "God is
bigger than the air I breathe; God will save the day." 

It is the first Sunday night of the month, and it is time for Crave.

Crave is a youth-led, youth-planned worship service that is open to young
people from all over northern Virginia. It began at Fairfax Station Christ
United Methodist Church two years ago.

"Where else can you stand up on the chairs in church and praise the Lord,"
asks a grinning Brandon Child, director of power point ministries for Crave.

Crave usually draws 100 to 300 youth from three districts, says youth
director Taylor Gaddy. 

Gaddy is the "adult" presence during Crave, but he is the first to point out
he is not in charge, it is not his service.

"If we tell him something needs to go or be changed, he listens," says Sara
Massei, a member of the Crave team. "It is our event, and he knows we know
what everyone else our age is going to like."

"He is there to help us, but he lets us make the decisions," agrees Patrick
Mutchler.

"We are going to have to expand the church just for Crave services," Child
says. "We have more people coming to Crave than the church has on Easter!"

Crave is an example of a successful youth program that has received funding
from the denomination's Shared Mission Focus on Young People initiative. The
church's General Conference adopted the initiative in 1996 with the charge of
"re-ordering the priorities of the United Methodist Church to better respond
to the joys and pains of young people."

The initiative provides grants for projects that address the needs of young
people, particularly in ways that can have a broader impact in the church.

"Crave has really taken off with the youth in the area," says Ciona Rouse,
director of the initiative. "It is a worship experience that seems to be a
good model for other churches to reach youth."

More information on grants is available at
http://www.idreamachurch.com/grants.asp.

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
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