By Peter Rhomberg
Many parishes have extremely small or non-existent youth groups. This was one of the problems at St. Patrick Parish in Iowa City for a long time.
While we were building our new church building, a youth representative was placed on the building committee to help create a special room for our youth group which was still in the rebuilding phase.
Now we have our own special room, and since we gained this our youth group has begun to increase in numbers. We started out with three members and now have many more. Also, we now have a few new youth ministers who help our main youth minister. I feel that in addition to having great youth ministers, a great room for the youth group is extremely necessary to making sure we have a strong youth group.
The St. Patrick’s youth group, which we have nicknamed iSPY, is very special. We have many devoted volunteers who come most every week to see us and help us to grow in our faith. We also have a lot of fun each week and we all enjoy seeing each other. We talk about themes in Mass, any issues that happen to involve us at a specific time, and plan events for our group to do, such as taking Valentine’s Day goodie bags to the homebound, or planning a service trip to Chicago.
These are aspects that make my parish’s youth group great. Finding a great youth minister and amazing volunteers are among the biggest part of our success, as well has having a place to meet that is all our own.
(Peter Rhomberg is a senior at Regina High School and a member of St. Patrick Parish, both in Iowa City).
