NOM

I'm curious about what the youth activities are like in the Church these days. My family is all out and even the youngest is past that age, but we have extended family that are very involved. When I was a teen and as a participating adult I was very involved in youth activities. I continue to participate in a local scout troop.

Another scout leader and I were recently discussing on a drive to an outing how so many churches have dropped their youth programs or youth engagement. The church he grew up in hasn't had a youth or college outreach program for years. The church our troop is currently hosted at used to have a comfy area for youth gatherings, but they kicked us out of that and converted it to ... something. Not sure what.

How are the youth programs in the Mormon Church doing lately? How have things changed since they dropped Scouting for the boys? Are they keeping the youth interested and engaged?

All I have heard is it is a fiasco most places since 1) BSA was removed, 2) New program installed (not sure if installed is the word), 3) Removed the YM President and made the bishop over all the YM activities.

The wife is still holding a calling in young women’s.

From the feedback I see and hear, the youth program hasn’t really changed much. They still hold Wednesday night mutual and do regular activities. Every 4th(?) Wednesday is still joint activity with the Young Men. This last one they had a cake decorating contest with a BoM theme. They are starting to talk about the young women’s summer camp (our stake renamed it from YW’s camp to Summer camp) to try to make more inclusive to non members (that apparently don’t know that it’s going on).

The Young Men gather and do activities and some quorums are still doing camp outs once a quarter. Basketball isn’t always the normal default and it seems it’s heavily dependent on the Bishop.

Perhaps Bishop Graey could chime in and tel us what his ward youth program is like.

In our ward it’s still difficult to get attendance on Wednesday nights above 50% but that’s typically because of other sports practices and competing activities with the high school and part time jobs.

My kids are now past the age where they feel they need to attend since they have jobs. But it doesn’t sound like it’s completely fallen apart now that the Boy Scouts have been abandoned. The Young Women seem to now have an equal budget and plan some fun activities.

The new FSY yearly activity was last summer. It was well attended by the kids from all over the state.

Red Ryder wrote: ↑Sun Mar 05, 2023 8:41 pm But it doesn’t sound like it’s completely fallen apart now that the Boy Scouts have been abandoned. The Young Women seem to now have an equal budget and plan some fun activities.

I wondered if the Church would allow the girl's program to achieve parity. The boy's program is no longer limited to scout-type activities, but I also wonder if they are capturing the boy's interests.

moksha wrote: ↑Mon Mar 06, 2023 4:47 pm

Red Ryder wrote: ↑Sun Mar 05, 2023 8:41 pm But it doesn’t sound like it’s completely fallen apart now that the Boy Scouts have been abandoned. The Young Women seem to now have an equal budget and plan some fun activities.

I wondered if the Church would allow the girl's program to achieve parity. The boy's program is no longer limited to scout-type activities, but I also wonder if they are capturing the boy's interests.

From what little I know, the emphasis of "scouting" in the YM program has shifted significantly from fun and socializing to more priesthood teaching opportunities. In other words, boring.

Hagoth wrote: ↑Tue Mar 07, 2023 3:45 pm In other words, boring.

The Church does what it knows to do.

This apologetic podcast mourns the demise of interesting youth programs. If you don't mind the apologetics, you can listen to TBM's lament the current programs of the Church and praise the good old days.
"The Spiral Of Silence is Killing the Church (feat. Greg Matsen)
MIDNIGHT MORMONS"

deacon blues wrote: ↑Wed Mar 08, 2023 10:22 am This apologetic podcast mourns the demise of interesting youth programs. If you don't mind the apologetics, you can listen to TBM's lament the current programs of the Church and praise the good old days.
"The Spiral Of Silence is Killing the Church (feat. Greg Matsen)
MIDNIGHT MORMONS"

I don’t think the YW program was ever interesting. When I was a YW we had lessons on being housewives any temple marriage, modesty and chastity, and more temple marriage. Horrible. Then when I was an adult leader, I tried to ask the girls what they wanted. One request was, even though we are not allowed to wear make up yet, can we learn about it so that we don’t make stupid mistakes and look like clowns or our mothers. So we did, and I caught heck from some parents. My own daughter was sneaking off and putting on make up with no mirror before catching the bus, then wiping it off before coming in the house. At 12. When we confronted her, she told us who else. Yup the girls of the two worst parents. Then they requested sewing because “modest clothes” were ugly and they could make things that were cute. I caught heck again from parents because fabric is more expensive than Walmart ugly clothes. Fun activities were only allowed if the boys were involved, which was two weeks of the month, and everything else had to be free. The bishop kept rejecting things the girls actually wanted and suggesting things like tissue paper wedding dresses and lessons on temple marriage, modest fashion shows. We couldn’t do anything outside ward boundaries. We couldn’t spend money. The girls were bored. Personal progress, the YW president really pushed goals that were pure churchy, support priesthood, genealogy…for 12-14 year old girls? Temple marriage and more temple marriage. 12-14 year olds should NOT be planning weddings and dressing up as brides, or journaling about their future husband. They should be paddling kayaks and climbing mountains and building self esteem and talents other than genealogy.

Amen!!

The biggest change I have seen is with the youngest boys. Rather than taking time to practice knots, first aid, or pioneering (all requirements for early badges in scouts), they tend to play a lot more games. The boys in our ward love to throw things at each other (usually dodgeball, sometimes nerf gun wars, sometimes pivot ball, etc.).

We have a small ward, on the best nights we get 12-15 YM, and 7 or 8 YW. Many nights we get half that.

For the YM we hold planning meetings every 6 months and basically just ask the YM what they want to do and then try to make that happen. Our activities have included...

* bowling
* playing dodge ball
* learning how to make guacamole with tons of different ingredient options
* making stop-motion movies
* building tiny catapults before having a 8v8 catapult war in the RS room
* learning sign language
* drawing/art contests
* family history indexing
* service projects for people/families in need
* and on and on

With such a small group, there are largely 2 families who set the energy for the group as a whole. If/when they can't attend it makes it hard to get the other kids to engage.

The YW leaders seem to focus on activities like journaling, making cards for individuals or families, etc. The YW leaders have also asked the YW for specific ideas of what they want to do, but get a pretty lack-luster response. In reality, most of our ward's YW barely tolerate each other and don't really want to come to activities anyway.

Combined (YM+YW) we've done lake day activities, Christmas elephant gift exchanges, invited therapists to come address the group as a whole regarding depression or conflict resolution, etc. The combined activities usually end up being well attended.

I hope they youth enjoy what we do. We put a lot of effort into getting things planned and organized. That said, being both bishop and YM president is a never ending gauntlet of calendar appointments and things to plan next. Just as an activity or meeting ends I hope for a break to catch my breath but realize that there is no time to stop because the next event is coming up already. Some weeks I really do feel like I'm burning out, and I have been guilty of cancelling YM activities for "trivial" circumstances like winter storms or because a certain number of YM were going to be gone and I didn't want to go through the full effort for 2-3 kids.

I try to trade off planning activities with my bishopric counselors but have had waaay to many times when they'll call me the night before and let me know they "forgot" to plan anything and will be out of town for work during the activity. For a while I would try to bail them out with my own backup plans, but now I make them email the entire group + parents and tell them they didn't get the plans finalized so things are cancelled. That is happening less often now.

YW leadership has similar struggles. Two of the 4 active leaders are school teachers and claim to be too busy to come to activities. If either of the other two are sick or have sick kids then YW activities get cancelled too.

While I hope the youth enjoy activities it seems clear that the adults get burned out putting everything together week after week with no framework to build on. I can't see this program lasting for very long in its current state. Big wards with lots of leadership might be able to handle it. But smaller wards like ours just can't. We either need to change leadership frequently to avoid total burnout, or find other ways to lighten the load.

Thanks for the thorough explanation, græy. That sounds like a lot of work for the adults running all of that, especially the amount of work foisted onto the bishop. Doesn't seem like a very good delegation model. I imagine the intent was to focus more of the bishop's attention on the youth, in order to improve retention. I'm not sure that's working.

Do the youth do anything to plan and execute their own activities or is it all up to the adults?


(At a recent meeting of my BSA troop, another adult leader asked if I were going to hand out troop hats to new members. I replied, "I hope to hand out as little as possible. Ask the Senior Patrol Leader." That's supposed to be one of the most common refrains in Scouting.)

Jeffret wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 9:10 am

Do the youth do anything to plan and execute their own activities or is it all up to the adults?

I know this question isn't directed to me, but I'll put my 2 cents in anyway.

If you read the program from the church, they want the youth to plan, lead, and execute their own activities. Adults are just supposed to be there as guides, to do things like ask thought-inspiring questions (e.g. will this activity get your class closer to the Savior?) and provide boundaries to be realistic (e.g. I don't think the ward budget has sufficient funds for a steak dinner for all youth). In theory this works great, the youth are excited to do it, they take ownership over the activities, etc.

The reality of youth leading is that it takes MORE time for an adult leader to get the youth to lead than it does for the adult to just do it themselves. Very few youth will actually take ownership, so it ends up falling back on the adult to remind the youth, coordinate with other youth, have a backup plan forget or no-show, etc.

To me, it's one more way that church leaders are disconnected from the members. Their ideas work great if you live in an affluent ward in Salt Lake (small geography wards) where you have a lot of strong parents with resources that will help their kids, but things don't work out so well where you don't have that.

Red Ryder wrote: They still hold Wednesday night mutual and do regular activities.

Do they still call it mutual?

Not following this very closely although I've got grandkids in whatever the hell they call it.

The news that they gave the young men's president the old heave-ho was news to me.