Loading...Author Jennifer Gambler, a popular speaker, retreat leader and workshop presenter on the topics of spirituality, prayer and teen faith formation, will give a workshop in September at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church while she is visiting Louisville.
Gambler has been involved in Christian formation since she began teaching Sunday school as a teenager. She is the author of two widely read books about the Episcopal Church: My Faith, My Life for teenagers and Your Faith, Your Life for adults. Her website, www.myfaithmylife.org, offers a wealth of resources for adults who work with youth. She is the vice-president of the National Association for Episcopal Christian Education Directors, has an active ministry leading confirmation and baptism preparation at her home church, the Cathedral Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Penn., and is a Companion of the Holy Cross. She is currently working toward a Masters of Divinity at the Episcopal Divinity School.
What do teens want from church?
The workshop, "A Safe Place for Authentic Conversation and So Much More - What are Our Teens Yearning For at Church?," will be held from 9:30 a.m. to noon (EDT) Saturday, Sept. 18, at St. Matthew's, 330 N. Hubbards Lane. It is open to everyone who works with children and youth in the church. RSVP Debbi Rodahaffer at drodahaf@stmatt-ky.org
if members of your congregation will attend.
An excerpt from Rodahaffer's description of the workshop's content and purpose provides a glimpse of the questions to be explored and the important place a church can have in the formation of teenager: "For what do our teens hunger? Teens yearn for relationship, for their voices to be heard, to matter, and to be recognized. Church can offer this place, an alternative to the pressures to conformity and identity based on consumerism. Church can offer a safe place for authentic conversation, a place that will not try to manipulate or make teens in our image, but of the image of God. It can be a place to 'get outside one's self' and make a difference in the world. How do we honor our teens? How do we provide them with a language for them to express the spirituality deeply sewn by their creator? This workshop will explore what practices in the church do exactly this.
