Starting a parish youth group

[Bibbet]

We are starting a youth group at our church using apologetics as the main activity. After the apologetics the teens will do another “fun” activity. We will be following the Beginning Apologetics book.

I am wondering if anyone has suggestions for the best way to do apologetics with teens, keeping it interesting and usable. Some of these teens may not know much at all about the faith.

I heard that Jesse Romero was using apologetics with teens. Does anyone know about his method and its success. We want the teens to learn it well enough to put it into practice.

Any advice from experiences of what works and what does not work will be appreciated.

 

[kage_ar]

At the overwhelming request of the teens and parents, our Sr High Youth Group is focused on Scriptural Apologetics.

We purchased $8 Bibles for each of them, at each meeting we have colored pencils and hi-lighters, and we encourage them to get to KNOW Scripture. OUr goal is by the end of the term, these teens will have dog-eared marked up Bibles and actually be able to converse with those non-Catholics who will try to destroy their Faith!

There are copies of the CCC on hand in the youth room too, the kids will each get one of those later in the year.

THE TEENS ARE LOVING IT - we are growing every single week (this youth group had been dwindiling down to only 3 - 5 kids each week prior to the Scriptural Apologetics shift).

We have a great head teacher, and a caring team.

One of the fun things we did last week - we played “Are you smarter than a 5th grader”. Using the CCD text books for grades 1-5, they played in two teams answering the questinos right out of those text books. We all had a blast!

 

[Pete99]

I am a full time catholic youth minister and I incorporate apologetics into all I do with the teens. At the last parish I worked at (before moving to the southern U.S.) we had one whole youth group devoted to apologetics. I don’t want to take up a ton of forum space here but if you send me a private message with your email I will send you my contact info and we can converse elsewhere. I would be happy to let you know how I do apologetics with teens.