Standing outside the Cariboo Christian Life Fellowship (CCLF) on a Wednesday evening, passersby might be surprised to hear the sounds of music and children’s laughter permeating the night air, but the occurrence isn’t an unusual one at all.
Every Wednesday night, Carter Froese leads a group of roughly 50 children through an evening of collaborative learning, music-making, and sharing together at CCLF in the 108 Mile Ranch.
On Sept. 18 the Kingdom Youth group gathered for the third time since their summer break to enjoy another evening of community together. About 40 children attended Wednesday’s group, competing in word-search games using The 100 Mile Free Press and The Cariboo Connector, but also playing games like tongue twister in teams, too.
Froese has been the youth pastor for the Cariboo Christian Life Fellowship for over five years. He said that his work with the youth ministry is all about fostering a sense of healthy community for young people.
“During the school year it’s a little more structured, it tends to be at the church every time,” said Froese, noting that over the summer Kingdom Youth tends to downscale its activities, but still meets a few times to play volleyball or soccer.
During the school year, the CCLF youth group meets every Wednesday from 6:30 to 9 p.m.
“Our youth group has a name, it’s Kingdom Youth, but most people don’t know it by that,” explained Froese.
Kingdom Youth is open to children from Grade 8 through 12 and regularly sees between 50 to 60 students at their events.
Each Wednesday, the children usually hang out first and play a few games to engage with one another relationally. Next comes the evening’s announcements, before everyone joins together to play some music. Following their jam session, the group typically makes time for a bit of reflection and teaching.
“We try to keep it as true to the bible as we can, as relevant to teenagers lives and where they’re at as we can and generally that’s about 20 minutes to a half-hour. Then we go into small group time.”
One of the biggest focuses of the church’s youth ministry is surrounding students with a healthy community.
“Parents are the primary voice in a student’s life. They always will be and that’s how it should be. But as students are developing independence and figuring out self-identity, we find that more often than not, they’re starting to look for other voices. They’re looking for other adults who will support them and be there for them. That’s where we do a small group format where every student is connected, not just with the youth community as a whole, but with a solid adult who walks with them for actually quite a few years, if everything goes well.”
Students are also connected with other positive adult influences through monthly get-togethers with families that the church knows and trusts.
“We just really do our best to surround students with as much healthy community as we possibly can, because at the end of the day we think it’s relationships and people that give students the best chance of success.”
Small group time allows students to talk about the lessons they’ve been taught and ask questions, too.
“Then we just hang out at the end,” said Froese. “Hangout and have snacks and food for the last 20 minutes.”
When Froese first moved to the community, he noticed about a 60/40 per cent split in the Kingdom Youth population.
“40 per cent were students who were from our church community, 60 per cent were students just from the community who had been invited and wanted to come. Now, I would say that’s probably reversed.”
Everyone is welcome, Froese emphasized, noting that the church has an open door policy.
“If you’re [in] Grade 8 through 12 and you enjoy the environment and want to be there, you’re welcome to be there. We do our absolute best to make sure that every student belongs.”
Froese feels that perhaps the reversal in attendance from the church and outside community could be the result of a focus shift. Previously, CCLF did not have the infrastructure and staff to run its youth ministry as it does today.
“We weren’t really set up to give that number of students the kind of environment that we wanted to. So a lot of what we’ve been doing has been kind of infrastructure building. It’s building people, building good leaders, good mentors. Building good structures and systems, getting families from our local community who are willing to invest in the lives of other students.”
The last few years have been productive for the church and this year, Froese expects to see CCLF’s youth ministry grow.
Roughly once every four weeks, Kingdom Youth takes a small group of students off-site to build deeper relationships between the students and their community. The trip usually takes the form of a relaxed hangout activity at someone’s home but may also mean taking on a local service project like chopping wood for a widow or making freezer meals for someone in need.
“This is a new initiative for us but we are hoping to partner strategically with local organizations who could use a handful of students for an hour on a Wednesday night to make a notable difference in people’s lives.”
At the end of the day, Froese said that CCLF is about people.
“We are a church, we are about Jesus, we are about bible and prayer and all of those things. That is our world view,” added Froese. “That is a massive heartbeat of who we are, but at the end of the day, it should motivate us to love people. In my case and in the case of our leaders, we just want to love students. We’re going to do that whether they agree with us or believe the same thing we do or not. We are going to do our best to love them.”
raven.nyman@100milefreepress.net
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