Special Youth Feature
successful program s for today’s youth
by George Santa, Director, Christian Workers’ Service ’Bureau
plagued by a monotonous, dying-in-a-rut sameness in their weekly programs that keeps young people away in alarm ing number. So routine is the meeting pattern followed in many groups that an absent member, simply by keeping an eye on his watch, can know exactly what is taking place dur ing any part of the meeting, though he may be miles away at the time. He knows that at 6:10 (ten minutes late, that is) the songleader, breathless and frustrated, bursts into the room, grabs a song book and, fumbling through it, requests from members, one or two choruses. Favorites, yes, but worn threadbare by overuse, are sung. A few other songs follow. Prayer is next. Then the Scrip ture reading. Then announcements and offering (taken on a hymn-book), followed possibly by a special musical THE KING'S BUSINESS
I n o b s e r v in g youth groups in action today, I so often think of the plant foreman who failed to get a much- coveted promotion. His claim that he deserved it because of his “ twenty-five years’ experience with the company” was shattered by the president’s counter-claim that “he had not had twenty-five years’ experience at all. He had merely had ONE year’s experience TWENTY-FIVE times.” Today’s typical youth group, as I have observed it, doesn’t have fifty-two youth meetings a year. It merely has one meeting fifty-two times. While it is true that many youth groups and their leaders are awakening to the need for re-vitalizing their youth program, there are still a vast number who are
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