Youth Ministry Update – April 2021

Putting God at the Center of the College Search Process 

Imagine buying a house without being able to walk through the rooms, or buying a car without being able to test-drive it. The thought is anxiety-inducing, to say the very least. 

For our high schoolers who have set their sights on college or university after graduation, junior year is the time to start the college search process in earnest: conduct research, make lists, visit campuses, and talk with admissions representatives. However, that process, as with so many other things, has been seriously disrupted byt he pandemic, and has to be reinvented. College admissions representatives are not allowed inside schools to do their presentations, and college campuses are not open for tours. 

To help the eleventh-graders of the church navigate this complicated process, they have been meeting online twice a month with Becka Fergusson-Lutz, Interim Coordinator for Youth Ministry. (Becka also works as an Admissions Reader at the University of Rochester, and taught high school and college English and ESL for many years.) The youth have been talking about the ways in which people of faith make major life decisions, and examining their own priorities for the future. They have also been meeting online with admissions representatives from colleges of interest to them, including St. Lawrence University, the University of Rochester, SUNY Binghamton, Duquesne University, and Syracuse University. The goal is to develop an attitude of prayerful openness to God’s leading in their lives, wherever that may take them.  

The entire YOUth@Third group had a fun and restorative ice-skating afternoon in early March: