LIFE TEEN at St. Richard Church…

You Are Welcome Here

“This is what is needed:  a Church for young people, which will know how to speak to their heart and enkindle, comfort, and inspire enthusiasm in it with the joy of the Gospel and the strength of the Eucharist; a Church which with know how to invite and welcome the person who seeks a purpose for which to commit his whole existence; a Church which is not afraid to require much, after having given much; which does not fear asking from young people the effort of a noble and authentic adventure, such as that of the following of the Gospel.”  

 –Pope John Paul II, 1996 World Day of Prayer for Vocations

 

LIFE TEEN is open to high school students in grades 9-12.

 

 

The purpose of the LIFE TEEN Program is to create an environment, which leads high school teenagers into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and His Church.

This mission is accomplished in three ways:

1. Through celebration of the Eucharist.
2. Through the teachings of Christ and the Church.
3. Through an experience of being loved and accepted.

 

What is it?

LIFE TEEN is a comprehensive program designed to minister to high school teens of all faiths from a uniquely Catholic base.  Reaching teens on spiritual, emotional, and social levels, LIFE TEEN responds to the need to be loved, offering meaning and direction and hope in a world plagued with indifference, aimlessness, and shallow materialism.

To provide this direction, LIFE TEEN encourages teens to embark on a journey of faith in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ and His Church.  At a bi-weekly LIFE TEEN Mass, teens experience the depths of God's love through the Word, the teen community, and the Eucharist.  All teens are welcome to gather around the altar as a family to intimately experience the Eucharistic celebration.

Every week, trained youth ministers and core members lead the teens deeper into their Catholic faith in the LIFE Night experience, building from the Mass.  Teens grow as a faith community, growing in understanding of what it means to be young and Catholic in the world today.

LIFE TEEN follows the Church's mandate to make Jesus Christ the center of everything that we do.  It is centered on Jesus, in particular Jesus in the Eucharist.  To that end, LIFE TEEN is a total youth ministry program that tries to reach teens of all kinds.  This means teens of different social and economic groups, different cultures and race, different interests, talents and spiritual maturity. LIFE TEEN ministers to the “churched” and the “unchurched.”

LIFE TEEN is open to all high school teens freshman through senior year.  It is important, however, to make a distinction between the junior high (middle school) ministry, and the (senior high) LIFE TEEN program.  Proper and effective catechesis necessitates separating the two age groups. Failing to do so labels it a "junior high" program and hinders older teens from coming.  However, teens of all faiths are invited to come.

No formal attendance is taken.  There is no registration and no fees are collected.  The reason for this is to more easily effect LIFE TEEN's goal of having teens come to a deeper, more personal relationship with Jesus.  Teens cannot be coerced into such a relationship.  In the same way, they come to LIFE TEEN because they want to come, not because they have to come.