On March 16-19th, 2023, First, Ponca City's Next Generation Coordinator and two youth had the opportunity to attend YouthLead 2023 in St Louis. The overarching goal of YouthLead is to "equip teens to develop and use their leadership skills as they serve Christ within their congregations and communities." Jaclynn Heitman and Josie Gales attended as representatives from First Lutheran Church in Ponca City. Here is a recap of their experience:
During our time at YouthLead in St. Louis, we learned a lot about how to lead our congregation and our community. On the first day, we met our groups that we were going to work with for the weekend. In one of our groups we learned how to prepare and lead a devotion. Each group got to prepare a devotion to present in front of everyone that was there. On day two, our first curriculum session was about confession and absolution, we learned the meaning of confession and absolution while also being taught how to put it into practice. Our second curriculum session was about reading scripture, this session gave us a lot of tips on how to read God’s word. We also learned about our strengths in leadership and how they apply to everyday life and it helped us better understand our qualities. On day three, we participated in another session on prayer, this session taught how to be more prepared and confident about what to pray about when asked or when volunteering to pray, and how to lead prayer and what a prayer may look like. One thing we took away from this session was that we need to pray even when we are not struggling with anything. It is very important to us to have a strong prayer life. We look forward to presenting this session at our summer lock-in with our youth. In our last curriculum session, we were reminded of the different parts of the Divine Service and how almost all parts are ways that God serves us in worship service. This experience was great for all of us, and we look forward to not only participating in more events ourselves, but encouraging other youth in our church, circuit, and district to get involved and attend trainings similar to this!
Submitted by Jennifer Heitman, Next Generation Coordinator, First Lutheran Church, Ponca City
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