"I Have Seen the Lord. Come and See"

Yesterday while I was with some of my friends we were discussing about different ways to get more of the youth involved in the youth group. We have a nice sized youth-group, but we could always use more people. One of the main changes the year is the time of our youth Mass. Once a month the youth have a Mass that they are "in charge" of. They are supposed to do all the different ministries for the Mass. I was telling my friends that the youth Mass time changed from the normal six p.m. time in the evening to the noon Mass because our numbers were pretty low last year. My friends seemed somewhat sad about that, but I can see why the time needed to change.
While talking about the youth Mass, the youth bulletin came up. We try to get one out once a month. The person who kind of puts it all together was kind of down about the bulletin because she wished more people would sent in more interesting things for it. That's when the idea of using some of my blog entries for it came up. I don't know why I never really thought about putting some of my entries in it before. When the suggestion came up, I was somewhat hesitant to agree to is, which I guess is kind of silly. I mean, I write it here on the internet for everyone to see. I guess it is a little different watching people read what you wrote while you're sitting across from them, rather than never really knowing when people are reading it on here and what they are really thinking about my random posts. I figure though, that if the youth find it interesting than why not. I just have to figure out which ones I want to post....
Another suggestion that was brought up to the whole Mass time change, is to have an ongoing Bible study. I kind of laughed at that. I mean, I don't mind giving talks at retreats or leading sports stuff or helping our with youth Masses, but me and Bible studies do not get along very well. I would not even know what to have the high schoolers study each week. Then I mentioned about taking an hour during our parish's "first Friday" adoration time in the evening and then afterwords hanging out and doing something social. I think that would be kind of cool.
Another idea I had was having our own kind of "holy hour" thing on Sunday nights, only I would not call it "holy hour." I do like the idea of having a different person each week come up with something reflective about our faith each week, like a mini-retreat. I think that would be interesting to see happen too, although I do not know how many people would be interested in something like that.
I also would love to push more retreats like "Consumed" and "Steubie" conferences, and other things like that to the youth in some way. I know that once I went to those types of retreats I was never the same person. "Consumed" retreats are retreats focused all on Eucharistic adoration. I wrote a post more about why I just love these retreats, and you can read more about it here. If you want to see a promotional video, you can click here. I am tempted to ask and see if we can show the youth this little video when it comes closer to the "Consumed" retreat, and see if that would cause anyone to be more interested in it.... Anyway, the theme from that retreat is, "I have seen the Lord. Come and see."
I cannot wait until my friend who is also kind of "in charge" of the youth group gets back into town so I can mention some of these ideas to her and see what she thinks. If someone has another interesting suggestion I'd be happy to hear it. :) I just really want to get these kids excited and on fire about their faith, after all, they are the future of the Church... Just like the "Consumed" saying above, I want these kids to really fall in love with their faith and then become beacons of God's love in hopes of bringing other people closer to Him... I guess we'll see how this year goes.