33 Ways You Know You Were A Youth Group Kid
Hey, can I borrow your Jars of Clay CD to bring to the lock-in?
1. You were so excited that your crush was also going to the lock-in.
2. You know ALL the hand motions to “Lord I Lift Your Name On High.”
3. You had one of these. (Extra point if you had your name embossed on the cover in gold.)
4. You at one point decided to kiss dating good-bye.
6. This was the greatest album you’d ever heard.
9. You burned all of your secular CDs at a church bonfire but then “backslid” and bought new copies of everything.
10. You used curse word substitutes like “son of a biscuit,” “frickin’,” “what the fudge,” and “dad gum it.”
13. Every Wednesday night you were at Fuel, The Edge, Fire, Reverb, The Blaze, Kindle, or Echo.
15. You went on a mission trip to Mexico, Guatemala, Haiti, Ghana, Nicaragua, Uganda, or Venezuela.
20. You prayed at school during “See You at the Pole.”
22. You knew the best Sunday school kids had Bibles that looked like this.
23. You were encouraged to “share your testimony” with your classmates.
24. You went to TGI Friday’s after youth group with a party of 14, and everyone ordered water.
25. You knew the most important question in the world was “How far is too far?”
26. You had that one girl who would always cry and be dramatic when praying out loud. (Or you WERE that girl.)
28. Instead of Halloween, you went to your church’s “Harvest Festival.”
29. All the concerts you went to gave you the opportunity to sponsor a kid.
30. You “guarded your heart” or knew someone who guarded their heart.
32. Your parents would only let you listen to TruthFM, WayFM, The BridgeFM, HopeFM, LightFM, ShineFM, or PraiseFM. (Safe for the whole family!)
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- Jordan Merka 33 Ways You Know You Were A Youth Gro...
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stolenbymimes a month agoHah, now we need one for the Jewish youth group experience! We had similar logo parody tshirts, but much more popular was the ever ubiquitous tshirt with the Dave Mathews Band in Hebrew. Adam Sandler movies on the bus rides to conventions, hookups at said conventions, and that one guy who wouldn’t shut up about going to Israel. They also never seemed to really bother even trying to talk us out of pre-marital sex either!
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melaniem20 a month agoBuzzfeed, you forgot Chick tracts! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_tract
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ILikeComments 2 months ago
#31 - Yes, yes, yes… This Buzzfeed article is so money. I don’t believe in god now, but I still think DC Talk and Newsboys were good bands for what they were doing. I’d love to see one of these for preacher’s kids.
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murexmuris 2 months ago
I never joined my church’s youth group, but I was forced to go to Christian camp (highroads, whoo!). It was fun enough, but the stuff they taught us (absolute obedience to God, thinking for ourselves unless it contradicted the stuff they taught us, that one youth pastor who told me my Muslim friend was going to Hell) was enough to scare me away from youth group, no matter how much my parents pressured me. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad—my church was pretty liberal—but I still don’t think I would have fit in (another gaytheist here). To all the people who claim to have loved their youth group, good for you, but please consider that it was less of a pleasant experience for some of your peers.
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deans4 2 months agoI became a real Christian during Catechism class but quit church b/c of our youth group, after I graduated and went out on my own. The same jerks in high school were in my church, no love loss there. We had cocaine dealers in our youth group, kids traded weapons and drugs (not at church). Then I became a real Christian because I found a church that actually lived as Christ would want. The young adults group met weekly, they actually studied the Bible, they actually prayed for each other, they didn’t tear each other down or watch horror movies. They could back up what they believed in agreement with the Scriptures. That was in 1986, and since that time, God has been a constant reality in my life, and I have done some amazing things. So many churches are just nifty social clubs, the real churches have a dynamic and vibrant life of holiness without the dumb rules.
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Nick Loschiavo 2 months ago
I love how almost every comment here is a negative stereotype of Christianity. It’s the exact thing people hate Christians for in the first place, being closed minded and judgmental. I grew up in a youth group, and I am thankful for it. I loved in a broken home and my youth group pointed me to a real relationship with the one true living God. Yes I admit 99% of this stuff is super cheesy, but what was around 10-15 years ago that we don’t consider cheesy. We are simply products of fads, and the bigger and better
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deans4 2 months ago
I think what Nick is saying is that even though some of the stuff we go through may seem cheesy 15 years from now, the fact is that these “cheesy” things helped us develop solid character, and find the True and Loving God, Jesus Christ. ericcv, Nick’s thoughts had nothing to do with your twisted comprehension of it.
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murexmuris 2 months ago
It’s good that your youth group helped you out, but a lot of people have had really awful experiences in youth groups, Christian schools, and the like. I have gay friends who went to Christian schools and were taught, essentially, that their very identity was wrong, that they should feel guilty because of who they were. For them, this kind of stuff wasn’t harmless cheesiness; it was traumatizing bs that they’re still dealing with today. I respect your experience, but not all criticism of Christianity is mindless hatred—some is justified.
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markk34 2 months agoMy first youth groups (at age 18) helped me to prepare to love and understand a little better young people from different backgrounds, in a ministry suited to serve them, as I was healed from autism and kept from a family of drug-dealing pedophiles and raised almost exclusively by my grandparents, who did their very best to protect me and love me to Jesus, raising me the way the Holy Spirit led them to, without all the gimmicks and games, just Christ.
Most of the stuff on this list are great things to do for the youth, ideally so they may bond to, and be given by the church, what they may not find at home or anywhere else, Love and a chance. But all I really saw in these comments were needing, hurting people, kept from seeing the true love and salvation of Christ, in the name of good intentions and “positive”, man-made, religious activities.
It just made them need and hurt even more, and for many, completely turn away from the real Jesus because somebody tried to shove GOD down their throat, or use some kind of trick psychology to indoctrinate them with their rules. Especially for gays and anyone else that was different, they needed to be loved beyond their differences, given unconditional love and support, and know that if their hearts were willing, God could heal their brokenness.
How were any of these things on this list even of Christ, if they aren’t done in love?
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jennyd11 3 months agoWhile I did a lot of this stuff, I think the most important thing youth group gave me was a place I could be myself and I did not have to feel uncomfortable about what was talked about. My youth pastor made sure that the lesson he taught was the main thing about youth group and spoke with conviction at my level. If I had the chance I wouldn’t trade my youth group experience for anything in the world! I work at a youth group now and it still challenges me to live out my faith in Jesus Christ everyday
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ericcv 2 months agoYou should feel uncomfortable, you hold faith in high regard, faith which literally requires a suspension of reason, proof, and logical thinking. The worlds believers should all feel so uncomfortable in their superstitions that they keep them out of public life for fear of being ridiculed.
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deans4 2 months ago
ericcv, you certainly know much that just isn’t so.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for. In other words, you can validate faith because you get results. I have walked in faith for more than a quarter century, and have hundreds of results to validate what I beleived. You have a genuinely stunted mentality, you can not allow others to see things differently than you do with out calling names and hurling insults. You assume you are right, and you are the type who will never actually investigate the evidence to see if it’s true because you don’t want it to be true because you know better than 2 billion people, with over a billion who do live by faith and have valid results they can show you. -
markk34 2 months ago
Jenny, good for you! That’s what it was all about.
My first youth groups (at age 18) helped me to prepare to love and understand a little better young people from different backgrounds, in a ministry suited to serve them, raised by my grandparents, who did their very best to protect me and love me to Jesus, raising me the way the Holy Spirit led them to.
I just want you to be encouraged because you’re not a “failure” of youth groups, like so many of the other commentators here, really touched me, thank you.
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juliawill 3 months agoI was raised Lutheran and I remember one lock-in where we got our youth pastor to let us watch Mallrats. I was also a counselor at a summer camp where we had bible study like 3 times a day…and the counselors had a point system for hooking up. The Lutheran church is vastly more lenient than most other sects (ELCA Lutheran at least. The Missouri Synod might as well be baptists).
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William Thompson 3 months ago
If you should meet a dishonest lawyer, please don’t conclude that Justice does not exist. When I was in nursery school we sang nursery school-like songs in Sunday School. Such songs are not appropriate now that I have many years and much experience behind me. No matter how silly, poorly presented or pushy some of your youth group activities and ideas may have been, the message of the Bible and Christ’s sovereignty is not affected. It took me years to come to that conclusion. Don’t stop praying for understanding and for that relationship with Christ that is promised. And let’s all be careful what we mock…Avidyananda
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William Thompson 3 months ago
Encountering a dishonest lawyer does not mean that you logically conclude that Justice does not exist. When I was about four or five I sang and happily clapped my hands at children’s Sunday School. Now I am much older and I’ve come to believe more deeply than ever in the Truth of the Bible and the Absolute Sovereignty of Christ. Disappointment with some of the methods used, and with your own immature reactions to them mean little. As you mature, you’ll learn the truths that were being taught in Youth Group, no matter how flawed or superficial the teaching may have been.
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ColoradoCinema 3 months ago
And let’s not forget the YATEC (Young Adults Together Encounter Christ) weekend, where we were held hostage in a Sioux City church, sleep depraved, fed an ample diet of sugar and broken down like mules in order to conform to the rest of the group.
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