Creative Prayers
How do we as youth ministers, teachers, and catechists of the faith help our teens formation of their faith? I am sure the Church has been asking this question for years. Studies prove that the most influential factor is the habit of the parents. If the parents consistently pray, talk about faith, and attend Mass then their children will as well. So, we hope and pray that when the parents bring those babies to be baptized, as the first teachers of the faith, they will raise them in the faith. One of the problems is that many parents believe it is their job to bring the children to the sacraments but not to live it out daily. Our jobs become more difficult. When we teach students in a Catholic school who rarely go to Church, talk about prayer, or have a solid faith foundation.
What I have learned over the last four years is to be creative with prayer! Almost every test I gave has a bonus question about faith formation and prayer. The students answer that they have grown closer to God through the interactive prayers of our classroom. They learned new ways to pray and how to laugh and have fun while praying. They also write about how intimate guided meditations are to them. That they have never before encountered God in the way that they do for this type of prayer. My overall theme in teaching theology has been to form their faith. We need to be creative and change it up. These are not teens in our generation they need to be challenged in new and innovative ways to reach God.
