Our parish’s youth ministry, The Rise, is back for a new year! I spoke to Dan Perera, Saint Benedict Parish’s Youth Minister, to find out what The Rise is about and how a new ministry model is working for them.

What is The Rise? 

At The Rise, we exist to serve youth from grades 7–12, giving them a place to belong each week. We use a small group model that provides a safe space for young people to explore their faith and grow deeper in it, while also providing opportunities to grow in community and their relationship with God.

You’re trying out a new model for nights at The Rise. Why change it?

As we started things back up in person after the pandemic last year, we realized pretty quickly that our youth were longing for a place where they could be seen, known, and heard. I think we all desire this to a certain extent; we were designed to be in relationship with each other and with our creator, God. After a long few years of not having connection with each other due to the pandemic and the lockdowns, we felt God prompting us to move in a direction that seemed unexpected. We knew we needed to build a firm foundation again, and this foundation is relationship. Everything we do within our youth ministry is built upon a foundation of relationship, where we strive to create an experience where youth can feel seen, heard, and known for who they are. We want to give them the opportunity to get to know each other and grow together in their faith, because no one was meant to do this alone.

How does the new model work?

Back in January, we shifted our focus at The Rise to a small group approach. Our weekly Thursday nights now consist of mainly small group time (with the night being mostly one long small group). We gather from 7-9pm in the auditorium at Saint Benedict Parish where our youth get to explore their faith in a way that is catered and specific to the needs of their individual group. They get to decide what they want to do and what they want to learn in regards to their faith. This may be an unconventional thing to say, but we truly believe that teens will engage in things they have a say in far better than a certain agenda we may try to impose on them. This creates a unique opportunity to meet them where they are at. For example, while a Grade 7 girls group might be learning about how to pray, and develop a personal prayer life, a Grade 12 boys group might be learning about how to live out their Christian faith in school. This would be very different in a large group setting where everyone in Grades 7 to 12 would be hearing the same content. Therefore, our approach is to focus on the needs of each individual teen helping them discover their faith at their own pace while also equipping them with the tools they need to become the person God created them to be, and all of this is done by the means of smaller groups.

If you’re in Grades 7-12, how do you get involved?

We encourage youth who want to sign up for The Rise to sign up with three to five of their friends. That way they can journey with a group of people they already know and feel comfortable with. I think back to pivotal points in my own faith life, and they always extend from a time where I was hanging out with some of my close friends. Some of the guys I was in a small group with back in high school are guys I still keep in touch with to this day. We have grown so much together and are very much a part of each other's lives. In fact, some of them were my groomsmen when I got married a couple years ago. Our hope is that the relationships that form at The Rise would be ones that last a lifetime as our youth grow and get formed as disciples to live out their faith in their day-to-day lives. We also realize that there are circumstances where a youth may not have friends they could invite to form a small group. Since this is a process and not a program, it may mean that a youth may have to wait a little while before joining us on our regular Thursday nights till we can find a group that would fit them the best, typically consisting of a group closer to their age. In the meantime, we would encourage them to join us at one of our large group nights that we will be hosting throughout the year, typically with one every four to six weeks. This is a night without any small groups where everyone will be together with formation focused on the entire group, rather than individual small groups. It is also a great night for teens to invite their friends who may want to see what our youth ministry is like, and for them to potentially get plugged into a small group of their own.

If you want to stay up to date with what is coming up with The Rise, you can follow @SBP_youth on Instagram or search for ‘SBP Youth’ on YouTube. You can register for The Rise at saintbenedict.ca/youth.