Taiwanese Community Church Information

As such, I want to share with the members and friends of TCC my thoughts on the TCC youth ministry for which I been involved with. For some background, I have been a member of TCC since 1993 when I transferred my membership (I was baptized at a local church Latham Community Baptist Church (LCBC) in upstate NY where I went to grade school and high school and where I was baptized in the 9th grade). The memories of those years at LCBC in grade school as well as through middle and senior high school at LCBC are still with me. I remember the friendships that developed with others at the church, the fun activities we had - playing ping pong in basement of the church every Wednesday night when the youth group met, playing on the church softball team with the pastor and other adults, playing violin with other youth during special services; going to week-long Baptist youth camp in the summer and hiking the Appalachian "Long Trail" in Vermont. Little did I know at that time, the real influence all these "fun" experiences have had to shape me as a person and as a believer in Jesus. Now that I have been involved with the TCC youth ministry, I realize that the true blessing from my own experiences is that the Holy Spirit is always at work in all of us - even if I did not completely understand or realize it at the time. Things are somewhat different now and youth, parents, families and leaders of the church have to deal with more challenges I think than say 30 to 35 years ago when I was growing-up. The youth have more options to "enrich" their lives these days but the formula for spiritual enrichment remains essentially the same - through youth fellowship and through the teachings of the Bible. During the past 5 years, some of the spiritual "enrichment" activities for TCC youth involve the following:Shared Sunday school teaching resources with our RCA sister-church, Fellowship Church, including a several trips to Roseland community (in the south-side of Chicago) to serve Sunday breakfast for the homeless in their communityOrganize Christmas caroling trip to members and friend of TCCSponsoring the youth on their first joint visit to TAF (10 TCC youth members went)Starting to introduce live youth worship team to Sunday schoolWorking with the youth pastor from TPC to have periodic joint youth fellowship activities (visit Cornmaze in fall) and worship / message (every other Friday at church)Although some of the TCC youth group activities above are different from what I did as a youth in New York, many are the same also. The ultimate mission is for the TCC youth to build their connection with God through Jesus and to be filled with the Holy Spirit that will prepare them to be life-long servants of God. The TCC youth mission statement comes from Matthew 19:14 where Jesus says, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these." With these words of Jesus in mind and the mission that all of us young and old are given, my hope is that the TCC youth group will continue to help the youth grow in knowledge as well as to provide a foundation where they can begin to internalize their faith as well as connection with Jesus to become the next generation of worshipers in their community wherever that may be. Top