Xtreme

During 2002 St John the Apostle Parish Kippax launched a youth group for students in years 7 – 10. They christened the group XTREME, here is their story. In a parish that has had a strong Antioch group for over two decades, I guess the ‘idea’ of a parish youth group for high school age kids was always in the back of everyone’s minds. In fact there had been attempts to get something off the ground in the past. At the beginning of 2002, with a new parish priest, Fr. Chris McPhee msc,
and in conjunction with the Parish Pastoral Council we started to look at ways of getting this project off the ground.

Emma Cox, who was a senior member of the Antioch group, courageously took the project on. With other members of Antioch Emma started to research what high-school aged kids wanted from a parish youth group. They held formation meetings with parents, kids, parents and kids and developed a mission statement that they hope they achieve at all of their meetings:

'To provide students in years 7-10, a safe and friendly
environment in which they can interact with one another and gain a sense of Christian community’.

XTREME meet once a fortnight on a Wednesday night and the
evening is structured as follows:

Games
Game with a point. [here we like to say that we are teaching the kids ‘life-skills’]. For example: working together, Co-operation, negotiation, trust, honesty etc
Discussion about our game with a point.
Supper
Game
Reflection/Story
Prayer
Home time

XTREME is an example of "Youth Ministering to Youth", the organising team is a group of youth who were, or still are in Antioch. However, they have realised that it is good to have some adult support and have now organised for older members of the parish to be a visible presence. Members of the parish community will attend the meeting and will provide the supper.

Emma Cox reports that some of the difficulties they have experienced are:

Getting kids interested
Knowing what they want
There seems to be resistance for something that is seen as a church group.
Accommodating games that suit the spread of ages.

XTREME has been running for just over a year and are averaging around 15 students per meeting. The Leadership group is aware that the long-term viability of XTREME relies on:

The leaders being replaced and supported, [perhaps a scheme where the youth in Antioch would spend some time as leaders of XTREME, developing the Ministry of Youth Ministering to Youth.]
support from parish both financial and community support.