Please reply to standingcom@edecr.org

The Standing Committee is proposing a short term solution to youth ministry in the Diocese. We propose the following:

1. Five (5) Regional Youth Councils be formed within the diocese, made up of youth and adults from individual congregations that wish to participate. These Councils would be:
   
   
   
   1. San Luis Obispo area
   2. Santa Clara Valley area
   3. Salinas area
   4. Monterey and Carmel area
   5. Santa Cruz area


2. Each of these groups would appoint one adult and one youth to form a Diocesan Youth Commission who would handle the diocesan youth events. Additionally, the leaders of the diocesan events (New Beginnings, Happening, 24 hours, etc.) would be part of this Commission.


3. One person from the Commission would be appointed as the liaison to Council. Besides supporting diocesan wide events, this commission would be charged with looking at a long term solution to youth ministry within the diocese, and setting guidelines/policies as needed.


4. The Regional Councils would be responsible for youth activities within their areas. It is hoped that this format would encourage all churches to participate in scheduled activities within their own areas – in additional to the diocesan wide events that they will help to promote.

We have asked Desi Brown, who has worked with the youth of the diocese for several years, to begin putting the Regional Councils in place.  Desi and her husband Mike have been actively involved in diocesan youth ministry and are presently the coordinators of the Junior High School New Beginnings program.  Desi agrees that regional councils feeding into a diocesan commission would be a good way to organize our diocesan youth ministry activities.

As a first step, Desi is willing to contact people in each of the local areas to discover who might be interested in helping form the Regional Youth Council for their area. Once we have identified a group of passionate people to form a regional council, we will have a kick-off meeting to get the group off the ground. Desi and other diocesan representatives will take part in each of these meetings. We will be using the program that Holly Hem began in Santa Clara Valley for the past eight months as a model for local youth ministry with the idea that this can be expanded and personalized for each of the regions.

Now we need your feedback and support.  Please let us know of your interest and any input you might have to this plan. We feel that this is a great opportunity to work with a model that begin in Santa Clara Valley, improve upon it, and take it diocesan-wide. It is our hope that we can begin the calling to form the regional councils and communicate this plan to the wider diocese later this week.Please respond via return e-mail.

Thanks, and we look forward to working with all of you in our ministry to our youth!