Article July 22, 2013 Issue

Wednesday evening unplugged

Susan Tish

Several students in our Sunday School have enjoyed attending a Christian Science summer camp each year. In late summer they come back from camp and one of the things they rave about is how much they enjoyed attending Wednesday night testimony meetings with all the other campers. They love the testimonies from other kids and teens and the fellowship of singing hymns together after the meeting. So our Sunday School teachers got together to ponder and pray about providing a Wednesday meeting where young people would feel that same sense of communion and joy. 

We have a wide range of ages represented at our Sunday School, but it is a truly close knit group. We decided to provide a Wednesday evening testimony meeting once a month that would focus on youth. While every testimony meeting has a message that blesses all, we strive on “Youth Wednesdays” to have a topic that focuses on an issue that is relevant to our Sunday School students. Our First Reader provides a printout of the readings from the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures so the kids and teens can easily follow along and have a handout to take home. We ask one student to volunteer as an assistant usher and hand the microphone around to testifiers. Finally, we regularly end these youth-focused services with a brief hymn sing where we invite “kid requests” for hymns that we all sing together. 

We now have a regular group of students who come once a month (and sometimes more often). On their own, they started sitting together at the meetings and have also begun to share testimonies. The interesting thing is, we also get a better turnout of adult participants at these meetings because everyone enjoys hearing from our Sunday School students. This fresh idea has really blessed our whole congregation.

Send a comment to the editors