Girdwood Chapel UMC — “Friday Night Live”

Pastor Jim Doepken tells how a twice-monthly, Friday night recreation night for youth “works” for them:

While living in a small town has lots of benefits, one of the problems can be the lack of activities for kids in the community.  This is particularly true in our community outside of ski season.  So, in order to provide a safe, fun night of activities for youth, Girdwood Chapel has been opening up its doors to kids from 6-9 PM on Fridays.  While this is open to all Jr. and Sr. High youth, we get Jr. High youth almost exclusively.  The format is simple.  We have a movie, foosball, air hockey, and table tennis set up from 6-8 PM.  At 8 PM we eat pizza (paid for by a $5 donation from each youth).  Then, after pizza we play large group, youth-group-like games.  The only thing that’s “religious” about it is the prayer before we eat. The hope is that this can feed into other social or religious experiences.  Regardless, we’re getting anywhere from 12-24 kids in our church two Fridays every month for safe activities.