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[quote=Anonymous]My HS freshman DD's friends have been encouraging her to join a Christian youth group called Young Life. It is a national organization and I am not familiar with it at all. I went on their website and am not totally clear on what this involves for kids. The local leaders appear to be college-aged adults who live at home; they host sleepovers and social events in their homes or take the kids on outings. A couple of DD's friends have gotten very involved very fast, in just the last 5 weeks - they went from going to an event to being something called Campaigners who are very intense. DD says her friends have told her that Young Life is mostly a lot of social activities, not a lot of preaching or intense religious content, although again, we are 5 weeks in.

We are members of a liberal mainline Protestant denomination that is not evangelical/born again, with a message of love and acceptance, and DD has been baptized and is currently studying for confirmation. The Young Life website says it is non-denominational and accepting of various Christian perspectives.

I am wary of "nondenominational" youth groups due to my own experiences with Christian fellowship turning into a pressure situation in the nondenominational-Christian fellowship group that I became involved with in college. It started out as "hey, come eat pizza and hang out with fun people," but I was pressured to do a lot with them very quickly, urged to recruit friends, and told that I needed to accept Jesus as my savior to really be Christian. Even though I was baptized and confirmed and very active in my own church, it was like none of that meant anything and I was continually pushed to take things further. The leaders were missionaries from Campus Crusade for Christ doing outreach on campus. I had some wonderful friends who were part of this group, but overall it made me uncomfortable and although my involvement was only a few months, the group made it very hard to walk away. 25 years later they are still trying to get me to send them money for campus ministries.

I want DD to have friends of various religious beliefs (or nonbeliefs) and for her to accept others having different/more conservative beliefs. Our denomination is very "live and let live" and our family is too. However, I don't want her to be evangelized, pressured, told she is sinning (or that her gay friend is sinning), or told that our variety of Christian is not really Christian, nor do I want her being asked to recruit other kids. I also know nothing about the adults running it. I was told the leaders come to school events and pick the kids up for coffee or ice cream outings after school, and I'm not sure I want adults I don't know driving her around. I'm a pretty free-range parent who wants my kids to go out and live their lives, but for some reason this is making my alarm bells go off.

I guess my main question is whether Young Life is mainly social events and fun with a little prayer and positive messaging (which I am fine with), or whether it is typically a more intense evangelical religious experience (which I'm not)? Do they truly accept more liberal varieties of Christianity in their members?

Thanks for any insight. I know I'm overthinking but she's 14 and does not need any more pressure in her life right now. [/quote]

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