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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a Christian, too. And a very traditional and conservative one by most measures.

In my experience: youth group leaders, both men and women, tend to be very immature and (bad combo) are also bad at maintaining appropriate boundaries.

This is why my teenaged daughter did NOT go to local church youth groups. We did have her friends come over and my wife would facilitate discussion on spiritual things (like going through JI Packer's book on the Apostles' Creed, etc.). But that is instructional.  I expect it to be the same with my younger children as well (girl and boy).

A lot of church youth groups are basically unfettered and untrained group therapy sessions or trauma dumps.[/quote]

I went to Wheaton College (IL) and I would say this is fairly accurate, though most of the college aged mentors I had at Wheaton proper were pretty good at keeping their lives to themselves. The other college girls in various groups - not so much (which CAN be appropriate once you're close, but not if you really don't know each other or if the material at hand is itself literally traumatizing). It was like a known joke on campus that people would pretty much just be like "Hi, my name is Larla and here's my entire traumatic past." I still remember sitting in a writing class where a classmate literally used a personal essay as a confessional - and these essays were read aloud to the whole class.

Which is why my church in high school did the same thing as PP - more a book or Bible study with a paid employee of the church, less a prayer group type thing.

But that said, the prayer group type things are good for peers, within the limits outlined above, you know? So it's a fine line.[/quote]

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