Young Life: Faith brings high school students together

I understand that a portion of you are outraged at the mere thought of a school newspaper running a piece on a subject “church” related, but before you run to your social media to crucify me (no pun intended) just hear me out.

My name is Sean Kelley, I’m a senior at Wenatchee High School and Young Life student leader. I get asked all the time “What is Young Life?” and I never truly know what to say without sounding insane. Yeah sure, I could say something about playing crazy games like bowling with frozen turkeys (sorry PETA) or blindfolded dodgeball. Or I could sound really cult-like and talk about how we all put our arms around one another while singing songs, but that doesn’t do nearly enough justice to Young Life

Young Life is about forming relationships with other high school students all going through the same struggles of everyday adolescence. It’s about coming together every Monday night to step away from the chaos of school, family, relationships, and more school. It’s about listening to personal stories from people who have had God work in their lives.

It’s not about forcing religion and God down your throat. It’s not about trying to change the person you are or criticizing you on each and every one of your mistakes. It’s about accepting you for who you are, all the good and the bad. It’s far too easy these days to judge and label someone without even speaking a word, and many of us do it subconsciously. It’s not easy to go out of our way to get to know someone on a deeper level, learn their story, from triumphs to downfalls. Anyone can judge and nitpick because that’s easy.

It’s about making you cognizant of the world around you. Making you realize that you’re apart of something bigger and better than just yourself, and when you grasp that idea life is exponentially greater, because you were made for this.