Young Life Christian group ramping up in Modesto

From the emails, voicemails and other sources:

YOUNG LIFE – Decades ago, Young Life clubs flourished at Merced, Sonora, Summerville and other high schools in the state. Eventually, those chapters faded out, but are now going again.

Young Life is an non-denominational Christian organization formed in 1941 in Texas and overseen by adults, most of whom volunteer to make a difference in the lives of teens through leadership, mentoring, participation and spirituality. They specifically want to work with teens who don’t already go to church, often brought into the group by those who do.

For whatever reason, the Christian youth organization never established a foothold in Modesto. That began to change about two years ago, when the nationwide organization hired Jennifer Hutton to start a program at Enochs High School.

She has trained with Young Life officials in Merced, which got its club going again six years ago and now has nine clubs and 40 volunteers. Likewise, the Sonora club is back and also under the tutelage of the Merced organization. The Enochs group is in its infancy, with nine members.

Hutton, the local leader, graduated from Modesto Christian in 2010 and Corban University in Oregon before returning to Modesto and looking into the prospect of bringing the organization here.

“Lots of (college) friends were talking about Young Life,” she said. She knew nothing about it but attended a weekend camp and decided Modesto needed it.

“We want to reach the students who would never walk into a church and try to reach students who don’t have much adult support,” she said.

Now it’s time to make what they call their Modesto “bump start,” said Mark Statema, a Young Life organizer from Puyallup, Wash., who spent three whirlwind days in Modesto last week, attending 49 separate meetings aimed at creating interest among adults locally. It was a get-to-know-folks session, recruiting the committee members who ultimately will raise the money and enlist the leaders to run local Young Life chapters at the high schools and middle schools.

Statema himself joined Young Life at age 13 and has been on Young Life’s staff for 22 years. He has asked a number of community members, including Jeff Morris and Dan Akulow, to commit for at least 12 months to get the program going here in Modesto. The volunteers they recruit will be well-vetted adults who will help out with sports teams, concessions sales and other activities as a way of connecting with students, who will become the biggest recruiters through peer relationships.

The organization aims to help all teens, and especially those considered at risk. While the adults volunteer as mentors, Young Life events are conducted on campuses, usually in volunteers’ homes.

“We offer a safe, neutral environment,” Statema said. “Generally, it’s not in a particular church. You hear kids say, ‘My parents won’t let me there (a specific church)” because it has the wrong name or wrong symbol. We welcome everyone.”

Activities at the meetings range from games to singing to a short spiritual message at the end. “It’s not a sermon,” he said. “Not preaching. It’s more of a life talk, about a life of faith that includes Jesus Christ and the gospel and the greatest story ever told – how he died for us.”

The teens, ranging from middle school to high school, with some outreach at the college level, also can attend summer camp. They will be expected to raise money to help pay their camp fee of about $600, but organizers also will look for monthly donors who will ensure no teen doesn’t attend camp for lack of funds.

For information about the organization in Modesto, visit modesto.younglife.org.

BRIDGE WORK – Last week, I wrote about the old Parrotts Ferry Bridge across the Stanislaus River north of Columbia State Historic Park, and how it became one of the landmarks during the drought when it emerged from the falling reservoir level last summer. The water is back up now, to the top of the bridge and about to creep over it if it hasn’t already, with recent warm temperatures no doubt accelerating the snow runoff.

As the water level fell last summer, Bureau of Reclamation officials attached buoys to it so that boaters and fishermen would be aware of what lurked beneath. Next, the ironwork and cables once part of the side railings became visible, followed by the concrete bridge itself.

Over the summer, the bureau removed the rusted ironwork and cables that had become nothing more than hazards. Now, only the concrete bridge remains and will be out of site and deep beneath the surface of New Melones Reservoir until perhaps next summer, or longer. Who knows? The last time, it stayed submerged from 1993 until 2015.

NOT LISTED – For all the crummy lists that include Modesto, here’s one we didn’t make: There were 98 reported shark attacks around the world in 2015. More than 30 were off the Florida coast.

There were no shark attacks in Modesto. So there.

This story was originally published February 15, 2016 at 12:10 PM with the headline "Young Life Christian group ramping up in Modesto."