“My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.” Proverbs 23:26
“My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.” Proverbs 23:26
The Youth Fellowship as the sub-committee of St. Andrew’s Church Pastorate Committee, works among youngsters who have completed Sunday School as young adults in our congregation and lead on to be part of the Youth Fellowship between the ages 18 to 35. This fellowship connects, engages, and supports the youth of the church to inspire through Christ Jesus to be an inspiration and leaders in their chosen fields through holistic positive activities in the form of Bible Study, career development workshops, music, dance, creative writing, drama, assisting in Sunday School activities, Mission and Evangelism and much more.
We as St. Andrews Youth (SAY) work together and support each other as a family making it easier for the young ones to seek help and shelter them in times of need.
We also have members of different churches who are part of our Youth Fellowship and we welcome youths to be part of SAY.
The rejuvenation of the Youth Fellowship in the late 1990s brought forth new initiatives but none resonated with the Christian network of Bangalore as the launch of Arpith, the inter-church youth festival held once every two years.
Picking up from the year 2000, the youth festival has stayed true to the idea of connecting the Christian youth of Bangalore, providing the opportunity for churches to form, strengthen or rebuild youth fellowships in churches.
Arpith is open to various denominations and is known widely for being a one-of-a-kind fest for churches with literary events such as poetry and essay, art events such as illustration, clay modelling and build-a-church (model), performing arts such as choreography and music in the mix.
Every edition of Arpith follows a theme and efforts are made to communicate this to those whom the church hosts through the ambience and decor.
Eurisko, a citywide task-oriented treasure hunt precedes Arpith a week before the main event. The event has been quite a hit and Youth fellowships still enjoy the thrill of travelling across the city in cabs trying to crack clues and complete tasks. Eurisko always has more entries than what can be accommodated.
After Eurisko, the focus shifts to the main events of Arpith. Several months of preparation brings together close to 40 crew members who with great heart work towards the execution of plans. The continuous commitment of the Youth Fellowship of St Andrew’s Church has kept Arpith alive through generations of youth fellowships.
Arpith also witnesses innovation with events that keep changing every edition. For instance, the introduction of a short film competition a few years ago was the first of its kind in the youth fellowship circle and brought about great storytellers and tech masters to come together and shoot films, which still exists on online platforms and can be viewed by generations of youth of various churches.
We hope to have more active and Christ-centred youth Fellowships across Bangalore as the Youth Fellowship with such activities. We pray that Arpith continues to be a blessing to several people including the Youth of St Andrew’s Church Bengaluru.
What started in the early part of the the 2000s as a badminton tournament for congregation members turned into the first step towards a multi-sport activity by the end of the decade. Athrylith occurs once every two years and the organisation is undertaken by the Youth Fellowship of the church.
The organisers (Youth Fellowship) take up the creation of the entire arena to be playable including building laying out the badminton court.
The objective of Athrylith is to build relationships within the church by engaging in various games hosted in the premises of St Andrew’s Church. We have seen several people who had never interacted previously, get to know each other and even team up for games for other events. Be it Chess, Badminton, Table-Tennis, Eat Your Heart Out, Carrom etc. we have seen the talented and the sport lovers join hands to make the St. Andrew’s Church community stronger in fellowship.
Age 5 or 70 + there is something organised for different age groups in Athrylith which takes place on weekends over a span of close to a month.
The Youth Fellowship leads the Carol party to the homes of all the Congregation members, singing with joy the “Good News of His Birth”. The months of November and December are busy times for the youth of our church.
Every Easter Sunday Sunrise Worship Service begins with a play by the St.Andrew’s Church Youth Fellowship at 5:00 am. The Congregation looks forward to unique take on Easter in relevance to today.
