The House of Peace Teen Leaders

talk about

Service, Learning, Prayer, and Leadership.

Service – Learning – Prayer/Reflection – Leadership:

These are the four core experiences of Transformational Ministry.  The Teen Leaders weave them into everything they do.

In our world today, there are so many hateful and violent crimes being committed. Most of the time, this is due a to lack of communication and a lack of imagination. As Teen Leaders, we provide an important service as we educate middle school youth on peacemaking skills and are therefore able to break the vicious cycle of violence in our community.

I now know what I can do to help bring peace into other people's lives. And I'm going to do it. We are here to serve the world. I know that we all have potential; all we have to do is find it. I will remember this for the rest of my life.

I have learned so much as a Teen Leader here. Leadership skills and peacemaking skills that I wouldn't have gotten anywhere else but at the House of Peace. The House of Peace has greatly affected my life. I know we all have to give back and find ways to serve the community.

The House of Peace does a great deal to help the community. They assist the poor by providing food and clothing to those in need. They also have a legal clinic and a medical clinic. They offer the services of a social worker and a spiritual director. They provide meeting rooms free of charge. They feed our bodies and our souls. The House of Peace serves so many people in so many ways. I am so proud to be a Teen Leader at the House of Peace. It is such a wonderful organization!

Learning is a part of life that makes the world a better place. One really good way to learn is to teach. For example, the House of Peace holds two workshops every year for the Teen Leaders to teach skills to middle school youth. The workshop is about solving conflicts without violence. First we learn the concepts, and then we teach them. We teach the concepts with skits and activities that require audience participation. When the audience participates, it shows us that our message is reaching the community the same way Jesus reached the Jewish community when he was a preacher.

The Teen Leaders keep learning and keep teaching: morals, peacemaking skills, communication skills.

The lessons I've learned at the House of Peace have changed the way I operate. Being a Teen Leader has taught me how to express my feelings, and how to approach someone in a particular situation. I am better at listening to people when they talk, and better at understanding what they actually mean. And I am better at explaining myself as well. These are skills everyone needs to learn.

While most people like the idea of peace, they may not know how to live peacefully. At the House of Peace, the Teen Leaders learn actual techniques that we are then able to teach to others. For example, we learn how to effectively express ourselves and listen to those who are in conflict with us. We call these communication techniques, "careful listening" and "careful talking." There is an actual procedure that we learn, and then we teach. We learn about different patterns people fall into when they try to handle conflict. We call them, "personal conflict styles." There are five of them. We learn them, and then we teach them by telling stories, demonstrating them with skits, and having our audience role play them. We show them how the best way to deal with conflict is to act in ways that are confident, honest, and fair. We teach how the smallest most insignificant conflict can have the same dynamics as the most complicated and huge conflict - like a world war. We learn practical skills so we can teach them to others. We couldn't teach what we haven't learned.

At the House of Peace, prayer and spirituality plays a key part of all programming and events. As Teen Leaders, we learn about morals, values, and how to walk this earth with the hand of God. The House of Peace encourages us as individuals to celebrate and praise God in our own way. This is always good and reverent.

Our workshop, "Hope is Something You Do" uses the beatitude, "Blessed are the Peacemakers" from the very start. It's even on our T-shirts. This is one example of how the Teen Leadership program uses prayer and spirituality creatively. In the last section of our workshop, we present a gospel drama of four stories. Each one shows Jesus being a peacemaker. We read the petitions that our workshop participants wrote, we hand out prayer cards and we exchange a sign of peace as our closing prayer. Even when we have planning meetings, and we practice for our workshop, we always begin with a prayer. The House of Peace skillfully weaves prayer into everything we do to help strengthen our spirituality.

The House of Peace helps high school students like me to improve my spirituality as a Christian. They give me the opportunity to grow spiritually, to be closer to God, and to influence other teenagers around me.

We have leadership training meetings only once a month. So we really don't get that much time together. But when we do come together, we have to click. Although there are 21 different personalities during the meetings, when we present our workshops, we merge as one. We promote one topic, peace. We act as one, the House of Peace. We are united because we believe in what we are doing. We work together just once a month, but we perform together as if we've been together for years. That's what leaders do.

The Teen Leaders truly are leaders. We teach other young people skills so they can exemplify peace and understanding. We get the opportunity to provide a new sense of direction, a way of life, with a positive attitude for the future. We give our community hope.

Here at the House of Peace, teens learn about an important aspect of life: the characteristic of leadership. I know I have already become a more responsible and reliable person. Community leadership starts with personal leadership, and so it's important to learn to form your own personality and not just follow the ways of others.