Belin United Methodist Church hires new youth director
By Tim Callahan
timcallahan01@aol.com
The youth of the church are not only the future of the church, they are the church, says Erik Mays.
Mays, the new director of youth ministries at Belin United Methodist Church in Murrells Inlet, said "we want to wait until they grow up and embrace them for who they may be down the road.
Not embrace them for who they are.
"They want to learn about life and God and a relationship with Jesus Christ," he said.
"We often think they don't want to grow and learn. I have found the complete opposite."
Experienced
Mays is not too far removed from the age of the youth he serves himself.
However, at 28, he has already served in youth ministry for seven years at three churches.
And, his job at Belin began in May, the same month he received his M.Div. from Emory University's Candler School of Theology.
He has a B.A. in religion and philosophy from LaGrange College, a United Methodist school in Georgia.
Some youth leaders don't have seminary training. Mays wanted to go to seminary, and may get his doctorate in ministry someday, he said, to better equip him to equip youth with tools to share and live their faith.
Following church leaders
Mays grew up in Due West United Methodist Church in Marietta, Ga.
He was active in youth ministry and said he was embraced by the church leaders for "who he was, right where he was."
He went on several mission trips, which he always enjoyed.
He said he wanted to continue along these same lines so he went to Reinhardt College, another Methodist school in Georgia to work on an associate's degree.
He didn't necessarily want to be a minister or church leader, he said, but that all changed when he went on a missions trip to Poland.
It was there that he received his call to ministry.
Missions trips
It was his first missions trip that he wasn't helping build something with a hammer in his hand, he said.
The group ministered at a soup kitchen, school for the blind and an orphanage.
"It was the orphanage that got me," he said.
"It put things in perspective.
The kids spoke German, Russian and Polish, but we could understand each other.
It was not a verbal comprehension, but a spiritual comprehension.
God had been nudging me toward full-time ministry, but that got my attention."
He came back and transferred to LaGrange. After graduating, he took 18 months off from school before entering seminary.
Church youth don't often get the attention they need and deserve, he said.
"My priority is to make sure the youth are spiritually nourished--not that they are just in a program--and that Christ is alive in the youth ministry," he said.
It will be God first, and fun and fellowship later, he said.
More unity
Mays said he would like to see more unity between the youth at Waccamaw and St. James high schools.
Unity among Christians is a big thing to him.
Mays is not ordained yet, he said, but will probably be commissioned next year, and hopes to be ordained as a deacon in a few years. However, he wants to stay in youth ministry, even if he gets a doctorate.
Prayer for youth
He and his wife, Lindsey, live in Pawleys Island.
They met on a missions trip. Lindsey is at MUSC studying occupational therapy.
As any good minister in training, Mays prays.
"My prayer for the youth of Belin is that they will continue to seek God out in all that they do, and that they will be an instrument of God's peace in the world."