The hubbub of kids making arts and crafts, shooting hoops, enjoying snack time, playing floor hockey—it all sounds like an average church youth group. Except that this youth group meets in the community centre in the heart of a troubled area of Winnipeg.

For years this neighbourhood has been plagued by gang violence and was recently rocked by a triple homicide. Each week The Salvation Army partners with the community centre to operate drop-in programs for kids and teens―keeping them safe and off the street, allowing them to just be kids. It’s a hopeful vision of the community could look like.

Who has taken on this significant responsibility? Who has responded to the call to serve the poor and the forgotten? In large part it has been the older teens of the Weston Salvation Army corps. Whether it be cleaning and reclaiming the parks in the neighborhood,facilitating youth programs for the marginalized or putting together community events such as a Halloween and Christmas party, the young people of the understand what it means to be The Salvation Army. 

These dedicated young people are not alone. Corps across this country have recognized that youth programs are not simply about serving our own needs as a church, but about serving a hurting world.

We have a social justice imperative as The Salvation Army, a specific calling to serve the lost and the least. Yet there is a need to sometimes be reminded that that imperative to serve suffering humanity doesn’t end with social services programs, but also must inform our work at the corps level. 

Our youth groups must be connected to our Salvation Army mission to serve suffering humanity. How that looks will change depending on the needs of the neighbourhood. In your setting, it could mean empowering your teens to:

• Organize baby-sitting for single parents
• Reclaim a needle and drug park
• Help operate a children’s after-school club or drop-in centre
• Organize an awareness group at school about the problem of human trafficking
• Volunteer at the soup kitchen
• Raise money for Partners in Mission or sponsor a child
• Lead a service at a nursing home
• Contact the Children’s Aid Society and offer to support
• Prepare extra lunches for those at school who go without

I recently heard of a corps in rural Ontario that challenged its young people to find ways to serve the community. While there was not a great deal of visible homelessness in their area, there was a strikingly high percentage of children under the care of the Children’s Aid Society who had no permanent home. The teens banded together and began canvassing the neighborhood for support to put together backpacks for the Children’s Aid Society. 

Whatever initiative your corps takes on, be sure to see it through the countercultural lens of social justice. Remember, it’s not about putting together a great looking youth program with flashy posters and a great light show. Rather, it’s about giving youth an opportunity to truly be an Army of Salvation that lives “missionally with youth on the margins, reflecting to them the image of the invisible God” (see the Prayerful Manifesto).