Suzanne Wagner

Suzanne Wagner

While growing up in the late 80’s at Beacon, formerly known as The Unitarian Church in Summit, we did not have a youth group program. I spent my junior and early senior high school years going to youth groups at my friends’ churches. While I loved the community aspect of their youth groups, I did not enjoy the doctrinarian aspects. I simply did not have the same beliefs as they did and grew tired over the years of pretending to believe in something that I did not.

One day, while waiting for my mother to finish up with whatever she was doing, I asked Rev. Bumbaugh “Why don’t we have a youth group?“ and proceeded to tell him about my experiences at the other youth groups I had been attending. His response was, “If you want a youth group then we should have a youth group.” I then began working with his son and the religious education coordinator on planning a youth group, and the senior youth group began.

Fast forward several years…….

When my daughter was six, she started asking those hard questions, which I tried to explain the best I could. I wanted her to have a religious home, somewhere that she would feel safe to explore her values and beliefs - allowing her to come into her own as a young adult. When she was in fifth grade, I finally decided to return to Beacon. I watched her walk into the building the first time and I knew that I made the right choice seeing how comfortable she was immediately.

Over the past five years I have watched her struggle and grow in a community where she has always been embraced by love. When struggling, I saw her being supported by the community, while being guided in making the tough decisions she needed. Now that she is a member of the Senior Youth Group, I have the joy of watching her come into her own developing into a young woman. She is learning to stand for what she believes in, and how to act on it in her life, which is not an easy thing to do in today’s society.

I know that the Youth Group at Beacon has laid foundations for me that I have carried through my life as an adult, and I am continuing to see this with my daughter.