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[Back to index of April 2008 articles] In the Beginning, God Cre:8d Youth By Paul Donnelly What's so special about Cre:8 at St. Peter's Parish in Poolesville? "That we did it ourselves," explains Hannah Dowdy of the youth ministry, which began last August and hosts a Sunday evening service every week. Every Thursday, a core group of at Cre:8 members – sisters Rachel and Abigail Tjornehoj, Hannah, another pair of sisters, Katie and Amy Stamm, as well as Krystal Stevens – meets at St. Peter's to plan the service: none old enough to vote, and most too young to drive. Yet grown up enough to worship, to reach for God in their own way. "I've never had one drop out," says Joel Tjornehoj, a member of the vestry who helps supervise the group. But the kids run it. How? "Usually, we use videos, DVDs, to illustrate what the lesson is going to be on Sunday," Hannah explains. Katie Stamm chimes in: "We think, well, where have we seen this in a movie?" Movies? Like Napoleon Dynamite? "Why not?" say Hannah and the Stamm sisters together. They've used short clips from Ice Age and The Santa Clause, but it's not all the Bible as Hollywood bubblegum: Cre:8 also used a scene from Hotel Rwanda to show how God can bring grace even from acts of unspeakable evil. Katie goes on: "This week was different, because we had a guest speaker, but since the theme was faith, we were thinking Bruce Almighty." A brief clip, a scene, a few lines, maybe just an image from pop culture can illustrate timeless lessons in a timely way. This is not your grandparents' 'smells and bells' Episcopalian service, with incense and a huge pipe organ: Katie and Abby sit at a laptop on a table to one side, and work a PowerPoint presentation that the "message group" created Thursday night from the standard canon, including language that follows – but is distinct from what you'd hear at the morning service. The Rev. Charles Hoffacker, interim rector at St. Peter's, explains: "It's based on Rite C which has some leeway in the language, so it is proper." And then there is the band. Krystal Stevens and Amy Stamm on vocals, Karl Mihm on his Martin cutaway acoustic guitar with a built-in pickup, James Siegrist on a Schechter electric guitar cranked through a Peavey amplifier, Jack Seeger on bass and drummer Zack Reiziss, with keyboard and general musical direction from Tom Walker, who was educated at the venerable Bishops' School in Capetown, South Africa considerably before the rest of the band was born. "When we were first getting it started," says Joel Tjornehoj, Rachel and Abby's father, "they suggested more contemporary music. I was thinking, you know, folk music like we brought into the church in the 1970s." Um, no. The musical inspiration for Cre:8 is mostly Hillsong, a Christian rock band from Australia – which started exactly the way Cre:8 did: as a youth ministry. The feel isn't quite The Alternate Routes much less the Rolling Stones, but it's real and it's theirs: although the keyboardist occasionally calls out: "C… F sharp" so that the changes all happen at once. Paul Canady, the Diocese of Washington's deputy for youth ministry, gave the sermon on Matthew 4 1:-11: "You should not try to be what you are not; the lesson Jesus is showing us when he could have been a king, is that you not try to be what you should not be. You will be tempted to be the kind of person you should not be; Jesus shows us a better way." Speaking out the responses clearly, although they were unfamiliar to her since they had been written just the past Thursday, was 83-year-old Elizabeth Davis: "Call me Boo, everybody does." Born in Poolesville, baptized, confirmed and married at St. Peter's, wearing a St. Peter's sweatshirt, this was Boo's first Cre:8 service: "It's fun to see what the kids are doing. I like it," she said, singing along gently with the chorus punctuated by shred chords of "One Way Jesus," even with it's "whoa … oh… oh…" part. Peter Chang and Maybelle Kagy, who drove all the way up from Ascension, Silver Spring, were impressed. "We want to get young people involved in our parish," Chang says. "We found Paul Canady's name on the Web site, and he suggested that we come here tonight." Kagy added: "We're hoping to find a way to do something like this," to which Chang, looking around, added: "Maybe we just have to get it started, and they do it themselves." [Back to index of April 2008 articles]
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