The following is excerpted from the Church News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
Try counting all of the high school “crowds.”
There are the hipsters, the brains, the jocks, the cheerleaders, the thespians, the band kids, the guys in auto shop — and the list goes on.
But crowds can sometimes be a bit cliquish. Stick to one group and your path might not cross much with the others beyond, say, history class or the school cafeteria.
But scores of Utah high schoolers are learning that the scriptures can be first-rate clique-busters.
Each Tuesday night during the school year, teenagers from Corner Canyon High School gather in the basement of one of their classmates’ homes for an informal, student-led scripture study session.
Some nights there are as many as 40 or 50 kids cramped together with their scripture apps open on their devices. Other weeks, there are a dozen or so.
Meanwhile, students at South Jordan’s Bingham High School gather on Sundays in host homes for similar scripture-driven evenings they simply call “friendly home evening.”
“We usually get around 20 or 30 kids, but we’ve had as many as 77 together at one time,” said Logan Baker, a Bingham senior.
Student scripture study “has just become a school tradition, … and it’s been awesome,” said Elle Stoker, a senior at Corner Canyon High School.
Elle recently started a group chat for anyone interested in the gatherings. It’s an open invitation for all high schoolers. “And now there are over 190 people in our group.”
And, yes, the weekly scripture study group is defined by its friendly diversity. Counted among the regulars are young men and young women with wide-ranging, seemingly disparate interests collectively drawn to the fellowship discovered in reading scriptures together and sharing testimonies.
Most are Latter-day Saints, but a few of the regulars are not. No matter. Everyone’s welcome.
Student-run scripture study is a place where everyone feels like they have a friend.
Logan said the Bingham students’ Sunday-night gatherings were started a couple of years ago by a couple of young men who are now serving missions. “Friendly home evening” typically begins with a brief lesson taught by one of the students — “and then we use the rest of the time to give people opportunities to share scriptures and their testimonies.”
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
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