What’s Love Got to Do With It? Everything!

A Teenage Study Unit about Our Relationships and Our Choices

What's Inside:

	God Who?
	Thinking about Myself and My World
	Why My Family is MY Family
	There are Friends and Then There are REAL Friends
	But I Don’t Even Know Them! OR But They Started It!
	But We Love Each Other!
	My Church and My Life: The Lifeboat:

For a study unit on this topic for younger children see "Learning to Love"

This unit is intended to accomplish the following:

To provide participants with a foundation and vocabulary from which they can explore the Church’s teachings on varied contemporary issues.
To provide participants with an opportunity to discuss and explore their relationships with themselves, God, the Church, their family, friends, and others.
To foster within participants a deep conviction that their relationship with God and His Church is central to every other relationship in their life
To instill within participants the connection between their relationships and their own ethical and moral choice.

Objectives: By the end of this unit participants should be able to . . .

identify their relationship with God and His Church as the center of all other relationships
discuss how their relationship with God and others effects their moral and ethical decisions
see ethical and moral decisions not in isolation but in relation to their relationships with themselves, God, the Church, their family, friends, and even those they do not know.
articulate their feelings about their relationships with God, His Church, themselves, their \family, friends, love interests, and others.
discuss God’s and the Church’s teachings on ethical and moral issues as wanting the best for each of us and not just a set of rules that “keep us from having fun” and from “doing what we want.”
define and discuss love in terms of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a.

Age and grade level for this unit is junior and senior high school youth between the ages of 13-18.

Reproducing this unit: All educational units designed by our Unit on Education and Community Life Ministries are designed to be reproduced locally. Every teach and staff member should have his or her own copy.

Suggested Reading

Other than the texts mentioned in the session outlines, while they prepare, leaders might consider reading the following:
The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY 1979
Who is God? Who am I? Who are You? by Dee Pennock Saint Tikhon’s Press, South Canaan, PA 1973
Youth of the Apocalypse and the Last True Rebellion by Monks John Marler and Andrew Wermuth, Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, Spruce Island, AK 1995

Notes to the Leader

Remember that your preparedness and your interest in the subject and in the participants are invaluable. If you think that what you do together is important, the example will rub off on them. You are a major influence on them, either positively or negatively, at a time when they may, consciously or unconsciously, be making a life-long decision about their membership in the Body of Christ, the Church.

Please read, pray, and think about each session well before you present it. You may need to gather materials, consult your priest about some point of information, or get resources from the parish or public library. Also, throughout the unit there are sections that the leader is instructed “to say.” The leader should be familiar and comfortable enough with the session to be able to “say” these things in their own words. Reading these things directly from the page will quickly kill an honest and open discussion.

Finally, be flexible and creative! This study unit demands local input, talent, and creativity. Do not be afraid to alter the sessions to fit your own circumstances. The more you can make this material to the youth in your area, the more successful we all will be!