Passages: A Guide to Developing a Coming-of-Age Program

July 30, 2020 | Administrative Guidance Youth RE, Coming of Age, Quaker Family Culture, Youth Education

Passages Monarch Emerging

Many faiths mark the transition of young people to teenage/adult status with a special process: learning, performance or ceremony. Quakers do not have a particular tradition for doing this. Some Friends have felt a yearning to honor this transition within their monthly meeting, and various programs have been developed by individual meetings on an ad hoc basis. The purpose of this guide is to offer resources, imaginings and encouragement to assist those meetings that would like to take up such a process with and for their young people. In Quaker tradition, we do not offer a prescription for a specific program but we hope that this guide helps those interested to design a program that fits their own community. In the appendix are specific structures which you are free to adapt to your meeting’s needs.

Su Hansen, a member of Ann Arbor Friends Meeting in Michigan, facilitated the development of a program in 1998 which was called Passages (See appendix) Several meetings in New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM) have used the Ann Arbor Friends Meeting program as a guide and have developed structured Passages programs. Other meetings and families within meetings have found less formal ways to acknowledge our young people as they come of age. This guide will focus especially on the development of a committed multi-week Passages program as laid out by Su and her group, as we have found this structure to be very fruitful.

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PDF Icon Passages: A Guide to Developing a Coming-of-Age Program

Author: Martha McManamy, Judy Campbell, Beth Collea

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Publisher: NEYM, 2012

Age Group: 13 to 15 years, 16 to 18 years

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Topics: Coming of Age, Meeting Practices, Mentorship, Quaker Faith & Practice, Quaker Process, Quakerism, Service Projects, Statements of Faith, Testimonies, Theology, With Teens

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