211. Come As You Are — A Conversation with Jen and Sam Norton

Faith Matters

Faith Matters Foundation

Morality, Lds, Ethics, Mormonism, Latter-day Saint, The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints, Christianity, Philosophy, Mormon, Religion & Spirituality

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2024

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re excited to bring you an episode with a genuine ‘lift-where-you-stand story’ of a family in the UK. Sam and Jen Norton have served young people in the church for more than twenty years and most recently as FSY Session Directors in London. FSY stands for “For the Strength of Youth”, and refers to the week-long summer events held for youth around the world.

As FSY leaders, Jen and Sam began facing difficult questions about how to include and support youth with a range of perspectives and lifestyles. They wanted to affirm the wisdom of the standards set by the Church for youth; they also noticed that many youth were driven away the fear of exclusion they would experience if they fell short. As a result, many youth would drop out of Church activity before giving a chance to learn what it’s really about.

Through prayer, open conversations, deep listening, and creativity, Jen and Sam were taken on a truly transformative journey; they found their way to loving the younger generation more than they thought possible, and learning how to really champion them and their unique spiritual gifts. In short, they believe in believing in the next generation and giving them a more gentle on-ramp to following Jesus and reminds them that perhaps the most important word in the sacrament prayer and baptismal covenant is ‘willing’. Their story will be valuable to anyone working with youth, or who is interested in blending top-down and bottom-up approaches to Church callings.

If you want more of what you hear in this conversation, Sam wrote a book about it called Come as You Are: Creating Space for the Rising Generation to come to Jesus Christ. The book aims to be an accessible guide to parents, leaders and teachers and invites us all to rethink about how we support our young people’s faith discovery.

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0:00.0	Hey everybody before we get started I just wanted to jump on because we are so excited to announce that restore registration is officially open
0:06.4	We can't wait to be with you again this year. It's gonna be on September 5th through 7th at the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy, Utah.
0:13.4	That's the evening of September 5th and then all day on the 6th and the 7th.
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0:20.9	We really think that what we have planned will blow you away again this year so you won't want to miss it.
0:24.4	Go to faithmatters.org slash restore for tickets and we'll see you there.
0:28.4	Hey everybody this is Aubrey Chavez from Faith Matters. We're so excited today to be bringing you an episode with a
0:34.0	genuine lift where you stand story of a family in the UK. Sam and Jen Norton have
0:39.0	served the young people in the church for more than 20 years and most recently
0:42.2	as FSY session directors in London.
0:44.3	FSY stands for for the strength of youth and refers to the week-long summer events
0:49.1	held for youth all around the world. As FSY leaders Jen and Sam began facing some difficult
0:54.2	questions about how to include and support youth with a range of
0:56.8	perspectives and lifestyles. They wanted to affirm the wisdom of the standards
1:00.6	set by the church, but they also noticed that many youth were driven away by this fear of the standards set by the church, but they also noticed that many youth were driven away
1:03.8	by this fear of the exclusion that they would experience if they fell short.
1:08.2	And as a result, a lot of the youth were nervous about their participation and would sometimes even
1:11.8	drop out of church activity
1:12.9	before getting a chance to really learn what it was all about. Through prayer,
1:16.9	open conversation, deep listening, and creativity Jen and Sam were taken on a
1:21.2	truly transformative journey.
1:22.8	They found their way to loving the younger generation more than they thought possible,
	...

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