Youth

Mentorship Program:

On a regular basis a growing number of youth and college-aged individuals spanning from Chicago to around the globe continue to reach out to The Marin Foundation for assistance in thinking through a variety of personal situations regarding the interplay of faith and sexuality. While continuing to be a sounding board through email and phone calls, The Marin Foundation is also currently putting together a pilot Mentorship Program in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs to address this topic on a more structural level. When the program is officially launched, we will post the details and applications to join.

Until then, for continued assistance please email Nathan Albert, The Marin Foundation’s Director of Pastoral Care at nathan@themarinfoundation.org or call The Marin Foundation office at 773-572-5983.

Suicide:

If you know of anyone, or yourself, who is LGBT or questioning and contemplating suicide, please immediately contact The Trevor Project here, a toll free 24 hour confidential hotline.

Bullying:

A great friend of The Marin Foundation, Dr. Warren Throckmorton, has released three free, downloadable resources regarding bullying prevention for youth in religious circles. You can find them here.

Golden Rule Pledge:

Each year in April in high schools across the country there is the National Day of Silence, where LGBT youth and their allies vow to not talk today at school to bring awareness to the name-calling, bullying and harassment of them in schools. In response to this day there are many Christians out there who decide to pull their kids out of school in protest.

The Marin Foundation believes that is the biggest mistake a Christian parent could possibly make.

Why?

First, it breeds in our Christian youth the idea that if we don’t agree with something we protest and walk in the other direction. And in my opinion, there is no worse way to represent our Christian faith on such a day.

Second, from The Marin Foundation’s perspective, what a better way to bring the LGBT topic to the forefront in Christian homes then to use this day as a springboard in how to peacefully and productively engage what has always been nothing more than a very divisive topic. And in doing such a thing with middle and high-schoolers, it gives Christian parents a wonderful opportunity to start their youth down the right path in how to build a bridge with the LGBT community. It’s a chance for believers to do something different in showing our faith rather than just talking about; which is what most unfortunately tend to do when it comes to homosexuality.

Third, I (Andrew) was on a Christian radio program recently and off the air the host told me about how his daughter wanted to go to school that day because she knew all of her other Christian friends were going to protest and not be in school. The host went on to tell me that she was the only Christian kid left in many of her classes, and at the end of the day everyone in one of her classes was being silent. Since she was the only one not being silent, and since she was the only Christian, for 20 minutes the teacher allowed her to talk about her faith and her love, and all of the reasons why she decided to come to school that day in opposition to all of the other Christian who didn’t!

Just think what would happen around the country if our Christian kids did as she did…

I could only imagine.

Dr. Warren Throckmorton, has started what he calls the Golden Rule Pledge to be done on the Day of Silence. Take a look, and please join in, especially if you have influence in a middle school, high school or college campus—keeping our kids in school and using this day as the Kingdom opportunity it should be.

This is too important to keep running away from.