An important question today: What can be done about Orthodox young people? Are not many of them losing faith and straying from the Church? The answer of many to this question is: dances, picnics, social gatherings. But this is a worldly answer - as though gathering people together were an end in itself, and a short prayer or talk sufficient to make the occasion ‘religious’ and 'Christian.’ But these things pass and are forgotten, and no one is the more Christian for them.
What does youth want? Not many are really satisfied by the pursuit of pleasure - that is an escape; nor by lectures (though an occasional appropriate lecture might do some good). Youth is full of ideals and wishes to do something to serve these ideals. The answer for someone who wishes to work with youth and to keep them in the Church is to give them something to do, something useful and at the same time idealistic.
