Park Presbyterian Church

Missy Gioan, Director of Youth Ministries

Missy graduated from Grove City College in May of 1999 with a double major in Psychology and Christian Ministries and a minor in communication. She has been the Youth Director at Park Church since July 1, 1999, where she is in charge of providing a ministry for the middle school (6th-8th grade) and high school (9th-12th grade) aged young people.

Under Missy’s leadership, the young people and Youth Leaders at Park have come up with a Purpose Statement for the Youth Groups. Missy says, “The Youth Groups do not exist simply to keep teens busy or make sure they stay out of trouble, but to point them towards Christ. In order to make sure that we are not doing an event or activity because it sounds fun or just for the sake of doing it, we make sure that its purpose fulfills one of the five in our Purpose Statement. Members of our congregation can remember the Purpose Statement by thinking of the acronym: PELTS. Each of these letters stands for one of the five purposes: Praise, Encourage, Learn, Tell, & Serve.”

“The order of the five purposes is important because they are in the order in which they should take place. For example, before we should do anything else, we need to PRAISE God. It is only after we have PRAISED our Lord and Savior that we can do any of these other things. Next we need to ENCOURAGE one another. After we have done that, we can LEARN more about Christ and how to live lives that are pleasing to Him. We can do this through Sunday School, Worship, Youth Group, Small Groups, NBC Bible Study, and reading the Bible each day. After we have LEARNED, it is then our job to TELL others how they can get to Heaven. (The Bible tells us that there is no way we can earn our way into Heaven. It is only by asking God to come into our lives and to forgive our sins that we may have eternal life.) Last, but not least, we need to SERVE others. Some of the ways the youth at Park Church have SERVED include: raising money for the poor by participating in the 30 Hour Famine, singing for Senior Citizens at Nursing Homes, and helping run a Vacation Bible School both in Beaver and on a mission trip in West Virginia.”