Try as she might in the past few months, Denise Gressel has fought the memory of a number of young middle schoolers she has met in the local Campus Life outreach ministry, where she has served as a volunteer.
These are young people who have told her that they sometimes wander local downtown neighborhoods in the morning’s wee hours because they are unsupervised. The thought of that has kept Gressel awake some nights.
“The more time I spent with them (at Campus Life meetings), the more I realized that they had almost no structure in their life,” Gressel said. “So, many of them are regularly roaming the streets — or being made to be responsible for all their younger siblings. And they have little or nothing to do (for fun).”
Gressel and others interested in young people are changing that with a soon-to-launch Friday night middle-school effort called The Hangout, where young people can gather, enjoy one another’s company and snacks, games, movies and more.
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And Gressel and company need others to help. They need more volunteers to step forward to staff The Hangout for a few hours each Friday at The Living Room Church, 1412 Sycamore St. in Columbus. All volunteers must submit to a simple background check.
Ideally, the events will include area sixth to eighth graders.
“We have an opportunity to help these young people write the next chapter of their life,” said Gressel, part of the ministry staff at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church. “It won’t necessarily be easy. But it can be done.”
She has recruited a number of other people to help her in this cause. Jessica Gorham is among them. Gorham already volunteers with the Alliance For Substance Abuse Progress and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Bartholomew County among her other community activities. She figures if the open-ended monthly teen gatherings at Foundation For Youth since last fall could be such huge successes, so can this eventually.
“We’re trying to keep this as lightly structured as possible,” Gorham said.
Though she is busy raising two small children, she decided to get involved with The Hangout for a simple reason.
“I just saw a real need,” said Gorham, who created the group’s logo.
When Gressel first considered doing something to help the at-risk youngsters she knew, she discussed possibilities with people such as Columbus Police Chief John Rohde, and Beth Morris, director of community health partnerships at Columbus Regional Hospital.
“These kids just need something (good) to do. They just need some place to go,” Gressel said.
“And we realize one or two Friday nights won’t solve every young person’s problems. But we’ve got to be willing to start somewhere. I just want to get to them before they become some sort of statistic,” she added.
Thrivent Financial has offered financial support for the gatherings. Gressel is approaching everything one gradual step at a time, trusting that the Holy Spirit nudged her to do this, and will guide her to proper resources and guidance.
“I don’t know yet exactly where God is going to take this,” she said.
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Denise Gressel, one of the volunteer coordinators of the upcoming Friday night middle school gatherings, to be known as The Hangout, needs more volunteers.
She wants to have enough adult volunteers so the same people need not staff the events every week.
To contact Gressel: dgressel@stpeters-columbus.org
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