Since moving to Brantford close to five years ago Dianne Rizzo has been dedicated to creating unique programs helping youth connect to and strengthen their faith while building ties with the community.
Rizzo, who is the Community Connections Coordinator at the Brantford Church of the Nazarene (BrantNaz), explained her own journey.
“I grew up in Hamilton [and] when I was around 14, a friend in high school invited me to a gym night. It was led by an organization called Reach for It, which rented school gyms and ran sports leagues like baseball, hockey and soccer for kids and adults. I used to love sports, so that was attractive to me. But that’s how I was first exposed to Christianity, through the God talks there. I then grew up, got married, while staying involved in the church. When our kids were little, we all moved to Sherkston and lived there for 20 years. We were involved in churches and youth ministry….then close to five years ago, we moved to Brantford,” she said. “We came here because of a job opportunity….to be the part time connection coordinator at the BrantNaz church…the church was very small, with only about 20 people….and so when Pastor Andrew [Brown] and his wife Paige came here, they were looking for partners to come alongside and…revive the church…It’s really been exciting to see the church go from about 20 or so people to now we average close to 150 on a Sunday.”
However, the focus has been growing programs directed to youth including the popular Summer KidsZone Camp initiative.
“When we first came to the church, there weren’t really very many youths attending. There was the youth center that ran in the house next door to the church for a long time that was more of a community hub…providing a space to hang out, play pool and have pizza…aside from praying together, there wasn’t really much of a bridge of any of the kids making it from the Tuesday night group that hung out here over to anything going on at the church. We then thought: how can we reach more families in the community? Then the idea of doing the summer KidsZone came to us. The [program] was all summer, happening 10am to 12pm on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays,” Rizzo explained. “We also wanted some teen helpers…so, we interviewed a bunch of the kids from that Tuesday night program that we had running. None of them had come from Christian families, [and] none of them had even made the decision to be a Christian themselves, but they were young and fun and energetic, and so they did a great job as our leaders in training to run that first KidZone program where we would do crafts, sing songs, play games, and do God talks to teach them something about the Bible. Then at the end of the summer, we have a big family barbecue for a KidsZone Sunday…having the kids come and sing the songs that they’d learned and share their memory-verses.”
As the youth have continued to get involved with programs associated with the church, some of their families have become intrigued with what else is offered.
“Five years later we had the average of 30 to 40 kids come and participate…and the crossover from kids that have started to come to KidsZone…[and] as they get older, aging out of it…they get involved in our Gym Nights…and that’s where we’ve had families starting to come to the church as a result. Some of them have never gone to church before [and] that was our whole purpose in all of this….was to introduce people to God,” Rizzo noted. “There have been….families over the years that have come, and it’s because the kids have brought them. And they just see how much the people in the church love their kids and love them and are welcoming to them. We’re always looking for ways to allow kids to be involved [and] find a purpose in our programming, and that nobody’s too young to come and help out and….be a part of the church family.”
Nevertheless, BrantNaz has offered an array of contact programs for youth as well as community initiatives during the year.
“Gym Night has been going for three years now and it was a program that was close to our hearts, especially my heart, because that’s where I was first introduced to God in church. We’ve got our initial contact ministries and get people seeing what we do within the community whether that’s a barbecue on Canada Day, or having a fun Nerf War in the church. All these different initial contact programs are more geared on reaching out to the community and giving the kids something to do other than just being in front of their screens,” she said. “Gym Night gives kids a chance to exercise [and] make connections. We do a little five-minute God talk at our gym nights too…[and] we do a bigger outreach event at the church on a Friday night, and that will be our Nerf War. We’ve done a Mission Impossible-type night…we’ve done a Fear Factor theme [and] we just finished our Chopped Cooking Competition. We also have done Mall Hunts at the Lynden Park Mall [and] a car rally, where you have to go and find different things in the town.”
There are a slew of additional programs offered by the BrantNaz as Rizzo noted.
“Just this year….we started a senior girl’s night, which only girls are allowed to be part of, and they have to be in grade nine and up. They’ve done things like paint nights, building a vision board, carving pumpkins and it also gives them an opportunity to have conversations about things that matter to them…things that are going on in their lives and [where] they need a safe place to talk. And then every other Sunday, we have our youth discipleship…where the kids can grow deeper in their relationship with God. This is where they can pray together, [and] grow together,” Rizzo said.
Recently, Rizzo went to the Change Conference in Toronto, bringing along youth leaders from the BrantNaz.
“It’s more of a larger gathering of different youth groups from all over the GTA, Southern Ontario, and other communities that are farther away. It’s usually held at the Queensway Church in Toronto. And there’s between 2000 to 3000 teams that are coming together on Friday nights. They have hip hop artists and music….[it’s a] bunch of kids that are excited to all come together. But they sing, they worship God and they hear more about what it means to be a Christian,” she explained. “The conference is over two days…and the kids are also participating in breakout sessions, where they can pick different topics and have different speakers… learning about mental health or how to pray. We’ve brought kids to this conference over the last three years. And then last year we also tried Today’s Teen Conference, which is more of a focus on developing future leaders within the church, within the ministry [and for] the kids that seem to really want a deeper relationship with God…they also learn the average church is hitting about 50 to 60 people, so there will be a lot of empty spots to fill. And so, there’s really an encouragement for kids to just consider…to get into full time ministry in the future.”
And last year, a special event was held which looked at bringing youth together from across the churches in Brantford.
“Just last year, Campbell Stahlbaum, one of the youth pastors at Celebration Church here in Brantford helped revive Youth Connect Night. It’s where all of the different youth groups across Brantford come together at one of the churches. It is a gathering of youth from the churches in Brantford that get together and play games, pray, listen to a speaker, and eat food. It’s to remind kids that there are people who believe what they believe in while helping them connect with these [like-minded] people,” she noted.
While Rizzo and the BrantNaz team have been in a great effort to building these programs, she has witnessed many youths growing with the church and developing their talents and skills.
“We have ten-year-olds that are running the cameras in the church [for example] and recognizing that many of the youth here want to find a purpose, they want to belong, and finding ways for them not just to be served, but to serve others. That’s such a great thing for them. We’ve got youth and teens on our sound booth and production and for a Sunday morning service. We’ve got kids that help with the younger kids….with childcare [and] in the nursery and with Sunday school classes,” Rizzo recounted. “The idea is for all of us working together for a common purpose [which] gives kids a sense of belonging. I know there’s a lot of kids who are in different stages of family life [and we found that] a lot of them don’t have dads involved in their lives. But there are men in the church that’ll come alongside them and teach them what a man is. And take them on hikes, or teach them how to play guitar. There’s just that interaction that’s happening and showing youth and adults alike that we can be a bigger family.”
However, these programs are providing a path for families to come learn more about what BrantNaz is doing.
“In the last six months or so, there have been a couple of families that have come through the doors of the church because their kids are searching for something and they don’t know how to answer the questions. They are curious about the big questions of life like: ‘Who am I?’ ‘Where do I come from?’ or ‘Why am I here?’ And they aren’t finding answers to these questions anywhere else. They’re not finding them online. They’re not finding them in their video games and….secular society just doesn’t seem to have answers for those questions. And so, it’s been really a big dream of mine to create more opportunities to help not only the kids but their families find answers to those big life questions, and that they find hope in God and a purpose,” she said.
