At lunch:
Matthew LeSage:
From 'ham boy' to youth prez

By Lesli Bales-Sherrod

Matthew LeSage knows a little something about leading. As a fifth grader, LeSage started "Hams for the Hungry," a ministry that, in its five years of existence, raised $65,000 to buy Easter hams for Second Harvest Food Bank, not to mention 1.5 tons of baked beans.

Now that he's in his senior year at Farragut High School, "Hams for the Hungry" is history, but LeSage is not. On Sept. 9, he was elected to his second term as president of the Conference Council on Youth Ministries (CCYM).

"I really like the fact that I can make a difference in what goes on," LeSage said Sept. 11 over salad and chocolate milk during his lunch period. "It's not just a bunch of old guys sitting around a table deciding what's going to be done for youth. It's youth deciding what's going to be done for youth."

The CCYM is made up of seventh through twelfth graders from each district in the conference. LeSage said his proudest accomplishment during his first presidential term was the establishment of an at-large committee for ethnic and racial minorities.

"Maybe we weren't reaching our full potential," LeSage said. "Since God's table is color-blind, ours should be, too."

This year, CCYM's goal is to raise $38,000 for the Youth Service Fund, which is money spent by youth for youth to benefit youth. LeSage has foregone taking a youth position in his home church, Concord United Methodist in the Oak Ridge District, because he wants to travel around the conference spreading the word about what CCYM is and what it does.

Of course, the 17-year-old also is busy with school activities, from student government and National Honor Society to Ensemble audition choir and the comedy improv team.

And then there's getting ready for college. LeSage has narrowed his choices to Duke, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Vanderbilt, and West Point, and he wants to go pre-med.

Yes, LeSage is smart. But so are other teenagers, he said, and they need to be included in their churches.

"I don't think they fully see us as the church of today," LeSage said of older church folk. "This is the time in your life when you need God's shaping the most, when you establish what you believe in. "It's not that the church needs us," he added. "It's that we need the church."

LeSage called on churches to incorporate youth onto churchwide committees: "Youth feel alienated because they don't feel like they have a voice."

Likewise, LeSage encouraged youth to step up and make their voices heard. He reminded them that "Hams for the Hungry" started with a dream.

"Everywhere I went, I heard, 'Let a little child lead them,'" LeSage laughed. "Then I became a gawky teenager, and I lost my appeal. We stopped doing it because I wasn't cute anymore."

All joking aside, LeSage summed up the moral of the story.

"You can change things," he said. "You just have to take initiative and make it happen."

Lesli Bales-Sherrod is county government reporter for The (Maryville) Daily Times. She attends the French Broad Circuit in Knoxville District.

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