I married a wonderful, conservative Catholic woman.  We have three children and haven't been studious in our church attendance.  Recently, we made the decision that the family would go to church again.  I am not Catholic but our children are.  I grew up hopping from one denomination to another (Lutheran, Baptist, and Methodist) and decided that the denomination isn't important so long as they get the message so many years ago.  Now I am having second thoughts.  Not due to Catholicism ( I think it's a wonderful, tradition steeped sect of Christianity and have absolute respect for it) but my kids are older and seem bored.  We have been to two different churches and the message is 15 minutes followed by ceremony.  In both there are no youth groups.  There is a Baptist church close by and the best church experiences of my life have been in youth groups in Baptist churches.  My wife is not keen on moving out of her faith as she "had to work to become a catholic."  I know the kids are not interested in the mass.  I know some of their friends attend the Baptist church and they have several activities, especially over the summer.  My goal is to make church an experience the kids want to go to.  They do not seem interested in mass.  On her side (all old school Italians)  going outside of mass would be pretty bad.  Any one else go through something similar?

I have gone to many different denominational churches and found that the Catholic ones are just too "up there" in traditional rubber stamp services to keep kids interested.  They ain't what we used to be and have to be stimulated about 1000 times a day in stead of the 3 or 4 that we needed  .  Traditional church has a hard time doing that.

I even heard of some churches that have separate "kids" services.  They are interactive and a bit shorter than traditional.

For the wicked and the thirsty...