500 attend annual Good Friday breakfast at YMCA

YOUNGSTOWN — Michael Shaffer, Youngstown YMCA central branch director, told a sell-out crowd of 500 at the annual Good Friday breakfast service that “lots of things happen here.”

Before the gym was set up with tables for the event, he said that kids were playing basketball.

He emphasized that the “C” in YMCA is about being Christian in all activities.

That led into the invocation offered by Carl Bogan, a member of the Spiritual Life Committee, who told the crowd to think of how the gym had been transformed into a church. The Good Friday event has been a tradition for nearly 40 years.

Shaffer introduced the keynote speaker, Bishop George V. Murry of the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown with these words: “He’s the right man at the right time.”

“He gets it ... the challenges and strengths of this community,” Shaffer said of the fifth bishop of the Youngstown diocese.

Bishop Murry’s topic was “The Cost of Discipleship Today.”

“Good Friday is a time to reflect on the sacrifice that Jesus made for us ... he died so that we might live,” he said.

Read more in Saturday’s Vindicator and Vindy.com