Franciscan at Home

When you began working in the Church, how many friends did you have who were also serving in ministry? For me, it was several dozen. These youth ministers, Catholic school teachers, missionaries, and seminarians all began their work with so much zeal for the mission ahead of them.

Yet, nearly ten years later, I can count on one hand the number of those friends who are still involved in full-time ministry. Maybe you’ve experienced something similar. Most of these friends of mine devoted several years of their lives to a university formation and tens of thousands of dollars to be trained for effective ministry. Yet, when I talk with former parish employees, the majority of them have fled from parish ministry with plenty of hurt and a noticeable level of bitterness toward their experience.

There’s a few obvious reasons—salary limitations and simply discerning a different calling are common ones. However, I’ve experienced another much more troubling and harmful reason: too often, Catholic parishes are some of the most dysfunctional places to work.

I can say this confidently having worked as a leadership consultant with hundreds of pastors who have told me this themselves, as well as having been an employee at two parishes myself. While a Catholic parish office is meant to be a hub of prayer, evangelization, and true Christian friendship, it is far more common that it is a festering pool for mediocrity, confusion, and frustration. This dynamic begs the question: why? What is causing this exodus from parish ministry?

The biggest reason people leave employment in a parish is not because of issues with liturgy, music, programs, or hospitality—things that often get lots of attention. They leave because the organization is unhealthy and tolerates low standards. Without healthy and clear leadership, the best homily or most dynamic video series will only get you so far. This is completely counterintuitive to almost everything that we are taught in studies and formation! We spend hours and hours crafting plans and reading theology (which are extremely important), yet almost no time learning how to effectively lead the people entrusted to us. When I discuss this with pastors, I can’t tell you the number of them who have incredulously told me, “No one ever teaches you this in seminary!”

St. Thomas Aquinas explained the imagination as “a storehouse of forms received through the senses” that are later called to mind.[1] St. Augustine considered it as a form of “spiritual vision,” distinct from our corporal and intellectual senses.[2] St. Theresa of Ávila described it as one of the most important powers of the soul.[3] Each of these Doctors of the Church spent ample time writing on the power of our imagination and its relationship to the life of faith. They understood that our imagination is part of our physical and spiritual nature. As such, it can affect our bodies and souls for good or for ill. Like all human faculties, our imagination must be trained and developed in order to be healthy, lest it become too weak or disordered—incapable of helping us enter into the reality of this life and the life to come. As catechists, we ought to consider how to form our imagination, and the imagination of those we teach, in the service of our call to holiness.

Jesus, as catechist par excellence, appealed to the imagination of his followers, painting elaborate scenarios. Most of his parables ask the listener to imagine a particular family, place, or circumstance that was common to life. We see him tell stories of disobedient sons (Mt 21:28–32), fiercely stubborn widows (Lk 18:1–8), harvesting wheat (Mt 13:24–30), and herding sheep (Lk 15:1–7). Some parables stretched the limits of the mind’s eye, appealing to circumstances less relatable but still within the grasp of a healthy imagination. Christ spoke of finding treasure (Mt 13:44–46), generous landowners (Mt 20:1–16), and extraordinarily compassionate fathers (Lk 15:11–32). Stories communicate truth and appeal to our imagination in ways that often transcend mere statements. The great southern Catholic author Flannery O’Connor once wrote, “a story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way . . . You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.”[4]

Forming a Healthy Imagination

The imagination is above all an integrative power. It reassembles the information that we take in through our senses for the purpose of calling to mind an object or experience in its absence or imagining something new and not yet experienced. I have never seen a purple dog, but I can imagine one. Unlike our external senses that can only perceive the object when it’s acting upon our sense organs, the imagination produces the sense of the object even when these objects are absent. For example, I can imagine a sunset and have its impression affect me without actually seeing it with my eyes.

Forming a healthy imagination requires having as much good and true sensory data as possible. This means that our experience of the natural world is critical, as it serves as the primary foundation of our imagination. As Sr. Thomas More Stepnowski, OP, explains, “the imagination assists in forming an ‘interior landscape’ of the spiritual life which helps us navigate through the dark valleys to the restorative green pastures.” She continues, “For Catholics, the imagination is not an escape to a fantasy world. The imagination aids us in seeing the real world by integrating the natural world and the supernatural world, the visible and invisible.”[5]

Most of us who serve as catechists in a religious education or youth ministry program share some common attributes:

• Our faith is important to us. It has served as a compass for our life;
• We want others to come to know the beauty of the Catholic faith;
• We answered a call for catechists—sometimes generously and sometimes reluctantly, only because we are aware of our limitations.

It’s vitally important to the life of the Church that our faith is handed on to the next generation with fidelity and accuracy. But it’s not always easy. Sometimes we are blessed with people who are sincerely interested in learning about our faith. But many times, if we are working with young people, we have people in front of us who are, at best, neutral toward faith and, at worst, a little hostile. If that is your situation, thank you! You are right where you are supposed to be.

If you’re catechizing the unenthused, I invite you to consider yourself not only a teacher of the faith but also a healer in faith. Behind those blank stares are young men and women who are probably carrying significant wounds—family wounds, relational difficulties, anxiety, depression, and loneliness to name just a few. Rather than being exasperated at the disinterest we see, can we look on our youth with the compassionate eyes of Jesus?

“When you love something so much, you talk about it. You can’t contain it. If you find something that you think is the greatest thing in the world, what teenager is quiet? There are none.” When I encountered that quote, my outlook on youth ministry changed. It was the day I realized that something was missing in our parishes. It was why, despite hundreds of thousands of Catholic teenagers attending youth groups, camps, and conferences every year, young people were still leaving the Church, some as young as ten years old.[i]

As those of us in the pews are getting older, more teenagers are becoming disaffiliated from religion. But this doesn’t mean that they aren’t religious or spiritual. Springtide Research Institute has interviewed and listened to teenagers (“Gen Z”) for several years. They are quick to point out that while many teenagers are no longer choosing to affiliate with a particular religion, teens are still very religious and spiritual. Furthermore, affiliation or disaffiliation doesn’t tell the whole story. Of “affiliated” Catholic teenagers, 49 percent say they have “little or no trust in organized religion.”[ii]

Almost half. That means that out of all those teenagers going to youth groups, sitting in religious education classes, and spending a week at camp—the ones who identify as Catholic—almost half of them don’t really trust the Church. It makes sense, then, why they choose to leave as time goes on. Why would you stay within an institution you don’t trust, especially one that is increasingly countercultural?

There is also a cost to being religious; we forgo certain things, do other things, and identify who we are through outward signs and behaviors. As secular culture becomes more antagonistic to religion, it forces teenagers who were raised Catholic but are perhaps lukewarm in their faith to make a decision: all in or all out. It is too costly to be a marginal Catholic; why deal with the persecution when you haven’t really bought into the faith in the first place?

As I write this article, I'm nursing the tail end of a mild bout of COVID-19. I don’t share that for pity but to point out how much the world has changed in the past few years. Before this decade, I didn't know what a novel coronavirus was. Everything I understood about pandemics was mainly picked up from disaster movies. Social distancing was only a dream my introverted wife possessed in her heart. And the virus that demanded fear as it first swept across the planet is now so common that it's possible to write an article while infected. Though we can celebrate the medical advances and technology that have helped us fight COVID-19, as the dust still settles on the pandemic, we are just now getting a real glimpse of how all this has affected today’s youth.

The CDC recently released a study revealing that over one-third of high schoolers have experienced poor mental health since the pandemic. At the same time, almost half acknowledge a persistent feeling of sadness or hopelessness.[i] Perhaps these stats are surprising, or maybe they are not; teens’ general mental health and well-being were on the decline long before COVID-19. However, we would be remiss if we failed to acknowledge the unique needs that young people now face. Though vaccinations and vitamins may combat the virus, it will take something far more powerful to heal these more profound ailments now facing teens’ interior life. To find the answers to the deepest sorrows of this life, we must turn our minds to the next one. The virtue of hope helps us do just that.

[i] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “New CDC data illuminate youth mental health threats during the COVID-19 pandemic,” CDC Newsroom, March 31, 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/p0331-youth-mental-health-covid-...

Diego is eleven years old. For years he has received religious formation through the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS) in a carefully prepared environment for the religious life of children called an atrium. He is working with a material known as the “Unity and Vastness of the Kingdom of God,” a timeline that takes a long and essential view of the history of salvation. Diego ponders the moment in this history when God says, “Let us make humankind in our image and likeness” (Gen 1:26). The catechist asks: “What do you think that means?” Diego never answers immediately. After a few minutes, he says, “It means we are able to live the Maxims.” Then, he brings over the box of “The Maxims of Jesus.”[1] This material consists of twelve wooden tablets, each holding a scripture verse of Jesus’ moral announcements. Under the words of Genesis, he places some of these Maxims:

• “. . . be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Mt 5:48)
• “I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34) 
• “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mt 22:39)

While Diego has not yet studied the Catechism of the Catholic Church, he is living what it teaches: “Freedom is exercised in relationships between human beings. Every human person, created in the image of God, has the natural right to be recognized as a free and responsible being. All owe to each other this duty of respect. The right to the exercise of freedom, especially in moral and religious matters, is an inalienable requirement of the dignity of the human person” (CCC 1738).

In the atrium, Diego is “recognized as a free and responsible being” and is given the time and the space needed for him to exercise that freedom. It is his response to being called by name by his Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, who “loves you; he gave his life to save you; and he is now living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.”[2]

Over the past seven years that I have been working in youth ministry, the only thing that has remained consistent is that young people are constantly changing. The middle and high school students I worked with in my first year of ministry are radically different from the students I encounter today.

There are a vast number of factors to consider when looking at the constantly shifting youth culture, but it is certainly the case that the dawn of TikTok partnered with a global pandemic has catapulted our young people into a new era—an era defined by uncertainty, division, and an increasing investment in their own experience and the experience of those around them.

Our young people today, more than any previous generation, have a deep interest in the well-being of others. We see this in the social issues that are at the forefront of their minds: health care, equality, mental health awareness, etc.[1] It is clear that, on some level, they recognize the value of the human person and they want to be part of helping people experience a deep sense of belonging. This emotional investment, while in itself commendable and inspiring, when coupled with a narrative that leaves no room for disagreement has given birth to what is referred to as the “cancel culture.”

This so-coined cancel culture has stripped from popular society the ability to discuss and disagree while still standing on a foundation of love. It has manipulated the younger generation’s good and beautiful desire to create spaces of belonging and has taught them that those who have different perspectives can and should be written off entirely.

This, of course, has key implications for the Church and her ministers and what it looks like to invest in our young people in the midst of the cancel culture.

To the surprise of my friends and family, I love being a middle school teacher. While admiring my enthusiasm, most people picture a hectic classroom filled with rowdy youth. It is true, some days I swear my students are on their second cup of coffee by first period. I have learned to enjoy these days because underneath all of that energy rests a deep desire to encounter Christ. In their fast-paced culture, young people’s hearts crave moments of silence, peace, and union with Jesus. When I first started teaching, I wanted each middle schooler to learn how to pray and to begin their relationship with Christ, but my efforts were not bearing much fruit.

I was doing something wrong. I began by praying the Our Father and Hail Mary with each class. My students knew these prayers from elementary school and did not show much excitement for praying them. My solution was to further explain the biblical origin of these basic prayers. While doing this helped a little, I still knew most of my students were not encountering Christ. No matter how much time I spent explaining the Our Father or Hail Mary, my voice was always the loudest one in the room. Even after introducing other prayers, there was no noticeable change. Why did the Holy Spirit not seem present?

I prayed the words of Saint Paul, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (Rom 8:26). I needed the Spirit to teach my students to pray!

Who could survive a low-paying, time-consuming, unpredictable, and exhausting job for more than a few years? And if they do survive, who could possibly thrive, especially as a family? We are living proof that it is possible, but it takes an important skill that many of us were not taught: building and protecting boundaries.

The first requirement to continue in ministry for more than a few short years is, of course, knowing ourselves to actually be called by God to this work. When we are called by God, bringing others into a deeper union with Christ and his Church in a substantial and concrete way becomes our overarching purpose. All Christians have this call by reason of their baptism, but not everyone is called to make it his or her professional employment. When considering full-time ministry work, there are important questions about boundaries that require clear answers. Can we do God’s will to the fullest in just the forty hours a week we are hired for? Does having time clearly set apart when we are completely removed from work limit our ability to love and serve unconditionally? If we are not at every event or providing several weeknight activities each week, how will we reach people well?

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