Franciscan at Home

Several years ago, I was working as a parish Coordinator of Youth Ministry, and one of my responsibilities was teaching a high school religious education class. The class was arranged by the parish DRE and met as part of her programming each Wednesday night. There was no set textbook or program. We had a wide range of topics and materials available, and we were able to move as the class needed. The class was comprised of a diverse range of students with varying backgrounds and levels of catechetical formation. Mid-year, a new family moved to the parish. The parents only spoke Spanish, and they had two sons in high school who had very little formal religious education.

The older of the sons was in eleventh grade. He didn’t speak much. I’ll refer to him as “Frank.” You could tell by what few personal stories he shared that Frank’s life was a hard one. He lived in a bad neighborhood. He adored his parents, who were hard-working, but recognized that they were consumed by the preoccupation of the family business and were also not as devout as they expected their children to be. The boys completed that school year and came back the following fall.

“With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as well” (1 Thes 2:8).

For more information about the celebrations for the University's 75th Anniversary, please go to 75.franciscan.edu. Or call (740) 283-3771.

For more information on the 2022 Steubenville Youth Conferences, go online at www.steubenvilleconferences.com or call 1-740-283-6315.

How to change a flat tire. How to turn off the water to an overflowing toilet.

How to manage money, create a budget, and balance a checkbook.

How to perform the Heimlich maneuver or CPR in an emergency.

One of my primary roles in my work for the Church has been to respond to questions from parish priests and lay leaders about how to start a youth group or the right time to hire a youth minister. As I’ve met with these individuals to discuss these questions in greater depth, I’m often struck by the “why” of the questions. What are they wanting to accomplish? Some of them have few, if any, youth involved in their parish so they are looking to hire a staff person or to start a program that will better engage the youth. Some are starting to see youth wanting to get more involved and they are seeking to offer support. Honestly, several times the leaders in the parish simply state that they want an active youth group because the church down the road has one or they have fond memories of their own childhood youth ministry.

Despite a plethora of reasons for starting or improving youth ministry, there are really only two common responses the average parish considers: starting a youth group or hiring a youth minister (or a combination of these two). When discerning the best path forward, it’s important to take time to consider the known options but also to have an openness to whatever it is that God desires. The risk of not doing so can hinder a ministry’s fruitfulness. Also, if decisions are made out of ignorance, pride, or even simply an impatience with the current realities, the ministry itself can be disordered from the start.

Though there isn’t a “one size fits all” option and I don’t claim to know what God’s will might be for any given situation, my hope here is to share with you some of the ways that I’ve seen youth ministry work most effectively. In the following paragraphs, I’ll explain a certain option, some of the benefits of implementing it, and finally some of the limitations and implications of each initiative.

Stay connected to your parish or school. Download myParishApp here for free.

This is a paid advertisement in the July-September 2021 issue. Advertisements should not be viewed as endorsements from the publisher. 

How do you bring someone to faith in Jesus Christ? As Christians, this is a question we should have a ready-made answer for.

In the 1997 General Directory for Catechesis, “Missionary Initiation” is listed as a sixth and unique task of catechesis. The 2020 Directory for Catechesis folds this task into the fifth task of catechesis, “Introduction to Community Life,” with the logic that an integral part of being formed in Christian community is learning to contribute to the growth of the community through our baptismal vocation as missionary disciples.[1] The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls mission work “a requirement of the Church’s catholicity,” meaning that because the Church is for all humanity, we must be a welcoming people, taking Christ’s message to others.[2] In fact, the Second Vatican Council called the Church “the universal sacrament of salvation.”[3] We are the visible sign to the world that Christ welcomes all to life in him. Taking Christ to the world is not only a collective responsibility, but also an individual one. In his encyclical letter Redemptoris Missio, Pope St. John Paul II calls missionary activity “a matter for all Christians.”[4] This includes, of course, the youngest Christians in our community, the children and teens we form in parish and school catechetical programs.

Notes

In 2020, the Shepherds of the Church gave us a treasure in the new Directory for Catechesis. Dr. Farey was a member of the working party for the bishops on the new Directory and shares additional reflections on its practical implications in this issue and the next two issues.