New vision inspires Church's youth work

In 1976, the Department of Education of the U. S. Catholic Conference issued a report, titled "A Vision of Youth Ministry," articulating new philosophies, goals and components of a new direction of the Church's ministry to young people.

According to Mary Harrison of the Albany diocesan Office of Evangelization and Catechesis, prior to that document, the main source of youth involvement in parishes came from the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO), which tended to cater to the physical dimensions of adolescent personality by organizing sports activities, and the social dimensions by sponsoring dances and other social activities.

Meeting new needs

This new vision of youth ministry was that it "is the response of the Christian community to the needs of young people, and the sharing of the unique gifts of youth with the larger community."

In essence, the idea was to allow young people to become full members of the parish community by enabling them to share their gifts and talents with the community as a whole.

Goals

It focused on three main goals for youth ministry:

* empowering young people to live as disciples of Jesus Christ in our world today;

* drawing young people to responsible participation in the life, mission and work of the faith community; and

* fostering the personal and spiritual growth of each young person.

Rather than segregate the youth from the rest of the parish, the idea was for youth and adults to work together for the good of the parish.

Diocesan response

One such program, the Christian Leadership Institute (CLI), was brought about to train young people to be leaders in their parishes. This week-long program has helped hundreds of young people become active members of their parishes.

Another program was the Diocesan Youth Council, a gathering of young people representing each deanery in the Diocese. They worked together to encourage parishes to look toward ownership of their own youth ministry programs.

Global gathering

After that speech, Ms. Harrison says, youth ministry began to grow as a "viable and professional ministry."

In the past five years or so, many parishes have begun to look at the youth ministry team approach. This idea focuses on a core team of youth and adults who work together to carry out the eight components of youth ministry: catechesis, prayer and worship, leadership development, pastoral care, community life, evangelization, justice and service, and advocacy.

In the past five years, 85 parishes have been through the training required to start a youth ministry team; while not all of the teams are currently active, at least 40 are flourishing.

Youth ministry

"Many new youth ministers believe that they can run a successful comprehensive youth ministry program on their own," she said. "Most of these youth ministers find out that isn't possible. With so many youth, so many ideas for programs and only so many hours in a day, it just doesn't work. New youth ministers burn out, get stale and fall out of touch with the needs of youth if they don't turn to others for assistance.

"This is where a Youth Ministry Team comes into play. At OLA, it became clear that there were many youth who wanted to be involved in the life of the Church, but there weren't many options and outlets for them to do that. Many of the options placed youth at a lower level than the adults of the parish. Youth ministry needs to be much more than [cleaning the church or raking the school lawn]. With a team, there were more ideas for activities and celebrations of faith than ever before because the ideas were coming from a larger group of both youth and adults. This meant the stress didn't fall on any one individual."

More to do

"I don't think I can even begin to imagine the possibilities and potential of comprehensive youth ministry done correctly," she admitted. "When it's right, youth make new friends across the social boundaries of school. They begin to practice their faith in many ways, from volunteering their time, to writing and leading parish prayer services, to supporting each other in times of need. I hope that the youth of the parish will come to see that their opinions really matter, that it is their Church as much as it is anyone's Church.

"I hope that the youth of the parish will meet many adults and see that the bonds of kinship that are created by our faith are very real. I hope that the youth of the parish will feel like they can come to the parish whenever they need to...that they know there is always someone there to listen...that the parish, the Church, is their home. I hope youth of the parish will be inspired by this new ministry, that it will enable them to think outside of the box so they can pray and worship in ways that they relate to."

(11-08-01) [[In-content Ad]]