Advocacy

Context

The secret message communicated to most young people today by the society around them is that they are not needed, that the society will run itself quite nicely until they – at some distant point in the future – will take over the reins. Yet the fact is that the society is not running itself nicely… because the rest of us need all the energy, brains, imagination and talent that young people can bring to bear down on our difficulties. For society to attempt to solve its desperate problems without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile. (Alvin Toffler)

Goal

Effective and comprehensive pastoral ministry with young people calls for adults to advocate for the needs of young people.  This, of course, includes saying “no” to that which is bad for young people.  Further, young people are taught and encouraged to advocate for themselves, to name their own needs.

Suggested Implementation

• Developmental Needs: Regularly offer information to a wide variety of audiences regarding the needs of young people. This can and should include parents, catechists, confirmation sponsors, and core team membership as well as parish staff and leadership.  It should include the developmental changes and societal challenges that young people face as well as how young people grow spiritually and emotionally.
• Diversity:  Offer to assist parents, catechists, confirmation sponsors, and core team membership as well as parish staff and leaderships in assisting young people and families.  Include the developmental changes and societal challenges that young people face as well as how they grow spiritually and emotionally.
• Spiritual Development: Check out this video to ensure that young people’s journey as a person matches the development of their journey with Christ.
• Perspective: When developing responses and/or programming related to young people, actively seek young people’s imagination, participation, and ownership in developing solutions. Remain committed to address various issues and concerns through the eyes of a young person.

Methods for Evaluation

Within the same calendar year as you attempt to address this concern, delegate individuals, both young and old, to ask:

• Do young people evaluate the programming available to them as too demanding and too mature for them or as too simplistic and too immature?
• Do we always attempt to match them in their present stage of development and/or compelling and challenging them to growth?

Context

Jesus said, Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. (Matthew 19:14)

Goal

Effective and comprehensive pastoral ministry with young people remembers, The partnership between children’s ministry and ministry with adolescents is one of the most vital relationships in the church. After all, the kids who are in (the) children’s programs will one day be in (the) youth programs. It isn’t as if teenagers, like the Greek gods of old, sprang fully formed from their parents’ foreheads. Every adolescent you minister to was once a child. (Ryan Timpte, Center for Youth Ministry Training)

Suggested Implementation

• Formation of Parents: Help parents develop skills and support for their parenting through resources and programming that addresses the spiritual and developmental needs of their young people. Consider providing resources regarding logical and natural consequences as a form of discipline.
• Establish Partnerships: Seek and develop partnerships with those providing children’s ministry within the parish community. Seek this ministry as a potential venue to offer young people the opportunity to provide service as a catechist and/or catechetical aide.
• Liturgical Ministry: Engage young people in both training and active engagement in various liturgical ministries.  Provide mentors to assist them as they apprentice themselves into these ministries. Welcome opportunities for children to work beside their parents (e.g., taking up the gifts, ushering, serving as ministers of hospitality).
• Service: Engage young people in both training and active engagement in various service opportunities. Ensure that service opportunities are meaningful and not merely “cheap labor” doing menial tasks. Provide mentors to assist them as they apprentice themselves into these ministries.
• Celebrate their Presence: Be intentional regarding acknowledging the presence of young people who have yet to reach middle school or high school. Include their concerns in prayers as well as in homilies. Celebrate their contributions in the ministries of liturgy and service in the parish community.

Methods for Evaluation

• When young people are invited to participate in middle school or high school ministry, might it be their perception that this is the first time that the parish community has acknowledged them or shown concern regarding them?

Context

Our vision of pastoral ministry with young people proposes an approach that attends to a wide spectrum of needs and attuned to the distinct developmental, social, cultural, and religious needs as well. We remain focused on young people. Yet we recognize that the day has passed when one program or structure could respond to the needs of many. (Renewing the Vision)

Goal

Effective and comprehensive pastoral ministry with young people calls for a regular assessment of the needs of young people where young people are involved in this assessment. Any corresponding ministry to young people should be evaluated in light of the needs outlined in the assessment process.

Suggested Implementation

• Focus Groups: Consider gathering a focus group of “concerned parties” regarding the needs of young people in the parish community. This might involve pastoral leadership, core team members, and/or parents; but should certainly include young people. Make sure to ask the right questions. For suggestions, see this link.
• Individual Interviews:  Develop questions that discern what is good and what needs improvement; specifically ask about the distinct developmental, social, cultural, and religious needs of young people. Discern the time obligations already placed on young people as well as the best methods for communication with them. Ensure a diverse sampling.
• Survey: Mindful of the statements above, develop your own survey.
• Mindset: Gather all key adults involved in your pastoral ministry with young people, including catechetical and worship efforts.  Review with them the Beloit Mindset List which assists adult in avoiding ‘hardening of (cultural) references” when speaking with young people as well as offering a “globally reported and utilized guide to the intelligent if unprepared adolescent consciousness.”   After reviewing the most recent list, examine your parish’s present efforts.  What might be changed to reflect the present mindset?
• Confirmation Preparation: Consider using the beginning or ending of preparation as a time for inviting young people to speak to their own needs within the parish community.
• Next Steps:  Following one or all of the above, gather a group to analyze all of the data assembled and invite someone to assemble a report for the parish community, web-site, bulletin, and/or parish leadership.

Methods for Evaluation

Within the same calendar year as you attempt to address this concern, delegate individuals, both young and old, to ask:

• What did the team learn regarding the needs of young people? What programs presently best serve their needs?  What should be modified or eliminated in consideration of their needs?
• What methods were young people offered to express their needs?
• What parish based venues have young people been given to express their needs?

Context

Effective pastoral ministry is to be people-centered and needs focused. Focus on the people – not the programs. Young people are not called to events, but to discipleship.

Goal

Effective and comprehensive pastoral ministry with young people calls for regular assessment of the needs of young people with young people actually being involved in the process of assessment. Ministry to young people as well as the evaluation of that ministry should correspond to these stated needs. Further, there is to be a stated “vision” of pastoral ministry with young people in the parish, one that is communicated to all staff and parish committees and leaders. This vision should be renewed every two years.

Suggested Implementation

• Needs Assessment: Develop a needs assessment survey to be distributed to young people. A few potential templates can be found here and here.
• Town Meeting: Engage a diverse, sweeping audience representing adults and young people in the parish. Share up to three distinct witness stories from young people. Start a conversation about the needs of young people in the community. Highlight the successes and where there is room for growth.
• Vision Session: Annually conduct a gathering of both young people and adults in the parish community that seeks to articulate the needs of young people in the community. Attempt to keep the session focused on discussing advocacy, leadership, engagement, and discipleship needs of the young people.  Avoid developing programmatic responses in deference to further understanding the perceived needs.
• Program Survey: Annually conduct a meeting of all the programming / programs that are available in the parish community. Are the needs of the young people being met by only one or even a limited number of programmatic choices? Where are the gaps of service and what needs are not being addressed?

Methods for Evaluation

Within the same calendar year as you attempt to address this concern, delegate individuals, both young and old, to ask:

• Have our ministry efforts assessed the needs of young people in this following year?
• Has assessment of the needs of young people impacted our ministry efforts?

Context

This approach involves a wide diversity of adult and youth leaders in a variety of roles necessary for comprehensive ministry. Ministry coordinators have a central role in facilitating the people, programming, and resources of the faith community on behalf of a comprehensive ministry effort with young people. Ministry coordinators alert the whole community to its responsibility for young people, draw forth the community’s gifts and resources, and encourage and empower the community to minister with young people. Of special importance to effective ministry with young people is cooperation among the leaders, ministries, and programs in a faith community as they work together in a common effort to achieve the three goals of the Church’s ministry with youth. (Renewing the Vision)

Goal

Effective and comprehensive pastoral ministry with young people calls for a collaborative, team approach for ministry where adult and youth leaders are to be valued and recognized for their leadership. Representatives from all areas of ministry in the parish serve on the team and the composition of the team should be reflective of the diversity of the parish. The skills and spirituality of adult and youth leaders are nurtured.

Suggested Implementation

• State the Vision: On an annual basis, the team, coordinator, and/or pastoral leadership should evaluate the direction that pastoral ministry with young people has been taking over the past year. Discuss this manual and the evaluation points on each page. Let the team help the coordinator “keep the vision” of ministry.
• The Role of a Coordinator: A coordinator of pastoral ministry with young people animates the vision and finds ways for the parish staff and leadership in the community to welcome young people into ministry. A coordinator who is not the “do-er” of ministry but the coordinator best serves a parish. This person should also be connected to diocesan groups like Network and AREA. A coordinator is committed to lifelong learning and takes intentional steps to nurture his/her spirituality.
• Training: Local and national resources should be utilized for training team members as well as for evaluating ministry.
• Commissioned: Team members should have an experience that their efforts are both recognized and affirmed by the parish community as well as part of the prayer life of the community.
• Recruitment: Recognize that recruitment for the team is not a season activity, but an on-going effort.

Methods for Evaluation

Within the same calendar year as you attempt to address this concern, delegate individuals, both young and old, to ask:

• Is pastoral ministry with young people considered a team effort within the parish?

Context

The challenge of being transformed into a holy person is not undertaken alone but within a faith community… The longing for community touches each of us at the very core of our being.  It is basic to being human. (Sons and Daughter of the Light: A Pastoral Pan for Ministry with Young Adults Washington, DC. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. 1997, pp. 19-20)

Goal

Effective and comprehensive pastoral ministry with young people calls for the investment of time, as well as prayer and attention, in order to strengthen a parish’s “web of relationships” – youth with youth, youth with adults, ministry leaders with parents, parish community with parish staff and leadership, and so on.

Suggested Implementation

• Prayer: Consistently request that the community engage in prayer (possibility in the Prayers of the Faithful) on behalf of young people and their various activities in and on behalf of the community. Consider engaging prayer sponsors for young people in sacramental preparation. Encourage parish committees to include young people in their prayer petitions
• Welcome the Generations: At parish worship, make a point to acknowledge various generations present and/or engaged in liturgical ministries. This does not need to be limited to young people alone, but can include parents on Mother’s / Father’s Day, college students returning for the summer or holidays, elementary school-aged young people, etc. Make a point of “catching young people being good” and celebrating those occasions.
• Time and Talent: Develop an annual time and talent survey to encourage adult participation in the mission of pastoral ministry within the family community.
• Curator: Be willing to serve and/or delegate responsibility to someone who serves as a curator of the latest news regarding young people (spiritually, developmentally, culture, and media) and call the attention of the adult community to this information. Be aware of positive information and potential solutions when there is negative information.  Consider including this information in homilies, bulletin announcements, and website/social networking updates.
• Cheerleader: Be willing to serve and/or delegate responsibility to celebrate both church accomplishments as well as secular achievements of young people within the faith community. Take care towards not mentioning the same families regularly. Encourage parishioners to celebrate these accomplishments with the young people.

Methods for Evaluation

Within the same calendar year as you attempt to address this concern, delegate individuals, both young and old, to ask:

• Has the parish’s sense of “ownership” in pastoral ministry with young people increased in the past year? If all ministries with young people ceased, would it be missed? Why? Why not?
• Do young people recognize the involvement of the parish community in the ministry efforts of the parish community? If the parish closed, would it be missed? Why? Why not?

Context

I prefer a Church that is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church that is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security…. More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: “Give them something to eat” (Mk6: 37). (Pope Francis, Evangeli Gaudium, 49)

Goal

Effective and comprehensive pastoral ministry with young people includes the ministry of pastoral care, a compassionate presence in imitation of Jesus’ care of people, especially those who were hurting and in need. (Renewing the Vision). It has been noted that this should include building a capacity to address the challenges of suicide, death of a family member, struggling with addiction (i.e., drug addiction, cutting, eating disorders, etc.), as well as addressing the needs of incarcerated or institutionalized young people

Suggested Implementation

• Care Providers: Develop/update a listing of local professionals for which you can offer families referrals to assist them in addressing the many challenges of adolescents.
• Pastoral Care Planning/Training: Use the Pastoral Cross, provided by CYM during a time of loss in your parish or school community. Use the resources that accompany the cross to help your team lead young people through their grief.
• Pastoral Needs Survey: Conduct a survey with school counselors, local police, and other ministry leaders regarding the perceived pastoral needs and challenges facing young people in your community.
• Parent Formation: When addressing the pastoral needs of young people make sure to include resources and/or additional programming to serve parents and adults.
• Peer Ministry Training: Equip young people with the caring skills (listening skills, showing empathy, referral skills, etc.) to accompany their peers through the many challenges of life.

Methods for Evaluation

Within the same calendar year as you attempt to address this concern, delegate individuals, both young and old, to ask:

• Are the pastoral ministry efforts within your parish community perceived as being “at the center” or are they directed towards reaching the fringes of the community?
• Were those responsible for pastoral ministry within the community both trained and flexible enough to help the community address a crisis or emergency pastoral care issue?

Context

From the very day of Pentecost the Church has celebrated and administered holy Baptism. Indeed, St. Peter declares to the crowd astounded by his preaching: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” The apostles and their collaborators offer Baptism to anyone who believed in Jesus: Jews, the God-fearing, pagans. Always, Baptism is seen as connected with faith: … The baptized have “put on Christ.” Through the Holy Spirit, Baptism is a bath that purifies, justifies, and sanctifies. (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1226 -1227)

Goal

Effective and comprehensive pastoral ministry with young people calls for us to recognize that As a baptized member of the Church, Jesus Christ calls you (all) to follow in his footsteps and make a difference in the world today. You can make a difference! . . . In the words of the Holy Father: ‘Offer your youthful energies and your talents to building a civilization of Christian love . . . commit yourself to the struggle for justice, solidarity, and peace (Homily at World Youth Day, Denver, 1993)

Suggested Implementation

• Intentional Invitation: Young people, as do all the baptized and the entire world, deserve and should expect an intentional invitation to participation in the life of the church.  At what points throughout the year are you extending specific invitations to young people? Upon review, what are the general expectations set by the invitations? Are invitations taking into consideration the schedule and lives of young people (exams, holidays, etc.)?
• Intentional Marketing: Young people, as do we all, deserve and should expect an intentional marketing to participation in programming in the life of the church.  Secular companies spend millions of dollars to reach young people. What distinguishes your messages to young people?  How are you engaging parents and the young people as collaborators?
• Intentional Evangelization: Young people, as do we all, deserve and should expect an intentional invitation into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ and discipleship of the Lord. Throughout the year is there a consistent invitation and /or challenge expressed to young people related to a relationship with Jesus?  Is there a consistent availability of adults and youth modeling and witnessing towards their own relationships?
• Intentional Homilies: Young people, as do we all, deserve and should expect an intentional commentary upon God’s Word that takes their culture, experiences, and life challenges into consideration.  Do the homilists in your community speak to the lives of young people?
• Intentional Pastoral Ministry: Young people, as do we all, deserve and should expect ministry designed to address their specific needs from within the context of the faith community. This should not be a ministry that excludes young people from the larger community but engages the larger community with the young people we are called to serve.

Methods for Evaluation

Within the same calendar year as you attempt to address this concern, delegate individuals, both young and old, to ask:

• Have our ministry efforts assessed the needs of young people this year?
• Has assessing the needs of young people impacted our ministry?
• Do we take into account what we learn from our evaluations?
• Do we intentionally welcome all young people?

Context

The Christian truth is attractive and persuasive because it responds to humanity’s deepest needs. (Pope Francis; Address to College of Cardinals, March 15, 2013)

Goal

Effective and comprehensive pastoral ministry with young people reminds us that young people are part of ministry because they are baptized, not because they register, start at the correct beginning of the year, or merely show up.

Suggested Implementation

• Prayer: The true starting point of anything we do in ministry should always involve prayer. If you need a “kickoff” experience, reserve it for your team and make it about prayer.
• Homecoming: All programming should offer a sense of homecoming regardless of whether it is a participant’s first experience, part of their regular routine, or if they have been away for a while. An emphasis on hospitality, no matter the season, is key.
• Avoid Hype: We should take care to avoid promotion for programming that might be labeled as excessive publicity or offers exaggerated or extravagant claims.
• Spirit of Inclusion: We should take care to always build a spirit of inclusion to all those who are present; no one set aside, no one ignored, all are welcomed.

Methods for Evaluation

Within the same calendar year as you attempt to address this concern, delegate individuals, both young and old, to ask:

• Do our publicity efforts contain all basic information needed: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How much? Deadlines?
• What effort have we placed into improving our hospitality?

Context

If you judge people, you have no time to love them. (Blessed Teresa of Calcutta)

Goal

Effective and comprehensive pastoral ministry with young people challenges us to remember that young people should feel relevant because they ARE relevant. All young people are to be welcomed, regardless of the way they dress, how they identify themselves as children of God, or how often they show up.

Suggested Implementation

• Look Inwards: Evaluate any stated or assumed set of rules regarding your ministry programming. Do they place a judgmental standard on young people in general or specifically on individuals?  Make sure to clarify the rationale for all rules, not defaulting towards “that’s the way we have always done it”.
• Reaching the Marginalized: Gather your adult team and watch Gregory Ellison’s presentation at the Youth Cartel: Learning to Notice Marginalized Teenagers and/or Nikole Lim: Teenagers We Overlook. Discuss these videos. Can we engage in fearless dialogues? Can we recognize brokenness, including our own?
• Who Is Missing: In a midyear discussion, engage young people in a discussion regarding who is missing from your gathered ministry. Do not allow the discussion to analyze individual’s situation or excuses, but remain focused on how an invitation might be extended to them.
• Hospitality: Offer learning opportunities to youth and adult ministers of hospitality. Be intentional about welcoming all to liturgy and/or ministry programming. Determine activities that engage and encourage all to mix and mingle at the beginning of all programming.
• Identity: Encourage young people to identify themselves as Children of God and genuinely listen to how they do so.  Consider how your parish or school might encourage young people to reflect on their own spirituality while remaining true to Catholic doctrine. Engage young people in this discussion.

Methods for Evaluation

Within the same calendar year as you attempt to address this concern, delegate individuals, both young and old, to ask:

• How has attendance grown more diverse over the past year? In what ways?
• What methods were young people offered to express their needs?
• What parish based venues have young people been given to express their needs?