By Dan Morris
This article appeared in the January 1985 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 50, No. 1, pages 26-31).
Can parishes ease the problems and pressures of troubled teens with a healthy dose of youth ministry? Dan Morris reports.
“Those dirty, double-dealing, hypocritical blankety-blanks,” Debbie blurted out as she came into our house. “Do you know what they just did? They want to cut me back to half time to ‘balance the church budget.’ A year ago they were all gung-ho about youth ministry, and now they want twice as much for half the price. And the damn pastor just sat there and didn’t say boo. I’ve worked weekends, nights, holidays—and he knows it. And when they said they didn’t think they were seeing enough results from the crummy $13,000 they pay me, he just sat there. Can you believe that?”
A friend of ours who is the youth minister at a nearby parish, Debbie, 25, had just come from a parish-council meeting.
“Half of them want a babysitter, half of them want a Catholic Mother Goose, some of them don’t understand why the assistant pastor can’t do the job, the pastor doesn’t give a hoot as long as he doesn’t have teenagers bugging him, and the kids could care less as long as they have a good time. Is it worth it?”
Thousand of parishes across the country are apparently venturing a “yes.” Experts estimate that as many as 5000 parishes have hired full-time youth ministers, and thousands of others are deepening their investment in youth outreach with volunteer or part-time staff.
Unfortunately, our friend Debbie’s experience doesn’t seem to be unique, as parish staffs, parents, parish councils and young people themselves try to sort out just what youth ministry should be and what youth ministers should do.
Lest the picture seem too dark, however, it should be noted youth ministry is becoming a healthy force in many parishes. Says Helena, Montana high-school senior Katy Paynich: “Through my youth group and parish I have become aware of global situations, but I have never been left without hope. Through my experiences I have developed the strength to entrust my life and the world’s future to God. Like everybody, I become discouraged, but… the spark of faith and an attitude of hope makes a difference in my parish and family.”
High-school sophomore Peter Finley of Oakland, California has found “lots of friends and lots of fun” in the youth group at Holy Spirit Parish in nearby Berkeley.
“It’s not run like a class,” he says, “but more like a group of friends getting together. The counselors (students from the University of California campus) respect our opinions, and we get involved in a lot of things.”
Asked what quality he would look for first in a potential youth minister, he responded, “Someone who understands how you feel, what problems you’re going through, but knows how to lead a large group like that.”
Sound a little vague?
Grasping at straws
In an observation typical of those working in parish youth ministry, Peg Hanrahan, youth minister at St. Francis de Sales Parish in Lake Zurich, Illinois, said, “We often have to deal with the mentality that we’ve been hired to play with the kids. Defining our role is crucial, and we have to spend a lot of time explaining to people what we do.”
Whatever they do, the need seems to be there. Pastors repeatedly mention youth (read adolescents”) as an agonizing weak spot in parish ministry.
“We’re willing to try anything, but nothing seems to work,” sighed one pastor in a typical comment.
Parents are also concerned. Doris Bilse, mother of four aged 11 to 21, notes: “Everything seems so fragmented. The church is doing its thing, the high school is doing its thing, CCD is doing its thing, and all I would like to find is an anchor for my kids.”
“I want a good, solid thing,” she adds. “I don’t want entertainment, but I want something for them that they’ll enjoy and where they can find how the church might make sense in their lives.”
Substituting for three months at my own parish’s high-school religious-education class, I polled teens on why they attended. More than two thirds of the 15 or so who showed up said their parents coerced them into attendance. Most were much more interested in each other and the wall clock than any of the “stimulating” materials I had checked out of the diocese’s religious education library.
Tragically, that CCD effort is the total sum of my parish’s outreach to high-school youth—15 bored teens in a parish of well over 1000 families.
So how can a parish get a handle on reaching this nebulous, self-conscious, sometimes irritating group?
“We have to look to minister to the total needs of the youth, not just compartmentalize it—such as social or athletic,” says David Biviano, for five years director of Youth Services for the Diocese of Spokane, Washington.
“To be succinct,” adds youth-ministry curriculum developer Bill Coleman (Growth Associates) of Mystic, Connecticut, “youth ministry is basically the interaction of the adult and youth members of the church. That would mean that young people are ministered to by the adult community, and the adult community is ministered to by the youth members. This should also take on a third direction, that of the young and older members of the church ministering to others in need.”
Great expectations
Why do Catholics need youth ministry and particularly youth ministers? Didn’t we get along just fine without them for a long time?
“One of the unfortunate perceptions in the church today is that youth ministry is somehow new. It’s not,” says Biviano, a former president of the New York State Catholic Youth Organization in 1959.
“Still,” he went on, “better trained youth ministers and more thorough parish youth-ministry programs are much needed today. It used to be that the youth would be assigned to the assistant pastor who would pull together people to run the CYO.”
Those times are all but gone, said Biviano and several other youth ministers. Interestingly, nearly every one of them stopped short of blaming the decline in religious vocations for the need for youth ministers today.
“One reason for hiring a youth minister can be the vocations decline,” he said, “but I certainly would not reduce it to that. It seems to me that we’d still need youth ministers today even if we had plenty of priests and sisters.
“Lay ministry has developed and grown, and certainly youth ministry is a signal of the development of lay ministry in the last decade.”
Because youth ministry remains a relatively new field, however, people have different expectations when hiring a youth minister.
For example, youth ministers and religious educators (catechists) often stress they are in different fields, but it is common for a parish to seek both in one person. A recent advertisement in a Catholic newspaper read:
“Director of Religious Education/Youth Minister: Suburban Milwaukee Parish seeks dedicated Catholic to direct comprehensive youth program: educational, spiritual, social, opportunity to administer established primary-grade program and to develop a promising teenage ministry. Send resume…”
Fuzzy job descriptions are more common than not, indicates Peg Hanrahan. “It’s easy to pick up the sense that you’ve been hired to take care of the kids, to keep them off the streets and out of trouble, do some nice things with them. But when it comes to a crunch, people often revert to the old method of ‘Father has all the answers.’
“It’s hard for a youth minister to gain the kind of credibility needed to be effective—not only with youth, but with their parents and other people in the parish. It’s crucial to define your role. A real challenge also is working with others on the staff—the pastors, associates, religious-education coordinators, sisters, the school principal.”
Father A. R. Doga, pastor of Prince of Peace Parish in an upper-middle-class suburb of Houston, provides an interesting context for Hanrahan’s comments. The priest recently advertised for a youth minister. When I contacted him, he said no job description had been developed for the position; the final decision for hiring was his, but applicants would be interviewed by the assistant pastor, the DRE, the liturgy coordinator, the coordinator of music, and representatives of the CYO. After hiring, the youth minister’s duties would include reporting at parish-council meetings.
“When I interview a person,” he said, “I sit down and I tell them what we’re doing in our youth program now and what I envision we might be able to do. Whenever I interview a person for the job, I tell them to send me their philosophy of youth ministry. I don’t even have a contract. We’d rather have them try it for a year, although I wouldn’t be opposed to a contract.”
Why does his parish need a youth minister? “The church and world are very different today than 20 years ago. We also got along without a DRE 20 years ago, but I can’t imagine any parish like ours getting along without one with a master’s degree in religious education—without running a mickey-mouse operation.”
The parish planned to pay between $17,000 and $18,000 annual salary for a “degreed person.” The full-time position also carries a two-week vacation, ten paid sick days, life and health insurance, and a gas allowance.
An uncomfortable question arises: are youth ministers something only upper-income parishes can afford? What about middle and lower-income communities?
The question nags at many in youth ministry. An honest appraisal says that parishes that have a youth minister tend to be middle-class and upper-income.
“I’m concerned that the field is becoming and is perceived as a white, middle-class reality in the church,” says Hanrahan. “I don’t think that’s good, and we have to explore options.”
One option that some areas have exercised is joint hiring of a youth minister to work in two or more parishes.
Warm fuzzy-type people
Bill Coleman tells the story of being approached by a parishioner of a parish with no youth-ministry budget. The man wondered what could be done. Coleman suggested the man “find a few adults to welcome kids outside Sunday Mass—warm, fuzzy-type people. I told him to continue to do that for six months. Greet them, carry on a little conversation. In six months he came back and told me that that had become the beginning of a whole youth program, a youth program formed with these adults. The whole thing made these young people feel welcome at Mass.”
Effective youth ministry does not necessarily begin with the hiring of a full-time, professional youth minister, Coleman stressed, noting that three types of personnel are most commonly found in youth ministry: first, professionally trained, full-time youth ministers; second, a part-time employee “with or without professional training”; third, the volunteer.
“Who do you get to do this job of systematic instruction and making young people feel comfortable in community at this time in their life?” Coleman reflected. “Often one of the most satisfactory is a couple, even perhaps fairly untrained, who have the right instincts. We can provide training, build in catechetics. The most vital thing is that they have faith.”
Regardless of whether a youth-ministry program is headed by an assistant pastor, sister, volunteer, or paid professional, nearly everyone in the field emphasizes the need to delegate or drop; organize or expire; share the buck or burn out.
“To avoid burnout, it’s crucial to involve adults and young adults,” advises Tom James, 30, former director of youth ministries at St. James Parish in Arlington Heights, a suburb of Chicago.
James followed his own advice in “Quest,” the parish youth program. Quest has five parts: a monthly teen Mass on a Sunday evening planned by the youth themselves; weekend retreats for high-school students; social activities such as dances, skiing, rock concerts; service, including a recent week in Appalachia on a Glenmary farm; and, finally, small group meetings held every other week in homes of adult leader couples.
By most parish standards, the program at St. James is also a numerical success. Of the estimated 800 to 900 high-school-aged Catholics in the upper-middle-income parish, about 500 are touched in some way by the youth program during the year. About 150 attend the biweekly, small-group sessions.
James admits the program “is not heavily catechetical; we’re not trying to pass on a body of information to young people, but trying to expose them to adults with a mature faith, adults who in many ways have their own questions about faith, have not foreclosed all possibilities, but have an active faith.
“Essentially they’re models for the kids, guides, people who nurture, people who challenge the teens.”
Two for the Trinity?
Coleman and his wife co-worker, Patty, outline four components for an effective youth program: catechesis, service, prayer, and building community.
Finding “community” was one of the primary reasons Rosalind Castro allowed her son to seek across town what he could not find in his own parish. The 15-year-old freshman takes part in a Baptist church’s youth group.
“It’s a very active, family-oriented program,” she explains. “They give the older kids responsibilities, let them be leaders and helpers for the younger children. It doesn’t matter if you’re Catholic or Protestant to belong.”
While she readily admits her son’s motivation for attending “is to be with friends and have fun,” she also notes that “he studies his little prayer book, and I know he can’t help but become closer to Christ in that kind of atmosphere.”
Interestingly, it is fun-with-little-content youth programs that draw the ire of other parents and many pastors. A pastor told me, “I asked a high-school Catholic boy how many persons were in the Trinity and he honest-to-gosh said, ‘Two.’ I mean, where are we going?”
The father of three boys, all teens, commented, “I want them to enjoy themselves, but can’t we take a break from Michael Jackson and give Jesus a little time at these get-togethers?”
“In too many parishes in this country,” charges Dr. Michael Warren, an associate professor for catechetical ministry at St. John’s University, Jamaica, New York, “catechesis for young people has almost ceased.”
Turning to youth retreats as an example of potentially effective youth ministry, the well-known catechist lauded and lambasted them in the same breath:
“What about the youth retreat movement? Is not that a vital catechetical movement? Do not programs like Search, Christian Awakening, Teens Encounter Christ, the Antioch Weekend, and the like carry out a catechetical effort? Youth retreats have been precisely what has awakened me to the drastic state of youth catechesis in the United States.
“Youth retreat weekends or weekends of Christian living are part of the problem, because they have not gone far enough. They have gotten bogged down in a good thing.
“The weekends tend to be exhilarating, a high, a turn-on. The excitement is half the joy of being found by God-in-Jesus. What is the problem? I say that conversion experiences are not enough.”
Another scholar, Dr. John S. Nelson, makes a similar case with hard data. “I do a questionnaire with adolescents on motives for their ethical decisions,” explains the professor of religious education at Fordham University. “Of the dozen items on the list, those which have the least influence upon them are those explicitly religious: the Ten Commandments, the life and words of Jesus, the moral teaching of the church. To all appearances they have experienced neither socialization within the church, nor personal faith commitment. Among the majority there is neither loyalty nor hostility, because religion is something ‘out there,’ apart from them….”
Can youth programs change that?
I would venture a firm yes, no, and maybe.
Image: Flickr photo cc by MAGIS 2011
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