Essentials > Leaders for Young Adult Ministry

Summary

This Essential will help you find the leaders you’ll need for a successful ministry with young adults, get them ready to lead, and keep them going over the long haul...

Build a Diverse Team

Your Leadership Team will be one of the main factors in the stability of your ministry, in the success of your events, and in the appeal of your programs. Before any events or programs are planned, take the time to create a team with members who are diverse in their skills, represent the different groups of young adults you hope to reach with your ministry, and who have a circle of influence that is large enough to help draw other young adults to this new ministry...

Starting Your Leadership Team

• Create a list of potential young adults to invite into leadership.
  • Names on this list can come from the various organizations within your parish where young adults are already involved, such as youth ministry programs, religious education programs, parents of religious education students, lectors, Eucharistic ministers, service organizations, small faith communities, etc.
  • Include individual young adults you know personally...

Overcoming Transitions of Young Adults

One of the most common problems in creating a long-term young adult ministry program is dealing with the constant transition of those in their 20s and 30s. Young adults’ lives can be full of change that comes in the form of moving for their job, getting married, starting a family, and more. It is very important to think about this when you create your leadership team. For ministry beyond the first transition, it is helpful to create a team of those who are in various stages of life, including a mixture of ages, a mixture of married and single, a mixture of parents and non-parents, and mixture of college and graduate school students and professionals...

Sample Invitation Letter:

Dear Sarah, We hope this finds you well! We write today because we are beginning a ministry with young adults ages 18-39 at our parish. Sue, our RCIA coordinator, recommended we talk with you. We would like to invite you to consider being one of the core team members for this important ministry...

Sample Agenda for Initial Leadership Invitation Meeting

• Introduction
• Prayer
• Background on beginnings of young adult ministry (Explain why this ministry is important and how it fits into the parish and share the initial vision of what the ministry would look like)...