These leadership essentials 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.
Often, one of the most daunting tasks in beginning a young adult ministry is figuring out who can help get it off the ground and resisting the urge to just set off on your own. Don’t be discouraged. Finding young adults to lead is easier than you think. We can show you how to put your team together, help you prepare them to lead, and how to sustain the effort over time.
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.
This means finding not only young adults, but also older adults that have a heart, a passion, and an interest in working with and mentoring young adults. Having a mixture of both young adults and older adults will help create a leadership team that will survive the constant turnover that young adult ministries often experience.
Young adults are already leading in some capacity in their lives. This age group of 18-39 spans vast life experiences, and the richness of this large age range is that young adults lead in their college organizations, in the schools where they are teachers, and in the businesses where they are team members and managers. This age range holds some of our nation’s strongest business leaders, including leaders of some of the largest companies in the United States. They lead as newly minted doctors, lawyers, and professors at universities. They are entrepreneurs and self-starters on exciting new projects. They are parents, leading their children. The bottom line is they are adults, who, like any adult, are willing to lead and take part if they are invited to do so.
But it’s not enough to simply tell them to lead something. Even before inviting, you need to listen to them. What are they looking for? What do they hope and dream for in the church community? What are their concerns with the state of the world? Help create a space in the church community where they can not only lead but also wrestle with these questions and make an impact on the lives of their peers and the whole church.
After inviting young adults to participate in leadership roles, it will also be your job to help form and support them in their roles as leaders in ministry. Every time you gather is an opportunity to minister to them and with them. Forming and supporting your leadership team includes giving them tools to deepen their own faith life, their leadership skills, and their understanding of their baptismal call to ministry.
“Listen, Teach, Send.”
You know you have a successful young adult ministry program when your team is taking on the majority of the tasks, and you are simply in a support role.
TIP: Take time to help young adult leaders explore and understand events. If you are planning a retreat, allow some time for the group to discuss what a retreat is, what it can be, and what they would desire it to be. Share your insights and experiences with them as they do this, help share why our bishops and the pope believe retreats are an important part of faith lives. These moments of exploration incorporate both listening and teaching, which will make their ministry to their peers even stronger.
Keys to supporting leaders are presence, companionship, and mentorship. This may not come from just you, but from the older adults you brought on board and from the influencers in your parish and dioceses you identified. All of these people can offer young adult leaders support, direction, and guidance in both their personal lives and in their leadership to others. Just like any adult in ministry, a community of support is vital in continuing to live out our baptismal call.
Connect your leaders to national organizations that are young adult minded, support and promote adult faith formation, and support pastoral leaders. All of these organizations offer resources, conferences, and a community of support:
One of the most common problems in creating a long-term young adult ministry program is dealing with the constant flux and instability 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, the realities of the world’s uncertainty, and more. It is very important to think about this when you create your leadership team and to be compassionate when lives get hectic. For ministry beyond the first transition, it is most 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.
It is also helpful to have someone on the leadership team that can be around more permanently. For instance, a member of the parish staff, a religious sister or brother who has a heart for ministry, or a lay person who is settled into their life on a more permanent basis are helpful additions to the team. This will ensure at least one person that can always move the vision forward even when other team members leave.
Sometimes, a leader of a young adult ministry program keeps all the pieces of the puzzle to themselves. The problem with this is that if that leader moves on the entire vision and inner workings of the ministry moves on with that person. This often leaves a void that takes months or even years to overcome.
To avoid this pitfall, use a synodal approach. The leadership team should be wide and deep with members having shared responsibilities and a shared vision so that the ministry can continue even when the key initiator leaves.
As a leader of a young adult ministry program, your job is to create a ministry to reach young adults. At the same time, your job is also to be an advocate for that ministry to the broader parish. Building support from the parish staff is important so that young adult ministry leaders can be included in communications from the parish to ministry coordinators and invited to serve on parish committees. This also helps with getting funding resources and support for your ministry.
As a young adult ministry leader, you will also help include your young adult leaders in the other adult faith formation happenings in your parish. To be able to do this, keep yourself informed of events, programs, and formation opportunities going on at your parish and also within your diocese. Share these opportunities with your leadership team as a way of supporting them in their own faith development.
Like so many in ministry, young adult ministry leaders can easily experience burnout from beginning a new ministry, lack of support, and lack of successful programs. There are several important factors that can help prevent this from happening:
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 OCIA 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.
We will have a discernment meeting January 24 at St. John’s Parish Hall from 6:30-8:30 p.m. As a core team member, you would help create and implement a vision for a ministry with young adults. Each core team member will have different responsibilities based on their gifts, skills, and time.
If you are interested and willing to consider being on the team, please let me know at your earliest convenience, but no later than next Monday, January 17. Attached to this e-mail you will find an agenda for this meeting. Please feel free to contact us with any questions at becky@mail.com or frtom@mail.com.
Thank you for considering our invitation!
Peace,
Jane Doe and Fr. John Smith
Closing prayer (Ask one of the young adults present to lead it.)
