Preparing the Parish To Begin Young Adult Ministry
Young adults have many gifts and talents that can fit right in with what your parish is already doing. Gathering the heads of the committees and ministries that already exist and asking them to take inventory of those ministries to see how many people under the age of 40 are presently involved is a great way to begin. Talk about a desire to reach out to people in their 20s and 30s in the parish announcements and even in homilies. Do you pray for young people in the prayers of the faithful? Engaged couples, college students, those seeking employment, and those in crisis are just a few ideas. Putting the thought of intentionally welcoming young adults into people’s heads will push older parishioners to think about gifting and mentoring younger churchgoers. Openly talk about being creative and finding out where some “hidden” young adults might be.
Possibilities for Intentional Young Adult Ministry
Marriage Prep: One parish revamped their marriage preparation process from a one-day pre-cana led by a Deacon and his wife to a process that invited more than 40 married couples in the parish to be part of the pre-cana process. The new Marriage Prep team included members who were newly married as well as people who had been married for more than 50 years. They welcomed engaged couples by inviting them to dinner just to welcome them to the parish. Some led pre-cana day talks, taking the pressure off of the Deacon and his wife to design the whole day. Others provided a romantic dinner for the end of the pre-cana day, and some volunteered to discuss couples’ inventory tool with them. It was a major success. The program was rated as “highly enjoyable and informative” by 95% of the engaged couples who participated. Thirty percent of the couples are beginning to volunteer for ministries in the parish. And the other 70% are being invited to consider how they might wish to take part more deeply in the parish by the pastor at a one-year anniversary dinner.
RCIA: Another parish formed RCIA mentors for couples with parishioners who had been through the process. They became the backbone of the ministry leading candidates through the sessions and questions. Most of the mentors later became confirmation sponsors for the candidates. And the group invited candidates to sit with them at mass on Sunday. Nearly 80% of the RCIA candidates signed up to be a mentor the following year. The group also ended up getting very involved in parish ministries.
Campus Ministries: A group of committed parishioners went to a nearby campus and asked some faculty members what they thought they could do for their students. The result was an engagement with medical school students providing screenings for the parish and the parish providing some care packages for their final exams. The Campus Minister provided stress dolls for their first exams and fed them after each test. The students who were Catholic were invited to a dinner given by the parishioners and the parishioners found doctors in the community who were willing and able to give lectures to the students on a variety of topics ranging from new medical technologies they were working with to temptations that doctors face in the field.
Liturgical Ministries: Studies show that middle-age women comprise not only a large portion of the professional lay ministry field but also make up the major participants in liturgical ministries at mass. Is your church the church of the white middle-age woman? Older men who are active ushers and lectors are also part of a majority of ministers in many churches. Providing an opportunity to look deeply at this group and then asking group members to stretch into the roles of mentors and inviters of young adults to their ministry is an excellent way to focus on young adult liturgical opportunities. It also provides relief from burnout. If every minister would simply look to one younger person who they think has gifts and talents that the parish could use, and then invite them into that ministry and help train them, the face of ministry would begin to change. Start by asking each member to invite three-five young people to consider being a lector, usher, or Eucharistic minister. Perhaps only one person accepts the invitation. Imagine if the 40 Eucharistic ministers each brought one new person!
Bereavement: Aren’t young people the ones grieving their grandparents and parents? How might a group of committed parishioners take on the task of providing hospitality and stress relief to this group? They are often overlooked. This is a “moment of return” for many and giving them an opportunity to feel welcomed and to grieve with you in community is but one way to garner their attrition. One parish I know of put together a team of people who will sit with younger members of families and help them plan the funeral and then provide the brunch for the family afterwards. The group made an effort to lighten the burden and also spend some time talking with the younger members of the family and expressing how much their grandmother loved the parish and what it meant to her and how happy they were that they would get to be in the community that grandma loved. The younger members never knew what kind of place the parish was and after that experience they became more regular fixtures in the parish community.
Blessings: Instead of just blessings for 50th Wedding Anniversaries or Mother’s and Father’s Day, perhaps having blessings of “sending forth” for college students or even young adults who are going through transitions – those moving into the parish, those moving out, engaged couples, first anniversaries, and the birth of the first child (perhaps baptism at Sunday mass). Get creative! A parish in Boston invited all Boston Marathon runners to church and blessed them at mass the night before the race and provided their “carb up” pasta supper. Another invited a local volunteer community from Americorps and blessed them and their work.
Building Space: Are we open to letting young adults book rooms in our buildings? Making sure they have a priority on booking rooms and that you can be flexible with the process. Make sure they’re not misinformed on parish processes and that a staff member mentor help them know who to ask if there’s a need.
Parish Events: Are parish events interesting enough for young adults to want to come to them? Or are they boring enough to keep them away? Something needs to be offered to the whole community, not just the baby boomers and elderly members who donate a big portion of the parish funds. A New York City parish tries to be more like a cultural center during the week providing art exhibits, lectures, and classes. A Chicago parish opens their doors from 4-7 p.m. each evening for artists and others to enter the church and relax. Artists paint, writers write, and soft music is played on a piano.
(For the Preachers)
Preaching: This might be the most important element for younger people. Ninety percent of the young adults that you’ll meet will come for Sunday mass and not much more than that. It’s an opportunity to engage them with preaching. Preaching needs to be:
- Relevant to their experience and to the scripture of the day: Make the connection between the timeless themes of the Bible and what they can mean in young adults’ everyday lives. Otherwise, the readings are just readings and not something that can be meaningful for them.
- Vibrant enough to not be boring: If you need to take a public speaking class, do so. You can be a lot of things in the pulpit but boring is not one of them. That said, you also don’t need to resort to antics. Your words need to come alive and move people but you do not have to entertain the congregation. You need to move their hearts to consider Christ in their lives.
- Provide a challenge to their lives without denigrating them: What might someone do this week based on the themes of scripture? Maybe the parish is hosting an event around the topic of human trafficking or urban blight – how does that tie in with a gospel message on Jesus’ love of the poor?
- Mention Jesus Christ at least once: This seems obvious, but many times it doesn’t happen. Paul might have good things to say, but we don’t preach Paul, we preach Jesus as Paul did.
- Be open to hearing feedback: One pastor invited a group o young adults to a meal at his residence under the condition that they tell him what his homily should be about the following week and what he got wrong last week. While humbling at times, the pastor admitted that his preaching became better.
