We’re hardly unfriendly to young adults most of the time. The typical experience is that we’re just friendly enough to keep our distance. Young adults don’t necessarily have an ax to grind against the church but often there’s a lack of engagement and commitment. There’s much we can do to bridge that gap of polite distance and welcome the young adults who come our way into vibrant engagement with our community.
Young Adult Friendly Parishes DON’T Let Young Adults Be Anonymous
Name tag Sundays, parish welcome weekends, young adults serving on the parish life committee, and parishioners specially trained to look out for young adults and invite them into deeper relationships within the parish can all help. Make it easy to register in the parish (can people complete at least the initial steps online?) and when a new young adult shows up, get this basic information even if they’re not ready to register just yet. Find out what their connection to church has been. Did they come from a great young adult ministry somewhere else or have a strong campus ministry experience? Invite them to share what they enjoyed about that experience and help them build the bridge between that encounter and their current one with this new community. Young adult friendly parishes DO learn the names, occupations, and desires of young people coming to their parishes.
Young Adult Friendly Parishes DON’T Ignore the Gifts Young Adults Have To Share
Keep a list of young adults and their skills and interests. Be sure when invitations get made for leadership and service that young adults are represented. Young adult friendly parishes DO encourage that young adult gifts are shared within a community that values them.
Young Adult Friendly Parishes DON’T Bore People
Music and preaching are the big issues here! Do you have a liturgy that anyone could comfortably snooze through? With nothing that surprises or challenges? Nothing that inspires or excites? Find the causes and concepts that matter to young adults and where they connect with the Gospel and with the Teachings of the Church. Preach about them, sing about them, and engage the whole parish in those efforts. Young adult friendly parishes DO enliven and inspire the heart.
Young Adult Friendly Parishes DON’T Make Preparing for Marriage a Chore.
These programs can be just hoops to jump through or they can meet the needs of young couples, even if those couples didn’t expect to make friends or get involved. Young adult friendly parishes DO make marriage prep engaging and get other married couples involved.
Young Adult Friendly Parishes DON’T Just Wish That They Had More Members Who Were Young Adults.
Being young adult friendly rarely happens by accident. It takes intention, planning, commitment, and energy. It’s not that hard but it does take focus. You can learn more by reading other Young Adult Ministry in a Box Essentials. Young adult friendly parishes DO keep outreach, invitation, welcome, and evangelization as parish priorities.
