Those of us who work with teens, teach teens or have teens living in our houses think a lot about…teens.
We can’t stop pondering youth ministry and ministry to youth and what to do with the kids and how to keep the kids engaged and excited and connected.
We’re extremely susceptible to Evangelical Envy.
For so long – longer than we might think- we’ve assumed that the most important thing we can give teens is nothing more or less than even more teens.
We want them to be hanging around other teens who share their values. Hoping secretly, perhaps, that the teens involved will have a bit more faith than our teens and so will push our teens to go further and take it all more seriously.
We want them to be immersed in a peer group in which faith is cool and not something to laugh at or scoff at or argue with, incessantly and cynically.
It’s older than CYO, it’s older than Don Bosco. Well, maybe older than Don Bosco.
It just makes sense.
Doesn’t it?
“What I’m looking for,” we might say, “is a good, lively Mass full of teens, for my teen. “
I was sitting at Mass yesterday, thinking about this, when I started wondering, “Do I? Really?”
Instead, I suddenly decided, I want my teen to go to a Mass filled with old people.
I want her to be surrounded by that wisdom and suffering endured and hope maintained.
I want her to contemplate the man who leans so heavily on his cane as he trudges up to Communion, the woman who lovingly pushes her husband’s wheelchair up for the same, the well-dressed, sharp-eyed grandmother in the front, the slightly disheveled, slighty confused old man in the back, the old women who beam at her little brothers, the aging priest who preaches faithfully and does everything just so and hardly ever seems to take a vacation.
Perhaps, as she lives in this, something important will sink in – that God is faithful, that He sustains. All of these people have endured loss,have suffering, have doubted, have been questioned, and face their own end sooner rather than later.
And here they are.
But then..not just old people. I want my teen to have a Mass filled with young parents and little kids and straight-laced young adults and boho, goateed, pierced young adults, and big families and small families and single people and people who speak with all kinds of accents living in all colors of skin bringing all kinds of histories with them, here to this place, all one, turning toward the Lord. One.
It’s good I want that, because that’s exactly where we were yesterday.
Yes, in a couple of years, she’ll go off to college and be surrounded by her peers in a campus ministry, like-minded and on similar journeys. Which will be very good. Very, very good. I hope and pray her experience will do what quality campus ministries have done for young people for years (including me).
But I wouldn’t have wanted her to emerge from that without the memory and knowledge that her Church, this Body of Christ, is way bigger than that particular community ministering to those in that particular station in life, that the Body doesn’t exist to cater to us. We exist to love and serve God and others, others who are different in a Church that often does the farthest thing from pleasing us and our sensibilities.
Above all, the Teacher of peace and Master of unity did not want prayer to be made singly and privately, so that whoever prayed would pray for himself alone. We do not say My Father, who art in heaven or Give me this day my daily bread; nor does each one ask that only his own debt should be forgiven him; nor does he request for himself alone that he may not be led into temptation but delivered from evil. Our prayer is public and common, and when we pray, we pray not for one person but for the whole people, since we, the whole people, are one.
St. Cyprian on the Lord’s Prayer, from today’s Office of Readings.
I enjoyed the reflection on ministry to teens! As a Salesian… of Don Bosco, I think a great deal too about these issues. I think I agree with you about teens going to mass with older folks and surrounded by their wisdom. I think the key is for the young person to feel welcomed and a part of this liturgy. I don’t mean the young have to do everything, but their is a feeling of welcome and support that they feel amidst the community. It is so important that young people are able to be surrounded by people of deep faith. More important than being surrounded by peers at a liturgy would be being surrounded by people of deep faith. Young people need to see our love and devotion to our faith. They need to know that it is not something we put on, but it really is who we are to the core. Let’s pray… through the intercession of St. John Bosco, for more and more communities of faith to welcome the young and lead them to faith by the example of their love!
What a wonderful meditation! Thank you!!
Cheers from Canada.
Tony
One of my most touching moments came during Stations of the Cross one Friday during Lent a few years ago. There were only about 25 people in the church, almost all of them over 70, I would say. I could see that the kneeling and standing for many of them was difficult, but it seemed to me that it would never occur to them to complain because this just what you DO…..you come to church on Friday night during Lent, probably after you’ve had fish sticks for dinner, and with creaky knees and bad hips, you kneel and stand and pray and accompany Christ on his journey to Calvary.
I’m of two minds on this question, Amy. On the one hand, yes, I think you’re right that there is all that beauty and faith and endurance to be seen in the pews, with young and old and everything in between. I remember when I got out of college and was going to graduate school, the one thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to be part of the campus ministry crowd any more. I wanted to be in a parish, with people from all walks of life, to see Christ play in ten thousand places.
And I’ve been thinking about schools, and how bad the typical middle school experience can be, precisely because the kids are only being socialized with other kids their same age, how it’s good for young teens to be “the grownups” for little first-graders, etc., and how that’s one of the things I’m going to miss about my kids leaving our parish school next year.
On the other hand, when I came to that insight about Christ playing in ten thousand places, I was 21. And I’m not sure I was ready for it until then. I grew up in a parish where I went to mass with all the old people, the young families, you name it. But I didn’t have eyes to see them then. Maybe it’s because the liturgy itself was too thin in the 1970s. Maybe we could have had the flame of faith stirred up in us all together. But we didn’t. And I didn’t, until I was part of a youth group, and built friendships with other people who were growing in faith, and participated in a liturgy that made sense to us. And then I was part of the college campus ministry team and watched so many people who had given up on coming to mass at home with their parents actually come regularly to mass on Sunday night, because their roommates were going, and because “it’s so much better than at home.” I guess there are all sorts of reasons we might want to question these premises, but I wouldn’t have been satisfied at that age with an explanation of why I should receive the gifts of mass at home anyway. I just knew I didn’t, at least subjectively.
If we buy the psychological account that tells us that teens transfer their primary coordinates for identity formation from parents to peer groups in their teenage years (which we might argue with, I guess), then it certainly makes sense to offer a setting for a healthy, faith-filled peer group.
I guess my hope is that such a ministry would always understand itself as part of a larger church community, not as an “alternative” to it. And so those opportunities for encounters with the deep wisdom of the wider community would still arise. But I know that doesn’t always work out, either.
I’m just afraid I’d still be “asleep in the light,” as they say, if I hadn’t been awakened and nurtured by my experience with my peers and young men role models in a youth mass and youth group. That’s what gave me eyes to see the light of faith in people that, before, i just thought looked bored.
Kevin:
Thanks for that!
I don’t think I say that youth ministry is unimportant or should be done away with. The opposite. I just don’t know that the emphasis on youth mnistry as a segregated, be-all and end-all to the “problem” of teens and faith ..works. Or is true to the nature of the Church. It is a fine line that youth and campus ministry must watch, always willing to be self-critical and ask, “Who are we serving?” and “What is the core of our ministry?”
It’s something that evangelicals are rethinking as well. Their studies are noting huge drop-offs of attendance and involvement after high school.
What I have said many times before is that youth-oriented Masses, in particular often have unintended consequences of ill-preparing young people for the realities of parish life.
It has long seemed to me that the best Catholic “youth ministry” is one that treats young Catholics as adults, with adult expectations and the opportunity to exercise adult responsibilities. They need support from their peers, but that focus is not a simple solution. Catechesis – living catechesis – as to what adult faith is all about, its richness and expansiveness is all about must be the core.
Having done significant evangelical youth ministry in church and parachurch (and by the way, if we don’t have paralawyers or paradoctors or parahospitals or paracities or para-anything, why do we have parachurch ministries? Hmm) settings, here’s my .02c.
In general, youth ministry can really only be supplementary to the life of the church. In my work, my fellow youth workers and I often found that if it wasn’t getting done by the family at home or in the congregation as a whole (or preferably both), what we did had little effect. It’s true we’d really impact the stray kid from time to time in spite of his or her home life or church situation (or lack thereof), and I’m sure we planted seeds that in many cases sprouted later. But it’s gotta be family first and church first, special youth programs second. Otherwise it’s like an egalitarian leading of the blind by the blind.
As far as having a youth minister, I’m not always sure if that’s a great idea. It depends on how involved adults/parent/parishoners are. If it’s just the YM and the kids, that’s bad. If the YM is getting everyone involved, that’s OK.
Look, I enjoyed and needed Christian peers when I went through that hellish valley called junior high and high school. Far better would also to have had older parents and mentors who would have formed me.
After my experience with my kids, I don’t expect them to go the youth group in our parish anymore.
My older daughter, as sweet as she is, never complained, but my younger son talked more about what went on there. He did say that he enjoyed when there would be sessions to discuss this or that topic, but he was disappointed when the Church teaching about it wasn’t put forward. We know about this, the non-judgmental way, but, please, 14 year-olds??? So, back at home, he’d at least ask me what the moral answer is.
But then there were those days that it just goofing around. I overlooked these days until I and my wife were invited to a parents night and it was just Kumbaya, hand-holding and play like kindergarten that it reminded me one of those employment orientation team-building baloneys. That’s when he told me that the meetings were pretty much just like that.
I never told him to go to our youth group anymore.
And then, there are Live Teen Masses…
We went to one on a Sunday afternoon and it reminded me everything I’ve always disliked about them:
- guitar and drums.
- goofy postures and gestures tacked to the Mass, not only against the GIRM, but especially creating a clique that makes any visitor an outsider.
I agree with you that it’s better to have an universal (age-wise) Mass, one where faithful of all ages find a home.
I don’t think it is about age. It is about a vibrant spiritual life. It is about deep, abiding joy. You don’t want your kids to have a dry, boring experience of the faith. You can have other teens who are just going through the motions until they can get back to their godless life. You can have middle-aged and even old people doing that. Then you can have people of all ages excited about knowing Jesus and working heroicly to carry their cross daily. There is always wheat and tares in every parish. I guess you want your child to connect with the wheat more than the tares. How do you do that? I guess it starts with you. Who do you interact with and admire? Are they the people society admires or those that are really close to God?
if we don’t have paralawyers or paradoctors or parahospitals or paracities or para-anything,
Well, we DO have paralawyers = “paralegals” and paradoctors = “paramedics”!
This is a great post, Amy, and I’m enjoying the comments – great additions from Kevin and others.
I agree with mixing all ages/walks of life together. The problem though is that teens rarely get the concept putting oneself in an “uncomfortable” circle, and by heavy default would rather associate with others just like themselves: age, socio-economic background, ethnicity. So they need parents to direct/force them to make sacrifices that in the long run develop the teen’s character. Like Iranaeous says. However (Unfortunately?), from my experience in the youth ministries of many churches across several different denominations, most parents feel like Kevin feels about youth ministry, i.e. it is necessary for teens and was instrumental in their (the parent’s) spiritual growth. So the parent, who arguably is needed to force their teen to mix with various age groups, rather tries to force the parish to have a youth group. And if the parish refuses, then the parents will take their family to a more “family friendly/oriented” parish. Their child grows up to be a fine upstanding Catholic, and the jury is out as to whether that is due to the fine youth program, or the parents that were so devoted to their child’s faith formation that they were willing to uproot the family in order to provide for it (even if youth group is an arguably inadequate method).
In summary, I don’t know. How much do we succumb to culture, and how much do we counter it? The reality is probably more along the lines of which middle road do we take?
I think if I were a teen right now I would feel very patronized by programs that assumed I couldn’t absorb and respond to serious ideas and deep spirituality without it being watered down and wrapped in skits, pop music and take out pizza.
I think – based on memories of my own youth – that we need to challenge our teens a lot more than we are.
But that’s hard.
Philip, Thanks for that.
But I don’t think it’s reducible to passing the buck. And I really see things differently than you do about teens rarely getting into an “uncomfortable circle.” At some point in one’s life as a teen, every circle is uncomfortable. Nothing quite fits. It’s hard to figure out this maturity thing. And so seeking the comfort of peers is one coping strategy. Look, kids are always with their parents, they’re always in their neighborhood, and, most of the time, they’re always at mass with all the people we’re talking about. We don’t need to “force” them to be with these folks. We may need to remind them of the obligations of civility and communion in such situations, but they’re not in a bubble.
It’s just simply true that, at a certain point, my teenage kids won’t listen to me in the way that they listen to their peers. They’ll obey… they’re good kids, and we don’t have any problem making it clear to them what is appropriate and what is inappropriate, but they won’t look to us (parents) for imitation and emulation in the way they do when they’re younger. It’s part of what it means to figure out (as all teens do) in what ways “I am not my mother/father.” That’s not to say that all teens are sentenced to “rebellion.” It’s more accurate to say that, if what we’ve taught our daughters (or sons, but I’m speaking of my own experience) isn’t supported and echoed and extended by their interactions with their peer groups, it will not matter what we say. Or it will matter, but only ten years later when we all have that experience of realizing that M & D were right, but we weren’t listening.
So I agree very much with Amy, that youth ministry might be vital, but it might need substantial rethinking in the ways it relates to the whole church, in its life and its worship.
… oh, and also I’d like to offer a big “ditto” to Amy’s comments about adult catechesis. Or, maybe I’d prefer “mature” catechesis. There’s too much infantilizing in religious ed. (it’s why I hated it in my youth), but there’s also a danger of missing the particular vitality of teens when we ask them to be “adults,” i.e., more like us. Not easy to balance that.
Honestly, I don’t see much point in a Youth Mass. Mass itself is not time to socialize and besides Mass isn’t about the congregation, it’s about giving God the worship He is due. A parish Youth Group, on the other hand, can be a great time for teens to socialize, learn about the faith, and do some good for the community. Plus, it doesn’t require our already overworked priests to schedule an extra Mass on the most busy days of the week. Where I live, this seems to be the model.
My parents’ parish has (or at least, used to have) Youth Mass followed by the Youth Group meeting on Sunday evening. The Mass, though, was for the youth only in the sense that they served as lectors, servers, and sometimes cantors and choir members. The actual liturgy was the same as all the other Masses and the congregation was made up of anybody and everybody. Of course, the youth could also go to Mass at other times and just show up for the meeting. They tried LifeTeen 12+ years ago, but they gave up within months. I was still too young for Youth Group at that point, so I don’t know what happened.
Currently, I attend a parish that combines with two others (under the same pastor) for CCD/Youth Group. The youth go to the parish Masses. Some of them are altar servers with the younger children, but they are also welcome to be lectors on the adult lector schedule if they like. This coming year, the high school youth are planning to do some service projects, social events, and, for the first time, study of the Theology of the Body.
To summarize, from what I’ve seen, Youth Group, yes, Youth Mass, no.
Evangelical Protestants are very into segregating their groups by age (High School, Young Adult, etc) and status (Singles, Marrieds, etc).
Yet on all the Protestant blogs, I read that a major problem is near-ZERO retention once the kid ages out of his/her youth group.
Kevin,
Good points. I waver back and forth on the issue constantly, but I keep coming back to the parents. My impression is that the best done programs can’t make up for lack of parental influence, and good parental influence more than makes up for really bad programs. So then I am left with “who cares”. Quit worrying about what neighborhood you live in, what school you go to, what parish you attend, what the youth group is like knowing that solid parenting will help raise solid Christians in whatever setting you happen to be in.
But then I remember that good parents 99% of the time care about all those things and work to make them better. So maybe they do matter. After all, I am still a young parent and haven’t raised any teenagers, yet. Although I was one once, and I have multiple siblings that currently are teenagers.
I agree about the wonderful mix of ages at Mass and the importance of this. I also think that hs aged kids can really benefit from a ‘posse’ of like-minded friends among whom they are free to talk about their lives and their faith. My daughter thinks our parish youth group is ‘okay’ and ditto for other archdiocese activities she has taken part in.
This summer she will spend a week at a Young Life camp with her friends-most in this group are Catholic and all go to a Catholic HS. She will love it-I will be interested to see the impact on her faith, which is growing and tested daily, true I think for anyone this age and in this generation who is a believer. If I know Young Life it will ’spoil’ her for any kind of youth group. This is not a concern. Nor do I think they will somehow ‘lead her away’ from her Catholicity or our parish-that isn’t their thing. I am hopeful that this nucleus of friends will see her through high school.
As a fifty something member of the laity, who works with youth I can say that at my parish we have great span of ages who work with the youth, not just in youth group (which uses Life Teen), but in mission trip, which brings together adults and kids from middle school to college to work in under privileged areas as well as CORE, which is family oriented.
The older teens help teach the middle school kids. The college young adults help with the teens. And adults help with all ages.
That and solid orthodox teaching.
And no teen Mass. I fought Father on that one, but admit he was right. He pushed for family Mass, with contemporary music (more by orthodox Catholic composers, and less by 1970’s “Christian” Protestants) where families worship together. The teens come back on Sunday night, and they mostly do come back. We easily pull >70% of the teens from registered families on a regular basis. I know because we’ve surveyed.
We typically get more interest than we have slots for Franciscan University’s youth conference and pull people from other Churches for our summer mission trip.
We do it with a lot of support form the parish adults (even those who don’t have children in the program) and of course Father.