Next Generation Youth Ministry
This blog is the third of several in a series that accompany our Kickstarter campaign. Over the course of four weeks, Andrew Ministries is raising funds to begin development of a new youth ministry strategy and program - one that is specifically designated to fight and reverse the disaffiliation of Catholic youth.
I received an email from a diocesan Director of Youth Ministry in an Archdiocese in the United States. This is what it said:
The age for the Sacrament of Confirmation age in our Archdiocese is going from 10th grade to 8th grade over the next 3 years. There is a concern that we will be giving up on high school students in our parishes. There hasn't been a strong culture of youth ministry outside of 3 Life Teen parishes and 2-3 others in some years.
We don't have good candidates for youth ministry positions (this is a common complaint around the country), we have pastors and finance councils that don't want to or can't afford good candidates for youth ministry positions, and we have a significant failure to understand what constitutes good youth ministry. No one seems to believe me when I say that youth ministry doesn't actually have to cost any money - it can just cost the time of committed disciples.
Everyone wants to do service activities and have high schoolers teach faith formation classes for younger grades and fun and games with a pied piper youth minister. When I talk about how if you want all the young people to show up like they are at the Protestant mega church nearby you need a team of adults who care about young people and demonstrate that by showing up to where young people are and offering 1-2 gatherings a week focused on small groups and not pizza and games and amusement parks I typically get the "rich young man" response - the conversation ends there and they go away sad.
This could have been written by any number of diocesan leaders in dioceses around he United States. We are losing our young people in the Catholic Church. What concerns me even more is the disconnect between what the Church is offering young people and what young people have articulated that they are looking for.
Most youth programs and resources are geared entirely toward catechetical lessons. Whether it is CCD classes with text books, video curriculums where an adult leader presses play and then leads discussions based on the video content, or youth groups where there are games, short talks, breakout groups (these are not the same as discipleship groups) and prayer activities… they all share the same thing in common. The purpose of the program is to communicate a lesson and this is a flawed approach. Relying on catechetical methods to reach this generation of young people is an attempt to rebuild Christendom. It is not self evident to young people why they should follow the faith that is being taught to them.
Over the past several years, the Catholic Church has done a tremendous amount of research into why young people are leaving the Church. The National Dialogue in the United States involved conversations between Church leaders and over 10,000 young people over a 3 year period. The Synod on Youth involved young people from all over the world and all walks of life who participated in conversations at the Vatican in preparation for the Synod. Every youth ministry study and survey on why young people are leaving the Church have told us the same thing. Young people want relationships. They are hearing the teachings but they aren’t seeing those teachings lived by real people. Generation Z is the most socially connected generation in the history of humanity, and they are also the loneliest generation. What they are craving are meaningful relationships, mentoring adults in their lives, and living witnesses.
Most youth ministry programs that I see on the market in the Catholic Church have created programs and models that get in the way of relationship (instead of supporting and enhancing relationships). This is why we are failing.
Small Group Discipleship
Andrew Ministries has assisted in building youth ministries all over the United States (and we are now working globally). Our youth ministry method is simple - we do ministry the way that Jesus did it - focusing on discipleship. We build small groups of 4-8 young people who meet with 2 adult disciples on a weekly basis. They meet on their own, in a comfortable environment (like a living room or coffee shop) and engage in conversations around faith, life, and prayer.
Some of the parishes that we work with have supplemented their small group discipleship with occasional large group gatherings. Some have paid staffs and large programs. But you don’t need a large programmatic approach, paid staff, or a lot of assets to do discipleship effectively. In fact, Andrew Ministries has a passion for helping parishes with little to no resources develop successful youth ministries. You have to identify adult disciples in the pews and empower them to work with a handful of young people for a length of time. It really is that simple.
There is one key ingredient that is necessary for success. The people leading the “program” have to understand that THEY ARE THE PROGRAM. The definition of discipleship is that the disciples lived with the rabbi and learned from their way of life. Discipleship is about imitation and mentorship. It is, quite literally, the antithesis of a program.
When Andrew Ministries leaned into this concept and taught others to do the same, we saw dramatic results. It is not unusual for parishes and schools that work with us to grow their youth ministry participation 10-fold and see 80%-90% of young people remaining active Catholics in college and into adult life.
Young people are craving relationships and it is impossible to communicate who God is outside of the context of relationship.
Next Generation Youth Ministry
Andrew Ministries is beginning to develop an online platform that will allow us to train hundreds of parishes at one time. Our battle plan to reverse the disaffiliation of young people is to focus on small parishes with limited resources and little success with young people.
Every youth ministry resource on the market is over-programmed. Andrew Ministries plans to pioneer a new generation of youth ministry resources that are “under-programmed.” We believe less is more. By giving small group leaders just enough to know how to start a group, and resources to help develop organic conversations, we believe transformative relationships will form as a result.
So often, I hear from other Catholics (who are not in the youth ministry field) that the problem is something else. They blame parents and say we need to invest in parents and families. They blame bishops and pastors for not “teaching with backbone.” They blame the culture for pulling kids away. They blame evangelical churches because we can’t compete with their massive budgets. They blame the liturgy wars of the post Vatican II era. All of these things are excuses and reflect a defeatist attitude. If you blame something you can’t change, you don’t have to change anything. The actual solution is simpler than Catholics realize and relatively easy to execute. Find disciples who are living witnesses of the Catholic faith and put them in relationships with young people. It really is that simple.
