Enthusiasm is fruit of an encounter with Christ.
It does not need to be encouraged because it develops naturally from the invitation that Christ gives all of us. As youth leaders, the challenge is to look past the emotion and help the teenager make firmly rooted decisions to follow Christ and articulate prayer to Him. We must teach them to respond to His invitation. As youth ministers, it is our job to help a teen navigate the emotions to find their individual decision to follow Christ.
Getting teens to events and in the doors of our parish is effective pre-evangelization and evangelization. However, that is often where youth ministries stop. If we were successfully converting, catechizing and purifying the lives of our young people, we’d see a lot more fruit from the thousands of American teens and millions of international teens that attend our big Catholic events. To develop saints, we have to dive deeper and do more than get them in the door.
The next three blogs that I will write, focus on developing saints and diving deeper. I will evaluate how we measure conversion, how we bring teens through conversion and finally, I will discuss the discipleship model that Christ gave us for developing the last steps of the evangelization process.
You and I most likely will never have a feast day in the Liturgical Calendar of the Church. Thousands of years from now, people may not carry around our prayer card in their Bible, and we may never be declared a patron of anything. But we have everything we need to get to Heaven. Every day, when we wake up, we can renew our answer to Jesus when He asks “come follow me.” And it is in our response to that question, in ordinary ways, that you and I can become Saints – with a little “s.”
Their shoulders slump from fatigue. Their eyes are bloodshot. Their stoles are a beautiful, albeit disgusting, blend of countless young souls’ tears and snot. It’s a not-too-uncommon sight in youth ministry, actually: priests sitting in persona Christi capitas, offering mercy and absolution to an endless line of adolescent sinners ardently desiring sainthood. The scene repeats [...]
Goal The goal of this Life Night is to break open the life of St. Patrick and help the teens better understand their journey to sainthood specifically through the need for a prayer life and trust in god’s will. About this Night We have so many examples and witnesses of faith. The Communion of Saints [...]
The purpose of the Edge Night is to use the lives of the saints to inspire the youth while also giving them a chance to respond to the universal call to holiness.
In the Catholic youth ministry world, there’s often a big difference between the bringers and everyone else. The bringers carry somebody or something. They seek or form community and make things happen. It’s not unusual to go to the smallest parish and find someone serving teens there who isn’t small at all. Sometimes, this is an unpaid servant, someone that’s inherited or acquired their mission out of necessity. Anyway, you can’t just say you’re an bringer and be one. It takes a lot of prayer and surrender to be a real bringer!
What’s your status? For a generation of teens that are more connected to the world and to each other than ever before, everything hinges on knowing and being known. Through Facebook pages, smart phones, Wikipedia, blogs and YouTube videos, the world is at their fingertips. How do we make prayer, Mary and the Saints accessible to teens who value immediate feedback and instant communication?
Objective: The middle school youth will understand the concepts of sainthood and holiness, as well as their personal call to be a saint. Overview: When we pray the Apostles’ Creed, we profess our faith in “the holy catholic Church,” followed immediately by “the communion of saints.” According to the Catechism: In a certain sense, this [...]