Youth leaders look to transform their ministry now and into the future
When it comes to youth ministry, parishes are at a crossroads. The ongoing pandemic unraveled the way ministers engage their youth. Programs were upended, volunteers walked away, and youth groups met through a computer screen. Some youth ministry programs didn’t survive, while others went on indefinite hiatus.
“We have a whole generation of youth that may not have been involved in our parishes and our programs,” said Rich Donovan. “They’ve gone to religious education virtually. They’ve participated in retreats virtually. They haven’t really been in a youth ministry setting.”
Donovan, associate director of the Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry with the Archdiocese of Newark, spoke with a group of 100 youth ministry leaders, religious, priests, deacons, volunteers, and archdiocesan staff. His office invited them to the St. John Paul II Youth Retreat Center in Kearny to discuss the state of youth ministry in the Archdiocese of Newark.
The challenge of making meaningful faith connections with today’s youth is widely acknowledged in the Church.
“I don’t travel to a parish today that doesn’t tell me that our greatest need in the church is to reach out to our young people,” said Bishop Michael A. Saporito. “It gets said over and over and over and over again.”
Bishop Saporito offered some electrifying words of encouragement to those gathered on that wet wintry night last week. It turns out he is a successful product of youth ministry in the Archdiocese of Newark.
As Bishop Saporito described it, back in 1979, when he was a senior in high school – then a shy, scared teenager in need of hope – he went on a youth retreat that changed his life forever. Afterward, he got involved in his parish’s new youth ministry program and never looked back.
“I was a person who needed that ministry more than I realized,” Bishop Saporito said. “It all started there. To all those youth workers out there who think you’re down to nothing. That your work doesn’t matter. Never give up the fight. Never give up on trying to do what we can to draw our young people to the Church.”
Bishop Saporito said that everyone’s gifts are needed to make a difference in the family of the Archdiocese of Newark. He also cautioned that success wouldn’t happen with one program or the snap of a finger.
“We have to be in it for the long haul,” he said. “Let’s pray for each other and especially for our young people to be set on fire. We have to work together. And we’ve got to do it now. Not when everything is empty and depleted and gone. It will be impossible to go back. The Lord takes the little that we offer, the little that we give, and we place it at His hands, and we entrust Him with that, and He’s going to multiply it and make it great.”
What works and what doesn’t?
Among the biggest challenges facing youth ministers in the last two years was sustaining virtual groups and creating meaningful connections that kept teens returning to the church and their faith. Motivation and connectivity were common themes that arose during a question-and-answer session with meeting participants.
Collecting this honest feedback is a crucial first step as the Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry evaluates youth ministry in parishes and the Archdiocese before making recommendations. Donovan said the ongoing Synod on Synodality will also be essential, and he encouraged all the youth ministers in attendance to hold a synod listening session with their youth.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom. Participants also had a chance to share the positives from the past two years and their visions for the future of youth ministry.
“It was amazing for us,” said James Kariuki, a youth coordinator from the Parish of the Transfiguration in Newark. Kariuki participated in the event with others from his parish and said the gathering was an important resource to help their parish program grow.
Transfiguration’s youth and young adult ministry formed during the COVID-19 pandemic a year and a half ago. About 50-60 people from ages 7 to 30 are involved in the ministry. Two youth coordinators are supported by a youth council and the parish priests. The youth leaders conduct virtual and in-person activities with the youth and young adults. The parish also organizes a youth Mass once a month.
Kariuki said he wants to help build a long-lasting ministry and has been working with the Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry towards that end. One of the occurrences he has observed is that young people are more likely than adults to bring their friends to church. These friends, he said, also bring their parents to church.
“The Church is headed in the right direction,” Kariuki said.
Richard Beahm, the volunteer youth minister at Church of the Assumption in Emerson, said he was glad he attended the meeting.
“I thought it was great,” he said. “It was excellent hearing other people’s thoughts and ideas.”
Beahm restarted the youth ministry program at Assumption in 2018, and it was going strong with about 20 teens per meeting. He had even formed a council to oversee the different youth ministries in the parish. When the pandemic struck, he lost his co-leader and volunteers, and youth group attendance dropped sharply.
“At its worst, we were probably at four kids, and we’d only meet once a month,” Beahm said. “I still have a core of eight to 10 kids that come to every meeting. A lot of the same kids are still with me, and they’re all juniors now. I’ve been lucky in that regard. But it was very hard by myself. My biggest struggle was just people not being there. But we’re coming out on the other side.”
Meetings went back to in-person at Assumption at the start of summer 2021. Beahm is currently rebuilding the program and filling out the leadership team. He said youth ministers need to be versatile and flexible because the future is uncertain.
“We don’t know if there’s going to be another pandemic,” he said. “When the early Church was started, the apostles were being persecuted, and they had to be versatile. They were able to survive. We need to think the same way.”
Sustainability is also important when it comes to youth ministry, Beahm said.
“Eventually, my kids aren’t going to want to talk to an old man,” he said. “Somebody is going to have to take over for me. Whatever the programs are and whatever we do now, it needs sustainability and versatility.”
Tom Conboy, director of the Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry, echoed those comments. After the meeting ended, Conboy encouraged youth ministers on the way out to attend the upcoming Continuing the Journey conference sponsored by his department.
“I don’t want to see youth ministry die,” he said. “Not on my watch anyway, and not after me. I want to leave something here. We’ve been lucky because we’ve had unbelievable leadership with Cardinal Tobin. We are surrounded by people who believe in what we’re doing and have given us the resources to make it happen. We want to keep building on that foundation so that it’s here beyond us.”
Donovan said that as horrible as the pandemic has been, it’s given youth ministers an opportunity to start over.
“Why return to normal when you can transform into something better?” he asked. “We have to be honest and look at what we keep doing, what we stop doing, what we start doing, and what we do differently. We have to have a ‘come-to-Jesus’ moment and look in the mirror and ask if it worked before Covid? If it didn’t, why would we go back to that?”
This might mean shifting focus from high schoolers to junior high for a time to rebuild a struggling youth ministry program, he said, or changing the lengths of meetings. Whatever it is that works will vary for every parish and every person, he added.
To learn more about the Archdiocese of Newark’s Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry, visit www.newarkoym.com.
Featured image: Teens in the youth ministry program at St. Michael Church in Cranford pictured at a retreat homecoming event one week before New Jersey and the rest of the world went into pandemic lockdown in March 2019. The photo was taken by Rich Donovan, the associate director of the Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry, and the youth minister at St. Micahel. He said it was particularly memorable because it was the last group picture before masks and other Covid protocols became the norm. (Photo/Rich Donovan of the Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry with the Archdiocese of Newark)
