Youth ministers explore ‘crossroads’ of ministry

By Ambria Hammel, The Catholic Sun
April 19, 2007

Youth ministry is at a crucial moment in its history, according to Bill Marcotte, director of the diocesan Office of Youth and Young Adult Evangelization.

Both he and Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted explained why in a “State of Youth Ministry” address during a gathering for teen ministers April 3.

They reviewed the impact of recent changes in confirmation guidelines and considered ways of reaching out into the greater community and supporting teen coordinators, among other issues.

“We’re kind of at a crossroad,” Marcotte said. “We have to look at the hard realities of the challenges that we face and then make a decision about how we’re going to face them.”

He discussed the impact of the safe environment policies that protect youth, Church staff and vulnerable adults. Youth ministers can no longer meet individually with teens, yet Marcotte encouraged them to continue pursuing relationships that are crucial to evangelization.

Marcotte suggested empowering the youth to be instruments of salvation for their peers.

The bishop agreed. He said every generation has to make a decision about faith and Christ, and peer influences certainly impact that decision.

Marcotte also highlighted the importance of youth ministers working beyond the parish walls as missionaries. This move into the greater community marks another crossroad.

There, youth ministers will not only get to know the friends, family and coaches that influence the teens, but will learn to work in solidarity with those groups.

“There’s a good 30 percent of our Catholic, unchurched, disinterested kids who are going to Young Life,” a non-denominational Christian outreach ministry, Marcotte said.

By meeting the youth where they are, Marcotte hopes his ministers can bridge teens back into the Catholic Church. Part of that outreach includes bringing youth into the culture of life.

The youth ministers listened intently and often took notes as Bishop Olmsted presented some of the harsh realities of the culture of death. He reported 2004 statistics that described the reach of the pornography industry.

“Pornography revenue is larger than all the combined recent revenues of all professional football, baseball and basketball enterprises,” the bishop said.

Children ages 12 to 17 are the largest consumers of Internet pornography, he added. The bishop found these numbers frightening.

“We have to help our young people whose hearts are being constantly exposed to something that will harden their hearts,” the bishop said, calling it noontime in youth evangelization.

“You guys as youth ministers are on the front lines of this culture of death that we need to go into in order to pull them out into the culture of life,” Marcotte said.

He also identified the revised policy on confirmation as one of the ministry’s crossroads. It has meant finding new ways to engage teens as they continue the path to true discipleship.

The bishop sees a cultural change in the youth as another crossroad. More than 50 percent are Hispanic, a number, he said, that will increase.

“It probably means that we will have closer connections with family,” the bishop predicted.

In the Hispanic community “there’s not as strong an individualism as there is in the popular Anglo culture,” he said.

“There’s also kind of a natural sense of devotion” to the faith within the Hispanic culture, the bishop added.

At the same time, with more youth to reach out to, Marcotte noted a 50 percent turnover rate of youth ministers in the diocese last year. He said some ministers did not want to do the work adapting to the new confirmation policy and others simply burned out.

Marcotte said parishes and pastors need to see youth ministry more as a profession. That way, teen ministers will have the practical, spiritual and financial support they need to continue to succeed.