We are all responsible for the future of the Church… therefore research assists in our efforts to form partnerships to bolster the structures that sustain ministries that demographically will/ should become the mainstream of our faith community.

NEW HAVEN, CT — Religious attitudes of young Americans, and young Catholics holds both promise and challenges for the Catholic Church according to the results of a new Knights of Columbus/Marist Poll. Some of the good news for the Catholic Church in the survey includes: 85% of Catholic Millennials (those 18-29) believe in God.  80% of Catholic Millennials see religion as at least “somewhat important” in their lives. 98% of practicing Catholics agree.

Among the challenges for the Church in reaching young people in the United States, the survey found that: Nearly 2 in 3 Catholic Millennials see themselves as at least somewhat more “spiritual” than “religious.” On the other hand, 55% of practicing Catholics see themselves as more “religious.” 82% of Catholic Millennials see morals as “relative.” The majority of practicing Catholics (54%) disagree. Read the entire Knights of Columbus press release.

WASHINGTON, DC – - Jesuit Father Allan Figueroa Deck, executive director of the Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church, announced February 4 the completion of a report titled National and Regional Hispanic Catholic Ministry Organizational Initiatives: An Assessment.

Limited outreach to youth and to a large segment of Hispanics who are not parish affiliates in a formal way are also seen as areas of concern. “The NRHM assessment underscores what many Hispanic ministry leaders have been saying: the major challenge in nearly all national and regional Hispanic ministry organizations is the curtailment of their mission due to a severe lack of fiscal and consequently personnel resources,” said professor Tim Matovina of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at Notre Dame, and a member of the advisory group. “Bolstering the structures that sustain Hispanic ministry is one of the most urgent strategic goals for the vitality of Latino Catholic faith.” Read the entire USCCB press release.

Getting off on the right foot is essential in any race. Here are some suggestions on how to properly position yourselves for developing adolescent faith formation and evangelization in your faith community.

Based on the needs from the assessment and on the vision identified by the adolescent faith formation team, it is time to generate program ideas. The discussion should use a holistic and comprehensive framework, developing ideas for each of the components of comprehensive youth ministry. Prioritize your ideas. Don’t try everything at once or plan more than your team can actually do. Rather, do fewer activities very well. Plan for quality activities and don’t evaluate solely on the number of participants. Good programs and publicity will attract youth. Go for the short term, immediate successes at first.

Greg Thompson might be short in stature but he has casts an extensive shadow in utilizing media on behalf of Catholic Youth Ministry.  He serves as the coordinator of Youth Ministry at St John’s Catholic Church in Madison, Alabama.

As part of a National Association of Catholic Youth Ministry Leadership’s OnCourse program facilitated by the Ministry Training Source, he set up his long-running on-line GregCast series to take a look at Confirmation.Some of the issues that Greg addresses include people who drag their feet in preparing for the sacraments; the need to collaborate with Catholic School, our dependence upon the Bishop’s schedule as well as the kids’ social schedules (confirmation and prom on the same night???); and not underestimating the kids who actually take it seriously. Here is part two.

Getting off on the right foot is essential in any race. Here are some suggestions on how to properly position yourselves for developing adolescent faith formation and evangelization in your faith community.

You need to have a proper physical before starting this exercise. In other words, conduct a needs assessment. Your efforts in ministering with young people must begin with an understanding of the needs and wants of the youth and their families in your parish. This can be done through interviews with select youth, phone calls to parish youth, questionnaires or surveys distributed during or after Mass, or through a Town Meeting. A Town Meeting is a gathering of an inclusive cross section of parish youth structured to foster dialogue about their needs and interests. This can be achieved through personal invitations by phone, parish bulletin, pulpit announcements, flyer or newsletter (get names and addresses through the parish census).

This is a prayer for an ordinary Sunday which happens to be Valentine’s Day

Lord, it is a day for love. We love you.

We are blessed by our love for you, we trust you, we find hope in you. By your grace and love, we find ourselves like a tree near a running stream, we remain fresh and green prospering and yielding fruit in due season.

Your love changes everything, Lord, We have hope because death no longer matters. We are blessed despite poverty or hunger or rejection. We are lovers who rejoice and leap despite insults or our tears.

Lord, we are blessed by our love for you. Lord, we are blessed by Your love for us.

It’s the meeting planner in me that loves the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics. The Beijing opening was intentionally overwhelming, but Vancouver was gentle and gracious.

My favorite moment (starts around  the 2:45 mark) came as springtime seemed to erupt in the midst of the production. A voice-over from Donald Sutherland recited this Chief Dan George quote “The beauty of the tree, the softness of the air, the fragrance of the grass speaks to me and my heart soars.”  Then dancers celebrated a springtime among the tall trees of the Canadian Rockies as Sarah McLachlan sang Ordinary Miracle. “It’s not that usual when everything is beautiful… The sky knows when its time to snow. You don’t need to teach a seed to grow. It’s just another ordinary miracle today.”

It was simple, beautiful, and it brought hope.

Meanwhile, If you want to see how the Vancouver diocesan office has been enjoying the festivities that are neighboring their offices, hurry on over to the videos at Clayton Imoo’s site.

As we conclude this week-long celebration of Valentine’s Day, don’t think that I forgot to send out a Catholic Youth Ministry Valentine to one very important person….

You!

I mean, sure… I ♥ ArchBalt, I ♥ Diocesan Leaders,
I ♥ the Pope, I ♥ Bob Rice, and I ♥ Team, but you didn’t think that I forgot you, did ‘ya?

So, here’s the deal… because you minister within our catholic church working with the diocese and it’s leadership and within the universal church and our Holy Father, because you are trying to share the Good News not on your own but with a team…  Well, how can I resist???

I ♥ ‘ya, too!

As Valentine’s Day is around the corner, I thought I’d offer a special love note to a beloved family member . . . My daughters’ dog, Charlie.

Charlie is always beyond enthusiastic upon your arrival and continuously nearby… and it’s king of hard not imagining the Creator being the same.

Anyway, this is for funsies, not theology, so enjoy and pet and rub the belly of the ones you love today (in a child and youth protection friendly sort of way.)

It has been a snow-bound week and the office has been closed all week.  While I have been celebrating, over on facebook, the joys of solitary shoveling… and while my introvert has appreciated the quiet…  I really have missed the team.

Yea, “team.”  I work and minister with beautiful, feisty, talented, passionate women who are gifts to our local and national experience of church as well as to my own life.  In our time of transition, we have grown together as a team through many, many shared projects and countless hallway conference meetings. 

Youth ministry is supposed to be a team effort. Church is supposed to be a team effort. (Why do you think Jesus recruited twelve?)  Well, throughout this week-long celebration of Valentine’s Day, I would be terribly remiss if I was not offering up a Catholic Youth Ministry Valentines to our team.

(And who is not pictured are Ann Marie and Susan, our administrative staff who constantly amaze in their ability to keep us all straight while learning new skills to serve the filed. Yeah, yeah, I daily live out the Hail Mary as “Blessed am I among women.”)

Get up to the starting line. Here are some of the fundamentals that you will need.

It is important for the team to look at the past history and the current reality of the parish’s efforts with adolescent catechesis and youth ministry. How does your parish love and care for its young people? How is that love and caring expressed in specific ways that invites adolescents into the fabric of who you are and what you do? Please note that the lead question is not, “Do we have enough money and the necessary resources to hire a full time youth minister/ coordinator of adolescent faith formation?”

This assessment step brings together the critical realities of your identified parish priorities and your parish resources and how they relate. This assessment can foster healthy discussion about intentionally using your parish’s resources to reflect your parish’s vision, values, and priorities. As your team reviews the conditions, it is important to avoid a “politics of scarcity” approach. Having vital adolescent catechesis does not mean taking parish financial support away from the senior group in the parish or siphoning off badly needed monies for the food pantry.