One of my favorite bloggers, Seth Godin, once wrote about the dip.  In it, he describes the long, tough slog through mediocre-ville. To be the best, he explains, you must concentrate your effort, push a little harder, commit a few more resources and leave mediocre to those willing to be average.

Josh Griffin recently blogged about the dip, that decline in participation that seems to be pandemic if you are still running programming during this point of the year. He explains four tips to address the dip: don’t panic, work the phones, keep parents in the loop, and finish strong.  Check his post for a fuller explanation. 

“You are not visitors in mom and dad’s or Father’s Church. This is your Church. It’s your responsibility to stake your claim in it. ”

In this video and blog post, Roy Petitfils jumps in rather enthusiastically with his opinion regarding youth and their role as the future of the Church.

But, if we really, REALLY believed that youth are a part of the church now and were destined to be the Church of the future…

… what would we / SHOULD WE be doing differently in service towards that vision?

And, spare a chair or few in the process…

WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) announced the 2010 Catholic Home Mission Appeal, which will urge dioceses around the country to “Strengthen the Church at Home” with their  financial support. The appeal will take place across the U.S. from April 24-25 and will focus on youth ministry as a special area of need within the Church.

“In youth ministry programs, young Catholics grow in faith and gain valuable leadership skills. Without this appeal, some poorer dioceses might not be able to sustain vital youth programs,” said Bishop Michael W. Warfel of Great Falls-Billings, and chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee on Catholic Home Missions. The USCCB reported on Tuesday that from 2003-2007, the Catholic Home Missions Appeal gave more than $2.25 million to 130 diocesan youth ministry programs. Read more in the USCCB news release.

BALTIMORE, MD — (Almost all of the news items posted on Tuesdays come via Google Alerts. These two came in personal contacts made on Friday.)

The Catholic Youth Network was formed by several experienced Youth Ministers who realized a need for help and fellowship among Youth Ministers. They are also blogging. A large team is on the case, many with some sort of Steubenville connection.

Further, Formed Magazine is a bi-monthly publication specifically for Catholic Youth Ministers. If you want to effectively reach teenagers and be supported in your ministry, this magazine is for you.  Associated with this team are the likes of NET’s Mark Berchem, Denver’s Chris Stefanick and Jim Beckman, Mary Bielski, and Bob Rice.

Finally, a third website, CalledToYouthMinistry.com also is available as well.  They recently reposted my entry on Talking About The Nones

It is that season again in Catholic Youth Ministry… Hiring Season. YouthWorker recently had a timely repost of David Olshine’s article: To Go or Stay in Youth Ministry: That Is the Question.

Olshine suggests that “Ministry is a marathon more than a sprint” and has a bias towards longer tenures at a position as “most aren’t wearing out their running shoes.” In his article, he suggests six criteria as benchmark for determining a youth pastor’s longevity: Faith, Family, Fun, Freshness, Focus, and Fruitfulness.

Are you in it for the long haul?

If you want to do great youth ministry, there are lessons to be learned from the experiences of St. Timothy’s in Mesa, Arizona.  A quarter of a century ago, they started this little youth ministry effort called Life Teen… (perhaps you have heard of it???)

Randy Raus recently celebrated the differences that made Life Teen last…
> The teens at St. Tim’s know that they are an important part of the parish.
> The Teen Liturgy was the core.
> Taking teens away for retreat experiences.
> Teens learn experientially
> The Music is awesome.
> The Core Team. the Core Team, the Core Team
> Sharing blessings with others.

Looking towards the next 25 years (if I might hack away for a moment), I’d suggest that we build upon the momentum of Life Teen and enlarge the scope of our ministry so that…
> The parish knows that they are an important part of the lives of teens and of all their members
>  Liturgy becomes the core for all the ages.
> Taking teens into immersion of parish life beyond the youth group
> Teens learn from the rich faith experiences of their faith community
> While music should remain awesome, quiet should be celebrated as well as to better hear the voice of God
> The Parish, The Parish, The Parish, and, the Parents (where Life Teen has already begun initiatives.)
> and, of course, share blessings with others.

Twenty-five years is a great opportunity to stop for a moment and look back and celebrate.

Twenty-five years is also a great opportunity to stop for a moment and look forward and then start anew by rolling up your sleeves and continuing to advance with the work of the Spirit. Opera Christi non deficiunt, sed proficiunt.

 A prayer for Divine Mercy on this Second Sunday of Easter:

Lord, You are so good to us, Your love is everlasting. Your mercy endures forever. Our strength and our courage is in You. This very day You have made and given us and it is wonderful. We thank you.

We are now caught up in spirit of this day, Your day. Through your life and death and resurrection, we have found life anew. Although we have not seen and yet still believe, we are blessed in this day, glad and rejoicing for the signs and wonders done among Your people.

Lord and God, send us Your peace.

It’s funny…  As soon as I saw this, I “shared” it on facebook. By coincidence or sheer petty lifting of the link, my beloved chaplain, Father Austin, posted it on his esteemed blog… and then I forgot about it… and didn’t share this with you, until now.

OK, so I have the youth ministry facial hair…  But, I have only been clean-shaven for a handful of days since I graduated high school with Abraham Lincoln.

My car and office have their days but I’m getting better about that.  Sports… seriously? I’m thrilled to hit a good shot in Basketball or make a pass in football. I rather win on strategy than skill. No way on the video games. Updating the web site… c’mon really?

But, did we forget to mention the “borrowing” that we all do (especially this site?)

There was an old Ronald Reagan line that came to mind yesterday… “There you go again..”. 

So, I’m sitting in a meeting yesterday and one of the other meeting attendees leans over and says, “Hey, I saw you in NCR.” and has a printed copy of an article with him.  And, I’m thinking, “Cool, all I’ve seen of the Technology Conference article was on-line…  Wonder what it looked like in print…” and then sort of ignored it until later.

Yet, only when I looked at the April 2 section on Catholic Education did I remember the phone interview on the Bishops’ Doctrinal Elements of a Curriculum Framework for the Development of Catechetical Materials for Young People of High School Age.

The article does not appear on-line, but you can find it here.   Sorry if it seems as if I’m showing off, but I wanted the kids to know that their dad appears in the paper every now and then….

In our family, we have had a Christmas-time tradition of attending a show. One of the most memorable was the (first) time that we had watched the musical Wicked.

My family has delighted in the songs of Defying Gravity, Popular,  Dancing Through Life, One Short Day, and, of course, For Good. This story is doing what so many retellings of popular myth recently have done- retold the story, in this case The Wizard of Oz, from a different perspective. 

In a recent YouthWorker on-line article, Benjamin Kerns reminds us that in Retelling a Lost Story such as Wicked, we can not longer assume but must assure that the audience can connect to the original story. 

And the youth ministry connection here? “Without a clear understanding of the original gospel story, those Kingdom principles and works of compassion and justice just become elements of a nice story that has no real value—just as Wicked is a great play on its own merits; but what makes the play truly amazing is the original story of The Wizard of Oz. As our culture loses connection to the original gospel story, maybe it is time to revisit how we tell our story so the redemptive message becomes the center of our focus once again.”

And, if we can accomplish that, then “I’ll stand there with the Wizard, Feeling things I’ve never felt. And though I’d never show it, I’ll be so happy, I could melt!”

In the March edition of FastCompany (whose print edition is the rare publication to which I still hold a snail mail subscription), they profiled The World’s Most Innovative Companies.  In naming Facebook as #1, they offered an extensive profile of the attitudes of both the company as well as their young founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

At Facebook, they are “keenly aware of the importance of rapid deployment and iteration, even as the company has become too big for staffers to shout updates to one another across the room. At the heart of the process is the notion of “hacking,” which is not about breaking and entering: “It’s about being unafraid to break things in order to make them better.” It is a mix of arrogance and curiosity. “The root of the hacker mind-set is ‘There’s a better way.’  Just because people have been doing it the same way since the beginning of time, I’m going to make it better.’”

“Determined to keep that mind-set alive as the company grows, Facebook has raised the all-nighter to an art form. ‘Hackathons,’ which started when the site was just a handful of friends around a dining table, are now all-hands meetings held every other month or so. Any project, any idea is on the table. If you can find some friends to work on it with you, go for it. The company provides food, music, and beer. It sounds like so much code-boy BS, except that most everyone shows up, even the lawyers…”‘

I’d love to have deeper richer conversations …about confirmation – especially parents and sponsors …about adults in ministry in general and training and how the Catholic identity question rests completely with the previous generation, not the next …about if we are truly living up to the framework of Catholic Youth Ministry as proposed over a decade ago …about vocations …about adolescent catechesis …about social networking like Facebook and its impact on our ministry …about??? 

What about Catholic Youth Ministry should we be unafraid to break things in order to make them better?