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17Oct, 2010

Count ‘Em

Posted by Scott

alterservermarry Last Thursday, we posted about promoting vocations and I still have a strong gut instinct regarding young people’s real participation in liturgy and its potential impact on vocations.

This summer, Deacon Greg shared a story of when an altar server married.  David James was the assistant moderator of the servers at Deacon Greg’s parish supervising schedules and training about 100 servers with enthusiasm, joy and love for the liturgy. The kids are crazy about him, and they all love what they do. And they are engaged in the liturgy with the 11:30 mass on Sunday typically with six or eight servers — incense, torches, the whole nine yards — and there’s nothing quite like the Easter Vigil and Midnight Mass.

And, here’s the great thing.  The kids don’t quit when they enter high school. Many keep doing it, even into college. (David himself is a doctoral student at Fordham, studying church history.)

This summer, David got married, and passed the torch (almost literally) to another server, who will now be drilling the kids. The nuptial mass included four priests, a deacon and – have you ever seen this at a wedding?? — 12 servers.  It was beautiful. Not unlike today’s readings, it was a matter of persistence whether it is convenient or inconvenient; what is needed is to convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching

Anyway, do me a favor today… After mass today. offer a comment. Excluding a “special” youth mass… were kids (elementary, middle, high school) involved in the ministries of liturgy today? How many? Where? and How?

18 Comments »

  1. All right, let’s get this started. At my neighborhood 9am mass (let’s not call parishes out by name, please…)

    We had zero altar servers, (which is not uncommon), four ministers of hospitality, two lectors, seven liturgical musicians with a choir of over forty, a processional cross bearer (which is usually reserved for a grade school kid), a family of three brought up the gifts, seven extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, no deacon (sorry, Greg) and a priest presider.

    Of those, the processional cross was carried by a guy over fifty, two of the three gift bearers were kids, and a post-collegiate young adult was an EM. Oh, and an announcement mentioned kids going off on a service trip.

    Comment by Scott — Sunday, October 17, 2010 @ 10:49 am

  2. At our 5:00 pm Saturday evening liturgy:
    3 middle school altar servers
    4 of the 11 extraordinary ministers of holy communion were high schoolers
    All of the other ministries done by adults (5 person choir, 2 lectors, gift bearers and hospitality = all adults)

    Interesting idea, Scott – thanks!

    Comment by Mary Heinrich — Sunday, October 17, 2010 @ 11:46 am

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    Pingback by Tweets that mention Catholic Youth Ministry Blog » Count ‘Em -- Topsy.com — Sunday, October 17, 2010 @ 11:52 am

  4. We are very lucky at Holy Cross Parish in Palmetto, FL – Had 10 ushers, 3 altar servers, 1 lector, and 1 commentator – ALL YOUTH. Meghan Miller just happens to be an alumni and makes guest appearances from time to time. Love it! We are however competing with many many things in the world today with regard to young people’s time… Church seems to be less relevant to them. The good thing with young people participating at mass is that the younger ones see this and can’t wait to do what the older young people are doing. Music to my ears when a 5-6 year old comes to me and says “Frank when can I do that?” We must include them now or they will soon be long gone – not active at all or gobbled up by a protesant model where they ARE included.

    Comment by Frank Perry — Sunday, October 17, 2010 @ 12:24 pm

  5. On facebook: Dan M. noted that as “a 7:30 mass this morning in a neighboring parish and don’t remember seeing many more young people in the building other than the two servers.”

    Comment by Scott — Sunday, October 17, 2010 @ 12:26 pm

  6. At today’s 11AM mass we had 3 Altar Servers which were all middle school age. The rest were all adults. Usually there are: 1 cross bearer (youth), 3 servers, and 1 incense bearer which all consist of young people.
    Sometimes the servers are just “there” and look uninterested in the mass but I have seen each time that our servers participate fully in the mass.

    Comment by Dave Cataline — Sunday, October 17, 2010 @ 12:37 pm

  7. Also from facebook: Harry commented that “Most will probably be at the youth Mass this evening. Might also be interesting to see how many parishes have a dedicated youth Mass” weekly like his parish or occasionally (a special event at regular liturgy) or infrequently or not at all.

    Comment by Scott — Sunday, October 17, 2010 @ 12:42 pm

  8. I’m all for having more youth actively involved in liturgy, so here you go:
    3 middle school servers, 1 youth cantor – paired with a young adult, 1 usher (of 6), and gifts brought up by 6 high schoolers who are in a faith sharing group. We usually have more youth ushers, but I guess they weren’t scheduled this week.

    Comment by Amy — Sunday, October 17, 2010 @ 12:42 pm

  9. Funny you should post this today, Scott: this Sunday, my parish installed 11 new altar servers :-) So we were jam-packed with kids on the altar. (I’ve posted on it here.) But otherwise, all those serving in other ministries were older.

    Deacon Greg Kandra
    “The Deacon’s Bench”

    Comment by Deacon Greg Kandra — Sunday, October 17, 2010 @ 6:50 pm

  10. Greg sent me… I work in one parish and worship in another. My worship parish has altar servers and we are on the road, thanks to our outstanding youth minister, to having young people as lectors, ministers of communion, hospitality and as ushers. It goes slowly, but it goes.

    My work parish already has a good distribution of younger folks throughout the ministries.

    Great post!

    Comment by Fran Rossi Szpylczyn — Sunday, October 17, 2010 @ 7:16 pm

  11. Scott, at our 12:00 Noon Mass we had 4 altar servers, 3 9th graders and 1 5th grader. Our Deacon, Our Brother, Our Pastor, Our Choir, were all present, and all are adults.

    Comment by Rosanne — Sunday, October 17, 2010 @ 7:19 pm

  12. 5 Servers, 1 Em , 0 Lectors, 2 Ushers.

    Choir has a mix of about 3-6 depending on the Sunday.

    Unfortunately this is the “youth friendly mass”.

    Comment by Tony Vasinda — Sunday, October 17, 2010 @ 8:35 pm

  13. I neglected to mention considerable participation in liturgical music by our youth as well – at my worship parish.

    Comment by Fran Rossi Szpylczyn — Monday, October 18, 2010 @ 10:18 am

  14. Sunday, 10/17, 11:30 am Mass – 3 altar servers (early teens), gift bearers (as usual) were a family with children chosen before Mass.
    FYI: My son at age 13 wanted to be a lector, so he signed up on “Service Sunday.” He was never contacted. I was told that our priest says Mass is for adults and that some parishioners would be offended by a child reading, and that a young person would not be sufficiently reverent. I did NOT repeat this to my son, but told him he could put his name in again after confirmation.

    Comment by KathyG — Monday, October 18, 2010 @ 3:05 pm

  15. I started “youth masses” at our parish monthly because it is the only time the kids are “allowed” to do the ministries except for altar servers. The servers used to be all adults even! So I got a large number of youth involved and actively participating in all the ministries at one of our regularly sheduled masses each month, even the choir was all youth for those masses. It was fabulous seeing 30 or 40 kids all participating! But now we have a new priest who won’t yet allow any of the youth masses. He even stopped our Children’s Liturgy of the Word. So now we have NO youth participating in anything except the youth choir who sings once a month at mass. I am FRUSTRATED to say the least! The kids were really feeling a part of the parish and were really enjoying coming to mass.

    Comment by Mich — Tuesday, October 19, 2010 @ 1:26 pm

  16. I must say that I did not count the youth involvement this past weekend. However, we generally have a good amount of youth participating as ushers/greeters, sound ministers, cross bearer, altar servers and a few EM. Sometimes we have youth lectors but not too often. We do not have a dedicated Youth only Mass. However, we do have Youth Masses offered throughout the year (usually during the school year) so that they can be “mentored” into the ministry that interest them. This way, they get the training they need and their name is given to the person in charge of scheduling for that particular ministry. So far, it works to get more of the youth involved and they know that they are welcomed to be a regular minister if they choose. It is still a challenge to get them to sign up but we are willing to find ways to get as many involved as possible.

    Comment by LeRoy A. Orie, Jr. — Tuesday, October 19, 2010 @ 8:13 pm

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