Youth ministry, the early Church way
In the typical Catholic parish, it is likely that more energy is spent on youth ministry than any other ministry. But is it energy well-spent? In a 2005 article (but one I just found), Mike Aquila gives us a model from the early Church in which we can compare to modern attempts at youth ministry:
Scouring the Patrologia Latina and Patrologia Graeca, I found nothing to suggest that Ambrose had ever led teens on ski trips to the nearby Alps. Digging through the Eastern Fathers, I came up even drier — no junior-high dances — not even a pizza party in either Antioch or Alexandria. In fact, in all the documentary evidence from all the ancient patriarchates of the East and the West, there’s not a single bulletin announcement for a single parish youth group.
Yet the Fathers had enormous success in youth and young-adult ministry. Many of the early martyrs were teens, as were many of the Christians who took to the desert for the solitary life. There’s ample evidence that a disproportionate number of conversions, too, came from the young and youngish age groups.
How did the Fathers do it? They made wild promises.
They promised young people great things, like persecution, lower social status, public ridicule, severely limited employment opportunities, frequent fasting, a high risk of jail and torture, and maybe, just maybe, an early, violent death at the hands of their pagan rulers.
The Fathers looked young people in the eye and called them to live purely in the midst of a pornographic culture. They looked at some young men and women and boldly told them they had a calling to virginity. And it worked. Even the pagans noticed how well it worked.
Let us also make “wild promises” to our youth today: if you follow Christ, you will be completely counter-cultural and your life will never be the same…
Oh, come now. St. Ambrose had to have used electric guitars at his Masses. Otherwise there’s no way teens and young adults would have come.
Great article! You mean they didn’t even have a “children’s choir” doing solos after communion with everybody expected to applaud??
In my former parish, the new pastor dismantled Youth Ministry, as well as restucturing or abolishing other groups by “firing” those involved with youth, Hispanic services, etc.
But we had lots of banners, and the Advent wreath swinging above the congregation.
Bravo! And while we’re at it, let’s encourage these bright young people pondering what to do with their lives to give serious attention to whether God might be calling them to a religious vocation. We need them desperately, especially the young men. The girls are exceedingly important too – nuns are the shock troops of the Kingdom!
This article has an interesting disposition towards youth ministry, making it seem antithetical to the heart of the message shared by the Patristics to their young people. Sadly, there are many pastorally and theologically lacking ministries in our Church, yet my experience in youth ministry with Net Ministries, Life Teen, and Totus Tuus these past two years all across America(I’m 21 and attendinging AMU for Theology) working for these programs, I have witnessed that- they are ALL joyfully orthodox, though are not always implemented correctly on a parochial level in some instances) have offered that radical call sainthood- and nothing less…..I know many teens who buck their peers’ sneering and opposition, their families’ hostility, and their own teenage desires everyday. Praise God for the work the Holy Spirit is doing for the younger members of our Church, for He is faithful and fruitful. Let us pray for those ministries/apostolates in our Church which are wavering in handing on the richness of the Faith to my generation.
My experience has been just the opposite… not that parishes have expended too much energy on youth ministry, but too little. What has been typical of my experience with youth ministry (in multiple parishes and having a number of youth ministers as friends) was that the youth minister expended a lot of energy and received little support from the pastor and community, financial or otherwise. Youth ministers were expected to put in significant hours while working virtually for free.
If it is a question of direction–yes, I agree, teens should be challenged to live a life of heroic faith. A question of methods? Like David I’ve seen youth programs that are fluffy, at best. Those need to be improved. If it was a question of whether parishes should expend a lot of energy on youth ministry, however–please, please do expend a lot of energy on it.
I can agree in some ways with the sentiment.
however, I don’t think it accurately depicts the history.
In St. Ambrose day their was no such THING as a teenager who was also a youth. A person was a adult and therefore marring age after they reached their 12th year. The demographic problem of dealing with a disenfranchised segment of the population , bleeds over in the church only because modern society creates a new group, gives them little or no responsibility , and no structure.
Add to that the requirement that they deny the natural coming of age and reproductive impulses burned in by millions of years of evaluation and you get a problem that is not caused by the church , but the church must still address, out of charity to the group that is disenfranchised.
Just got back from vacation, where my family and I witnessed my old roommate’s permanent vows and ordination to the diaconate. The monastery is austere, the monks chant their prayers and Masses, and the Abbey Church is perched in a relatively remote place (i.e. it requires a sacrifice for the full-house-crowd to get there and fill the church every week).
In his homily, the Bishop who ordained my old roommate and his brothers to the priesthood and diaconate made a confession to the congregation:
“I’m envious, and jealous,” he said, “because I just ordained more young men in this monastery that I did this year in this diocese*.”
*The diocese is in a major metropolitan area in which the city alone (not counting any suburbs or the “greater metropolitan area”) has a population of more than one million souls.
I agree with fish — I think this manner of arguing against contemporary youth ministry is a little unfair given the historical context. The social, psychological, and spiritual milieu in which young people came of age in late antiquity was radically different from post-post-modern Western culture, particularly when it comes to the severe delay of adulthood that current American society has created. The period between childhood and adulthood was brief, if it existed at all; now, American youth regularly experience fifteen years (or more) between puberty and marriage. Even if adulthood really started at 18, we would still grapple with the stretch of the teenage years that never existed until very recently in human history. That new development led to different challenges in ministry, and parishes and youth programs are still trying to figure out what exactly the best way to serve young people may be.
It’s begging the question.
The point of the article is to challenge the proposition that changing historical circumstances can invalidate or make less effective those forms of youth ministry which the fourth-century Church practiced, or even require those forms of youth ministry which the 21st-century Church practices.
To say that we need new forms to suit the changing historical circumstances is begging the question.
While I agree that ‘teenagers’ as we know them did not really exist much before the 20th century, I think Dcn Sammon’s point has merit.
What are we using to call people into the Church (or keep them there?). I refer to the hearts-and-flowers catechism I was taught. Insipid. Why stay if God loves everyone and sends everyone to heaven anyway?
Give the people the meat. Teach what the Church really stands for…to the kids (okay, we can maybe go easy on martyrdom stories here except for the cool ones where people get eaten by lions) and to anyone else who comes along.
We have it easy, and we forget what Christianity used to cost people. Teach faith worth fighting and even dying for.
jp,
I agree with everything you wrote, except one thing: I’m not a deacon!
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Pingback by Youth Ministry For The Millennial Generation | Homebrewed Theology — October 9, 2010 @ 4:33 pmLove it. I agree with above commenters that adolescence as we know it did not exist. Still, there seems to be something “different” about that space between childhood and adulthood that God has designed in us. And the point here isn’t to prop up youth ministry based on some loose connection with us and the Church Fathers. The point is that the early church helped young people take their natural passion and use it to follow Christ.