Ignite: The Secret to Engaging Young Adults in the Church

By Dr. Megan Lowes-Bolin

Do you want to know the "secret sauce" for getting young adults active in the Church? Do you look around your parish community and wonder where all the young people are? Are you on a mission to help encourage young adults to be more active in your parish community but have no idea how to begin? If you have asked yourselves any of these questions

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manuscripts LLC
• Release date: Sep 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889267591

Book preview

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Ignite

Ignite

The Secret to Engaging Young Adults in the Church

Dr. Megan Lowes-Bolin

Copyright © 2023 Dr. Megan Lowes-Bolin

All rights reserved.

Ignite

The Secret to Engaging Young Adults in the Church

ISBN

979-8-88926-758-4 Paperback

979-8-88926-759-1 Ebook

Contents

Author’s Note

Part 1.

Service Role Models

Chapter 1.

Volunteering Is a Good Thing

Chapter 2.

Family Members

Chapter 3.

Teachers

Chapter 4.

Parish Staff

Chapter 5.

Religious Clergy

Part 2.

Motivations for Involvement in the Church

Chapter 6.

Faith

Chapter 7.

Community

Chapter 8.

Service

Part 3.

Factors That Encourage Continued Involvement

Chapter 9.

Words of Affirmation

Chapter 10.

Feeling Supported

Chapter 11.

Fruits of Their Labor

Part 4.

Factors That Discourage Continued Involvement

Chapter 12.

Lack of Feeling Included and Welcomed

Chapter 13.

Limited Access to Resources

Chapter 14.

Lack of Support from Parish Staff

Part 5.

Strategies for Creating a Welcoming Community for Young Adults

Chapter 15.

Listening Sessions

Chapter 16.

Representation on Ministry Teams

Chapter 17.

Fostering a Life of Service

Chapter 18.

Closing Thoughts

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Author’s Note

I want to share my gifts and talents to help make the world a better place. This is what I told my high school guidance counselor when she asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. As I grew older, I fell in love with service and the Catholic Church. After college graduation, I ended up working in ministry and became interested in creating an environment where young adults could become involved in the Church.

While working in the Church, I was inspired to pursue my doctoral degree. My doctoral study on how to best engage young adult Catholics as volunteer leaders in the Church led me to speak with thirty volunteers in my local diocese. I gained a better insight about when to introduce them to volunteering, what motivated them to remain involved, and what discouraged future involvement.

The conversations were eye-opening and affirmed my personal experiences becoming more involved in the parish community. They led me to write this book in hopes of sharing their stories to help others.

In the ministry, I commonly heard people wondering where the young adults were and why they were not involved in the Church. But when you think of young adults, who comes to mind? A teenager? Someone fresh out of college? In the Catholic Church, we are unclear on who is a young adult. According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, young adults are defined as those between the ages of eighteen to thirty-nine years old (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops 2005).

A lot can happen to a person in this twenty-year time frame. The life situation for one thirty-year-old may look different from another thirty-year-old. An individual may be married, married with children, single, or a single parent. Assuming everyone has the same needs introduces limits while trying to best minister to and invite young adults to become engaged in a parish community.

Young adults need to feel they can be part of the community and take on a leadership role. Without this opportunity, they may be discouraged and lose the desire to be involved at all. It is important to determine actions the Church can take to help the younger demographic remain engaged in the Church. The conversations I had with the individuals I studied and interviewed are important lessons that the entire world should hear.

As a Catholic community, we have the power to eliminate the disaffiliation numbers of young adults in the Church. Creating opportunities for young adults to be engaged as leaders is key. First, we must understand how to engage them. We need to talk with those already engaged in leadership positions, and their replies will serve as a foundation to create initiatives to engage other young adults in the future.

This book is for anyone who wants to gain better insight into how to best engage the younger demographic in the Catholic Church. This is not a one size fits all solution. Instead, it is wisdom gathered from a group of people and my personal reflections. My hope and prayer is that this book can assist with better engaging young adults in other parishes as well.

I share these insights as a young adult myself. I spent my first decade after college both working as an employee and volunteering in various roles within the Catholic Church. I know what it is like to have the desire to want to be involved but to be told by elders in the parish community that I am not welcome or experienced enough to run a ministry. I remember experiencing heartbreak when no one acknowledged my existence in a meeting, let alone listened to my ideas. I remember countless anxiety-filled days and evenings when I was told to prove myself by doing countless hours of busy work without being acknowledged for all of the time and effort I put in. I remember feeling so burned out from serving as a full-time parish employee, disrespected by colleagues with limited access to resources, that I walked away from a job I loved so much.

I am here to serve as a voice of reason to all the young adults who ever felt alone, unwelcome, or burned out from ministry. I serve as an advocate for those I met throughout the years as well as those I have not yet met. I hope through not only telling my story but the stories of other young adults that I will inspire religious leaders, parish leaders, and other laity to create an inclusive environment where young adults feel they are welcome and invited to become involved in parish ministry and serve as leaders in the Church community.

As you read this book, I pray you have an open mind and open heart. Some stories and insights may be easily agreed upon. Others you may strongly oppose. However, that is the beauty of our prayer, life, and spirituality in the Catholic Church. Sometimes God calls us to do things we may not want to do. We trust God knows the best for us. Hearing these stories and perceptions opens our minds and hearts on how we can best continue to build up the kingdom of God. It is a constant work in progress, but together when we learn how to best welcome others into sharing their time, talent, and treasure within the Church, amazing things can happen.

Part 1:

Service Role Models

Chapter 1:

Volunteering Is a Good Thing

Volunteering Is a Good Thing.

Volunteering makes you a good person. It is an opportunity to give back and help others. There are different ways to volunteer and different ways in which a person can learn about volunteering. Throughout this book, young adults will share their volunteer stories. If we can better understand what brought young adults to ministry-related volunteerism, we gain insight into ways to increase early interest and increase retention of current volunteers. During my interviews, four pathways emerged as common entry points to volunteerism: youth ministry, Girl/Boy Scouts, service trips, and school service hours.

Youth Ministry

Youth ministry is an opportunity for young people, typically between the ages of thirteen to eighteen, to learn more about their faith and how to live it out within the world.

In my years of working in youth ministry, I had the opportunity to introduce a variety of service-related activities to the young people of our community.

One popular event was Souper Bowl of Caring. Souper Bowl of Caring is a national movement that encourages youth groups of all denominations to raise money for their local food pantries on Super Bowl Sunday. At the first parish I worked at, St. Catherine’s Catholic Church, teenagers of the parish would participate in Souper Bowl of Caring annually to benefit the parish monthly Community Meal.

At St. Catherine’s Catholic Church, our junior high and high school youth ministry students and any teenagers who wanted to join worked together in teams, supervised by an adult core member, to create a snack they would make and sell after all of the weekend Masses on Super Bowl Sunday weekend. In the days leading up to Souper Bowl of Caring, teams would spend hours baking and preparing snacks to sell after each of the Masses. Some of the tasty creations included chocolate pretzels, pepperoni rolls, spicy pretzel nuggets, and several other salty snacks to enjoy on Super Bowl Sunday.

In addition to each team creating their own snacks to sell, all who participated in Souper Bowl of Caring would work together to create the signature salsa. The FIAT Salsa was a mixture of tomatoes, fresh vegetables, and more. The FIAT Salsa developed a positive reputation at St. Catherine’s because it was the item that always sold out fast. It appears to be a salsa recipe, but one of the ingredients gave it a kick. The joke among the teenagers was the secret ingredient was Jesus. Whatever the secret ingredient was, it did wonders besides helping sell bottles of FIAT Salsa. This service opportunity brought teenagers and adult core members of youth ministry together in the Church.

Once all snacks were prepared for Souper Bowl of Caring, each team would set out to not only sell their snacks but also convince parishioners at St. Catherine’s to donate to their fundraising campaign, even if they did not want to buy any snacks. Whichever team collected the most money at the end of the weekend received bragging rights for the remainder of the year. The young people who participated in this fundraiser, usually between fifty to sixty students, would be very competitive and work very hard together to have a successful campaign. All of the money raised during the Super Bowl of Caring campaign would feed an average of three