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By Erika Anderson, STAFF WRITER
ATLANTA—“It’s an exciting time to be a young adult
in Atlanta.” Janice Givens, founder of the archdiocesan young adult
program and now director of young adult ministry at St. Brigid’s Mission
in Alpharetta, believes strongly in those words. After all, where else can you
share a beer and your faith all in the comfort of a popular Buckhead sports
bar?
When Givens began the young adult program in 1997, she knew that
it would be necessary to reach a generation that was often overlooked. Young
adults, defined as those who are post-high school age to those in their
thirties, single or married, face the predicament of being too old for a high
school youth group, and too young for many parishes’ typical singles
groups.
Because there have been few to no ministries targeting the needs
of this age group, it is a time when many people may leave their faith. So
young adult ministers, such as Givens and current archdiocesan director for
young adult ministry Cindee Case must see to it that there are activities to
suit everyone in this age bracket. Case said that though it is sometimes
challenging to minister to the wide scope of ages and lifestyles defined by the
young adult category, young adults have the advantage of learning from their
peers.
“If we were to minister to only single people then those
people wouldn’t get some of the gifts and perspectives of married people,
and vice versa,” she said.
However, in order for the young adults to reap the benefits of
these perspectives, they must first get involved. This includes young adults
who may have been away from the church since they left the rule of their
parents’ home for college. So what works in ministering to the so-called
Generation X?
Reaching them where they are is one goal of young adult ministry.
In Atlanta, this ministry is affectionately known as YAM. By offering both
social and spiritual events, young adult ministry programs give young adults
the opportunity to connect with their peers and with God.
Dismissing the notion of the stereotypical young adult slacker,
Givens described young adults as “doers and thinkers.”
“This generation is very service-oriented, very
volunteer-oriented, very giving, very loving and deeply spiritual,” she
said. “But being a deeply spiritual person may mean something different to
them. It may not mean going to Mass every Sunday. We need to tap into that
spirituality by offering Catholic experiences, both social and spiritual, and
let God do the rest.”
Case added that many young adults are searching and that this
search for their faith separate from their parents’ faith is a good thing.
“Young adults need to own their faith on their own, so they
question things. By questioning things, they develop their faith and a sense of
ownership of that faith.”
The key to serving that type of mindset found in young adults is
to make sure they don’t stray too far.
Givens said that 90 percent of young adults who stopped coming to
Mass didn’t leave because of issues, but just because they got out of the
habit, oftentimes due to their mobility—moving and making job and
lifestyle changes.
“That’s what makes it even more important to invite them
back. If not, they are primed for other faiths, and those other faiths are
really good at inviting,” she said. “The best place for evangelizing
is at work or at the grocery store or gyms—places outside of the walls of
the church.”
Offered each fall, Theology on Tap is a popular young adult series
of Catholic discussions led by priests and other church leaders, and held at 3
Dollar Café in Buckhead. The program often draws as many as 450 young
adults.
“Jesus didn’t hang around the synagogue waiting for
people to come to him ... He always went to them. He never sat and waited.
I’ve always just tried to do what he did,” Givens said. “If
we’re afraid to go out, then we’re missing half the boat.”
The goal, Case said, is to attract young adults with programs like
Theology on Tap and Holy Grounds, the young adult coffeehouse program held
during Lent, and then send them out.
“Because we’re in a bar doesn’t mean that all the
young adults are sitting around just drinking. But the amount of people who
come to Theology on Tap shows where people are at,” she said. “This
may be where they start and hopefully they eventually get to the
parishes.”
Givens believes that is the goal of young adult ministry.
“My goal was never to create a virtual parish, but to bring
them in and send them out to the parishes,” she said. “You really
have to market it and we have the best product—Jesus Christ, and that is
what they want.”
The young adult mission of going beyond the church boundaries
reached Kent Kelsey. Kelsey, 28, a parishioner of Holy Trinity Church in
Peachtree City, is the son of Camille and Deacon Don Kelsey of Holy Trinity.
Kelsey left the church in high school and got into the “party scene.”
When he was 22, he began experimenting with different types of spirituality.
“I associated the Catholic Church with religion and dogma,
but I didn’t relate it to spirituality,” he said. “At the same
time there was kind of an empty spot.”
Kelsey said he missed the tradition of Catholicism, but at the
same time he “felt, on the inside, kind of judged.”
But God works in mysterious ways and he had a plan to bring Kelsey
back to the church. Two years ago, Kelsey began dating a Catholic girl and
attending Mass with her. He was still grappling with some church teachings,
most especially with the sacrament of reconciliation. The girl he was dating
suggested he not receive the Eucharist until he had gone to reconciliation.
“Once again I felt really judged and not good enough,” he said.
But that all changed when Kelsey went to Holy Grounds and heard
guest speaker, who explained that a sacrament was an “outward sign
instituted by God to give grace.”
“I didn’t associate the sacraments with getting
something because I had never experienced that grace,” he said. “It
doesn’t mean that it wasn’t there, I just hadn’t felt it in my
heart.”
That night, for the first time in eight years, Kelsey went to
reconciliation and experienced the grace for which he had been longing.
“I told it all—years of stuff. I laid it all down there.
And I was so ashamed I couldn’t even look at the priest, but when I looked
up at him he was almost in tears. His voice started cracking and the first
words out of his mouth were ‘welcome home,’” he said. “I
don’t know if everyone is personally welcomed back to the Catholic Church,
but I was. And for the first time, I felt that grace—the grace of what a
sacrament was—the grace of Christ.”
Since then, Kelsey has stayed involved in the YAM community.
“YAM was the springboard into my new life and it continues to
grow,” he said. “There’s a lot of support there still.”
Support from the group of faith-filled peers he found in the YAM
community also had a profound influence on James Whittaker, 21, a parishioner
of the Church of St. Ann in Marietta. Involved in youth groups in high school,
Whittaker went to college and strayed from the church into a dangerous
lifestyle.
“I was a rave kid-and I was really badly into drugs. I would
go to raves twice in a weekend and do drugs like ecstasy and other drugs. I was
also smoking pot like seven or eight times a day.”
He even experimented with the New Age religion. But after a year
of college, Whittaker began longing for peace. “I started asking myself,
‘What do I have to show for the past year?’” he said.
So at the prompting of a church friend, he got involved with Renew
at St. Ann’s. Through the program he heard about TEC and made his first
retreat.
Whittaker said he “got a lot” out of the retreat,
especially the desire to turn his life around. But that wasn’t easy.
With friends and parties and available drugs, Whittaker said he
succumbed to temptation the day after his retreat. However, the lessons he
learned on TEC gave him the knowledge to know that he had to change, and that
night, he gave himself over to God. He has been clean ever since.
“Through YAM, I found out that there are so many things you
can do that are fun without drinking, without drugs. I didn’t know that
before.”
Ministering to those outside of the church is one tool in young
adult outreach, but evangelizing inside the church is also necessary. Both Case
and Givens agree that one of the most important ways to minister is by first
recognizing that the young adults are a strong presence in the church. Nearly
40 percent of the Catholic population is in their 20s and 30s.
“We as a church have to invite them in and help them to
participate in some way,” Givens said. “You have to personally invite
young adults. I’ve never had a young adult turn me down. Sometimes they
are just waiting to be asked.”
In 1996, the growing needs of the young adult population were
realized by the American bishops when the pastoral plan, “Sons and
Daughters of the Light: A Pastoral Plan for Ministry With Young Adults,”
was adopted. The plan came 20 years after the pastoral plan for teenagers and
youth was adopted.
The plan says a successful young adult outreach will connect young
adult Catholics in four ways: with the church, by inviting and welcoming their
presence in the church community; with Jesus Christ; with the mission of the
church in the world; and with a peer community in which their faith is
“nurtured and strengthened.”
A successful young adult outreach is imperative, Case said,
dispelling the common myth that young adults may leave the church during
college and come back when they get married or have their children baptized.
“That’s a fallacy. Statistically that’s just not
what’s happening. If they leave, they’re not coming back,” she
said. “That’s why we have to reach out to them now.”
Using the pastoral plan as a model, young adult ministry in
Atlanta offers activities that are social, such as dances and trips to Braves
games, spiritual, such as Bible studies and the popular TEC retreats, and
service-oriented, such as mission trips to the Mustard Seed Community in
Jamaica.
The young adult web site, found at www.yam.org, offers information
to young adults who are seeking information about church doctrine, as well as
young adult events. Case said that e-mails pour in every day from all over the
world.
“A lot of really good things are happening and people are not
really looking at us as Generation X anymore, but more like Generation
Next,” Case said. “We are the ones asking, ‘how can we make this
place better?’” |
