Against Young Adult Ministry? | Fr. Joseph-Anthony Kress & Fr. Gregory Pine
August 15, 2024
Fr. Gregory: This is Father Gregory Pine.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: This is Father Joseph-Anthony Kress.
Fr. Gregory: And welcome to Godsplaining. Thanks to all those who support us. If you enjoy the show, please consider making a monthly donation on Patreon. Be sure to like and subscribe to Godsplaining wherever you listen to your podcasts. Oh yeah.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: We back at it. We are back at it.
Fr. Gregory: It’s been a minute.Yeah, so now we’re working together. So yeah, I relish the opportunity.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: It’s always a good one.
Fr. Gregory: It is. It’s always a whole bop. I don’t know actually bops come in holes and parts, but if they do, this would be a whole bop.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, not a partial bop.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, that’s actually a fascinating question because like if you collect together vocabulary of positive experiences that have been deployed in the last 20 years, or vocabulary used to describe positive experiences, you know how like vibes and like bops, jammers. I mean like nobody says any of these things anymore because just as soon as I know it, it’s no longer okay. So I’m not gonna try to get out of it. In any way, shape or form up to date. I recently learned that mid means bad.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah. It just kind of means ‘meh’.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, exactly. But like ‘meh’ is basically bad. Okay, so, it just across the whole swath of terminology used to describe positive experiences. Do you have a go to?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Oh, that’s a great one. I don’t know, I think I just say like, you know, I’m vibing. It’s good. I love the vibes. Big vibes guy out here. Chillaxin’…
Fr. Gregory: That was like circa ’97.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: But I’ve kept it. I’m like, I’m not gonna let that one go.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: I think my go to is just the staring like, yeah, yeah, coo, coo, coo, coo, coo, coo, no doubt. Like the quick rapid fire, coo, coo, coo, coo, coo, no doubt, no doubt, is like, that’s my response to a lot of things.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, I like rapid fires that make no sense. I like there’s a fry in our province who says, “Right or wrong, man, right or wrong.”
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, right or wrong.
Fr. Gregory: It’s like, I don’t know what that means. But I support…I think my go-to’s are groove.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, you’re groove, man.
Fr. Gregory: I said that often. Also, that was like a thing that I’m still holding on to from 20 years ago. It never made sense to anyone, but when–
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Quit trying to make fetch happen. Yeah, it never happened. –
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. When we were at Steubenville, everyone was discerning something. And so I distanced myself from discernment language. And I used to say that I was feeling groovy about becoming an Dominican friar. And then groove has just been really helpful ever since as a description of positive things.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, why wouldn’t it be? (laughs)
Fr. Gregory: I also do vibes as well. I mean again, to say vibes is to identify yourself as a millennial trying to get along with Gen Z types and therefore immediately abhorrent to gen archetypes. But to say that the vibes are immaculate.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Oh dude, I love that.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, it’s just like,
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Just like you walking in and you’re like, what’s that man’s like, dude… vibes are immaculate right now.
Fr. Gregory: (laughing)
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: We had, there in Charlottesville, Virginia, there’s a horse race, every spring called Foxfield. And it’s a spring and they do one in the fall, but the spring one is like the jam that everybody goes to. And it was just like the perfect day. It was kind of overcast. It was super perfect weather. We were on the outside rail watching the horses and all this kind of fun stuff. And everybody has big hats and dressed up for the races. All this, it was perfect tailgating, all these things. And it was just like, yeah, vibes are immaculate right now. And everybody was like, all right, yeah, you’re not wrong. Like, you can’t, you’re not wrong at that. But it was when you say vibes are immaculate, like I get transported to Foxfield. And just like watching the horses, right? It’s a good one. You know?
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, I think like ‘golden moment’ is another way to describe a similar thing, but that doesn’t have the same…It doesn’t communicate the mood.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: No.
Fr. Gregory: Okay. So, apropos of immaculate vibes and positive experiences, we thought that we talked a little bit about young adult ministry, but, uh…
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yah, yah dude.
Fr. Gregory: “These are the days of our lives.” Usually we arrive at giving and or receiving young adult ministry by passing through other awkward stages of human existence. So you and I have never been on the receiving end of young adult ministry on account of the fact that we transitioned seamlessly from adolescents to high school, to college, to entering the order.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yes, please.
Fr. Gregory: So I guess you could like refer to the work of our novice master and student master as young adult ministry, but of a peculiar sort.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Very, very niche kind of young adult ministry.
Fr. Gregory: Niche young adult ministry, definitely the case. So thinking about your experience in high school and in college, albeit our experience was weird experience. But what are the types of things when you went to a place where people did ministry, when you became the object of ministry? What was that experience like?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: It was weird because when I was in high school, I went to a Catholic high school, right? And it was super small town Ohio, and at one point they had tried to start like a youth group in my parish, because like we’d never had that before. And I was part of the core team that was trying to jumpstart that stuff. But it just never really kind of took. And I think part of it was just, you know, numbers were so small and it was just kind of awkward. And the reality was we were, you know, in the Catholic high school. And so ministry happened on like kind of a daily basis just in the high school. You know, there wasn’t this like very clearly delineated life, life, life, life, life now I’m in ministry doing things. It was a really kind of integrated approach, which I think was helpful and good, and I loved that. And a similar account to it was our college experience. You know, we both went to Francis University – Steubenville, and there was no concept of, you know, I’m one of the campus ministry center, or I’m going to do this campus ministry event because it was just kind of the air you breathed. It was just life like you kind of integrated it into everything. So it’s weird because what I look back on it is those are the prime moments in the prime, the prime time of ministry engagement, but I felt like I never actually did it because it was just constantly in this full integration of my life. It was just, the ministry was kind of the context of which I was just living life.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. You might even say, “This is the air you breathe.”
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Oh, you could. This is… We haven’t had enough singing on the podcast.
Fr. Gregory: The listeners are thinking to themselves, we’ve had plenty. Yeah, we’ve had plenty. Thanks for that, chief. Yeah, no, I think my experience was somewhat similar in that high school, I went to youth group for a hot second and it was like, you know, the people there were cool, but it was kind of anonymous. Insofar as I didn’t really know these people from elsewhere and I didn’t necessarily form relationships with them. The cool thing that came about of it was, I went to a couple of Steubenville conferences with a guy who is now a good friend, Bobby Hogan. And it was like one of the first occasions in which we kind of came together for something holy. But then college, like you said, it was the environment, it was just, you were there with people who had similar values as they say and similar aims and life and has a way of bringing you together around holy things, but I think it’s like it’s like fascinating like where did I learn the faith in high school principally for my parents and from my sisters, my older sisters, not to say that my younger brother did not teach me the faith except that when I was in high school he was like six and seven so you know, you get it. But nevertheless, it seems like the relationships are the primary thing.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Right. Absolutely.
Fr. Gregory: You know, it’s like you got your mentorship relationships and you got your friendship relationships. And it seems like if you have some good combination of mentorship and friendship, like you’re going to be alright.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah!
Fr. Gregory: So that’s nice. The question is then like how is ministry supposed to facilitate that? Like, how is ministry supposed to facilitate mentorship and friendship? Because it seems like we’re looking to learn and grow in relationship to people older than us, wiser than us, and we’re looking to learn and grow with people, you know, who are peers. So what, yeah, how do you do that?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, I mean, it’s something that I actually, I’m very passionate about because, you know, I’m working in campus ministry at the University of Virginia, and we’re very emphatic to talk about that. We’ve kind of switched and maybe moved from what could be considered like a program or event-based ministry into a relationship-based ministry. And we kind of recognized the value of exactly what you said, like, “Well, where do we actually learn the faith? Where do we learn how to trust God and have a relationship with Him? Well, it’s by the relationships that we have with others. And the events that we do, because it’s not like that we just pulled the rip cord and we’re never doing anything. It’s like, no, we actually do have events, and we have different engagements and programs that we run and things like that. But all of those things are done with the eye to how does this facilitate a relationship? See, how does it initiate a relationship with God and with our peers or how does it shrink than that? And so when we do talk about events or we talk about what are we going to do, it’s not just the accomplishment and the patting of our back of, like, oh, we did that thing. We’re doing ministry. But we’re always having this eye of the things that we do are tied to the relationships that we have or need to have in our life. And how does it either initiate or strengthen them? And so we kind of emphasize like the invitation process and the follow-up process. The event is kind of, it happens and we wanna make sure that we put on good events, but it’s not our success and our concept of what ministry is isn’t just the accomplishment of the things, but it’s like how do we then take that as a launch pad to either strengthen or further a relationship with God or with our peers. So yeah, this whole concept of like, okay, how do we create a context or how do we maybe either initiate or strengthen the mentoring relationships or the peer relationships? Because you do have to do things. You do have to provide opportunities and venues for these things to happen, but it’s always with the eye of what are these relationships and how do we move forward with them?
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. Okay. Well, then, let’s think about that in light of this challenge against young adult ministry. Okay. So we’ve titled the episode somewhat provocatively…
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Intentionally.
Fr. Gregory: Click bait-ily. So people are thinking these guys are just coming after young adult ministry and I’ve dedicated the last 28 years of my life…Or these guys are coming after young adult ministry and they can possibly understand the dire straits of the diocese of way out of the way, you know, who cares. And wherein the only place that we can come together is under the, okay. So before falling prey to or incurring the wrath of those objections, let’s talk a little bit about young adult ministry. What it is, what it’s not, what it might be ideally, what it might kind of, we can talk about the criticisms later. But I think that what we’re trying to look for is relationships. And I think that when we approach young adult ministry, it’s often people in a post collegiate world coming to a new city, perhaps, looking to form relationships with like-minded Catholics, so that way they can, have some accountability, have some friendship, or have some escape as it were from the loneliness of being in a new place without any friends. And then the question is, okay, how do you facilitate that encounter? What do you see there?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, no, it’s really important because you look at a lot of young adults who either come out of a college, contacts there, campus ministry or things like that, or they have a strong faith. They enter into a professional world and maybe they show up to a parish and they look around and they’re like, “Ah, I’m the only one here that’s under the age of 50.” Unfortunately, that’s a common experience. So to promote specified events for young adults and things can help break that person out of the isolation of “I’m the only one.” And they may be the only one at their marketing firm or their consulting firm who has a crucifix on their desk or is a Catholic and practicing. And so, so much of their life is like, I’m the only one, I’m the only one, then they show up to the church and they’re like, there’s nobody else like me here. And so, it’s very demoralizing in that context. And so, to have an opportunity to, you know, have a specified demographic and events targeting, quote unquote, that demographic, to help them understand they’re not the only ones who believe and work at a professional sphere, or they’re not the only Catholics that are their peer group that have a similar experience of life that they can share with each other and you can put them in relationship with each other and help them to support each other in the Faith. Because it may be really hard to break into a parish when you’re the only one and there’s a two decade gap between you and the youngest, the next youngest people at Mass. So I think there’s a really important aspect of like the whole motivation behind it is to create a community that they can share in the Faith with each other. They can support each other in the Faith and grow in that way. And that breaks them out of that isolation. We know so much, the isolation is one of the primary objectives of the evil one. So to help young adults break out of that fact that I’m the only one here, and they break them out of that and have them experience others and build relationships and say, “No, no, no, there are others like me that are faithful that do have a professional life in the, in that are in my proximity. That’s awesome. And we want to encourage that.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so within this setting, I think that we can identify a couple of tensions that arise naturally organically. So I think in most human life, you’ve got a mixture of mentorships and friendships. Because we’re often living intergenerationally. And I think that we can harken back to yesteryear in which things were better in a kind of golden age of human community. So we might compare the present to the past and I think that part of people’s social isolation is that they don’t feel they have access to other generations in a kind of normal way. Insofar as they’ve been made to move further from their family than they might ordinarily have chosen. So I think that the disequilibrium between mentorships and friendships is part of the experience of isolation. Right. But when you have young adult ministry, you’re typically limiting lower bound upper bound, 21 to 33 or 21 to 35 or 21 to 40, such that it’s hard for mentorship type relationships to develop within that setting, because you’re all at a similar life experience kind of place. So there’s that. But then there’s also the fact that not all friendships are alike. In the sense that some friendships are like, dude, let’s bromance this up. Like let’s hike every mountain together guy. And then some of them are like, oh my gosh, we have been friends together. And then other of them are like, we should date. So like, how one interacts with an equal might be romantic and might not be romantic. It might be a kind of catches catch can. It might be, let’s do everything together. And I think that commitment can often be a source of anxiety in those settings. Because it’s like at times you feel like older man or just hanging on in the young adult group because they’re looking for a woman to enter the group at a propitious moment so that they can pop the question and then pull the escape cord and then you know, or the escape hatch or the rip cord or the the rip cord escape hatch. To be technical. And right. So that there can be like a little creepy, predatory vibe, maybe at the edges or at the peripheries. So it’s like, okay, so there’s the mentorship vibe, and then there’s the friendship vibe, and you can see a tension that arises within both. So what do you see there, and then kind of how do you help people or counsel people to navigate those things?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: I think one of the great tensions in this is, especially for young adults who are leaving college and entering into a new city and into a professional world. I counsel a lot of my college students as they graduate is to acknowledge the reality that up until this stage of their life, 22 years old, they’ve only been grouped up with their approximate peers. Like that’s been the only way they’ve experienced life is with other people the exact same age within arms reach. And for the rest of their life, they will never experience that again. This is it. This is the end, you know. And so they do have to actually enter into life that is multi-generational and learn how to build friendships that some, with somebody that isn’t your exact same age and that’s actually really good and healthy and it shouldn’t be you know, shied away from and that entering into that is a really, really, healthy thing and so to not be afraid of that kind of engagement that, okay, the rest of my life and then the rest of my life, whether it’s professional or social or whatever it is, but my Faith is still relegated to this experience of has to be proximate peers. I think that’s a problem. And I think that’s kind of a pitfall of the young adult engagement right now in the Church is that it’s kind of, maybe hamstringing somebody’s maturity in the Faith, because it says it has to be done within age demographic. And I don’t believe that. I think that’s actually really toxic. And so to allow somebody to, yes, establish a community and have people that are, you know, their peers, but to just constantly say, well, we’re going to then maybe prolong your maturity in the Faith because it’s dependent on your age demographics. I think that’s problematic.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. No, it’s interesting. Okay. So thinking about intergenerational living, perhaps, you know, again, in the aforementioned yesteryear, it happened with less intentionality, or it happened less deliberately. I think like as human beings, we’re not responsible for constantly choosing this or choosing that. There’s a lot of stuff that’s just kind of done unto us a lot of stuff that’s just gonna set before. It’s just for us to kind of say, this may as well happen or to kind of ratify the circumstances and say, I’ll give myself to it. But I think that with what we find often enough with intergenerational living is that it’s easier to gravitate people to people of the same age because they have the same cultural references. They have the same inside jokes. They have the same kind of vocabulary register. They’re going to be able to use the same vocabulary, whatever you get it. So I think that there’s an ease, or there’s a kind of repose in being with people at the same age, but then that can lead to a kind of what’s the word that I’m looking for.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Navel gazing.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, navel gazing, close-offedness of our technical noun there, or a kind of self-referentiality, I think is what I’m thinking about. It’s like when the whole of life becomes an inside joke, it’s like, what are we doing?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Well, I also think it doesn’t challenge the individual. The individual takes up this disposition of I need to be served instead of what can I offer? How can I sacrifice? And maybe this is uncomfortable, grabbing coffee with somebody who’s 40 or 50 because I’ve noticed them regularly at Mass and I want to get to know them. What’s their life story? What can I learn from that? That means risk. And that means taking kind of a challenge versus, well, yeah, I’m now I’m in this inside circle and I need to be served here. And so I think it’s a little bit of a dispositional change as well of like, no, I need to push myself and I need to extend myself to maybe get to know other people. Some of them are my peers and some of them are, you know, not my peers. But they all, you know, have what we share in common isn’t our age, isn’t our kind of, you know, chronological experience, but what we share is actually the faith in Jesus Christ and I can I can share that with this other individual.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah Okay, so like when it comes to kind of intergenerational relationships, that’s a somewhat patronizing way to describe them or condescending way to describe I think it’s just like human relations. That’s where we don’t think about relative age too terribly much. Okay. There might be a little work at the outset. Insofar as I’m going to have to be a bit out of my comfort zone or I’m going to have to speak more slowly or I’m going to have to translate some of my bizarro world millennial vocab. So that way it doesn’t alienate or isolate. But then having done that, right? I think that we find that those relationships are often very beautiful. And like we get out of this paradigm of thinking about them in terms of nourishing or sacrificing as if there were this kind of back and forth to it where we’re always navigating who’s doing more, who’s doing less. And it’s just kind of like a, there’s a natural pedagogy to it. There’s like a natural mentorship, I think is the one that I used at the beginning. Where it’s like, ah yeah. So I found this to be the case with a couple of older Dominicans, where it’s like I genuinely enjoy talking to them. It doesn’t always happen naturally because it requires input energy and it requires like making plans or you know, shaping arrangements up. But then when it does, there’s a kind of sweet repose that just arises or that just kind of presents itself. And it’s like, yeah, that’s right. And you have helped me to see my life in a new way. And I’m super grateful for it, so…
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: No 1,000% and I think that’s one of the great things that as a young adult, you know, you do have actually a lot of freedom and a lot of free time. You know, you don’t have the demands of a family life, you don’t have a spouse, you don’t have children, and you can actually engage in these intergenerational relationships with a greater freedom than you will in the upcoming decade, decade and a half. And so to take that opportunity for what it is, and I find a great kind of almost sadness in the fact that our expectation is, you know, the 22 to 35 group is all of their time and energy is put on, it put into these young adult events and they’re missing the great gift that it is to get to know other people in the parish and to grow in relationship and to share life in those ways, because they do have so much time and energy. And it’s, yeah, I think it’s something that is like, there’s a great opportunity for young adults to mature rapidly through these kind of mentorship or multi-generational relationships that gets stunted when the expectation is we have to deal with our age demographic only.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, yeah. Okay. So in the last several minutes here of this episode, let’s think about kind of furnishing the listener with a series of considerations that can help organize or they can help prioritize how we contribute or how we invest. So it seems like– let’s just talk a little bit about the parish because, yeah, there are different fora in which people meet like-minded or kind of like-desired individuals. They’re like online fora increasingly the places where we meet. You know, if you read first things and you look online and find there’s a rafters group, that’s kind of all the time. But 15 years ago, that might have happened. Or if you’re like getting plugged in with Aquinas 101 on the Thomistic Institute website and you find that there’s Aquinas 101 watch groups and I don’t even know if those exist. I worked for the Thomistic Institute, I should know this. So there are ways in which people can get in touch through the internet. But by in large, I think we’re going to get in touch in person. It might be that the internet brings us to in person, but we’re going to need to get to in person because people are in person. So then engaging with the parish, you know, they’re going to be invitations to do young adult programming. They’re going to be invitations to do other programming. Let’s just say parish programming. What are the types of considerations that you bring to the table? It’s like, listen, I want to love the Lord, listen, in a lot of cases, I want to get married.” “Listen, I want to have meaningful relationships of other sorts so that way I can make it through life without breaking down out of inordinate anger or sadness.” Whatever it is. So, like, how do you navigate those different offerings? Just, I mean, your experience.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, no, I think it’s really important to just be a good parishioner, you know, in the good healthy prayer is a community itself. It is the Body of Christ in that localized instance. And so to look around who’s in the pews, right? And I know our associate director campus minister, Matt, we talk about that. He’s like, it is so challenging, but he keeps pushing himself to walk up to random people at the coffee and donuts after Mass and say, “Hey, I’m Matt. Like I’ve noticed you, I’ve seen you every week at the 9 AM Mass Like don’t be afraid to just take that step and introduce yourself to somebody that you see on a regular basis. One of the great tragedies, and I see this everywhere, not only in campus ministry, but everywhere, is unfortunately we approach our sacramental engagements. We approach Mass, we approach showing up to the church as a private endeavor, and it is not. It is the Body of Christ coming together. And what a great sadness it is when people show up to Mass and are anonymous. And they may have done that for weeks, months, years and nobody knows them. And so I think we really have to work hard to strip the anonymity out of our sacramental engagement.
Fr. Gregory: That’s great.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: That means maybe sometimes holding a social midweek or holding a pot luck after a daily Mass. Once again, those are events and we want to initiate these types of things. But to take that risk and that step, to say, if there’s another, you know, peer of mine, another young adult that you see at Mass, well, say, hi, introduce yourself, you know, we don’t want to be like creepy cruise missiles and like, yeah, you know, but, and we should do that across the board, you know, we should do sort of the selves to the new families or, you know, to somebody, a young family had just had a child was like, okay, how can I help you? “I’ve known you now or I’ve seen you around. “Now I want to get to know you. “Do you need help and how can we share life together in this context? So I think one of the big things that I just encourage people to do is like actually to work hard to strip the anonymity away from our sacramental engagements.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, no, it’s interesting. Like as you’re saying this, I think a great step for people, okay, so people want to form relationships, whether mentorships or friendships, and specifically amongst friendships, they want to find a spouse. I think a great first step is go to daily Mass. Because in daily Mass, you see a bunch of committed people. You see a bunch of engaged people, people that take their spiritual lives seriously, to some degree or extent. You’re not gonna be able to judge the interior life of each and every person there. But regardless, you know that these people have shown up. And then you’re going to be able to see if you go like every Wednesday or if you go every Tuesday, Thursday or if you go every day, you know, you’re going to be able to see who’s there. And as you leave at the same time, you’re going to strike up conversations and then you’re going to form relationships. Like it’s just going to happen. And I think it’s like, all right, if you’re going to strike up conversations and then you’re going to form relationships. Like it’s just going to happen. Yeah. And I think it’s like, all right, if you’re in your own head thinking about how this might be creepy or how this might be predatory or how this might be whatever else, okay. Well, then just focus on friendships, right? Just focus on asking people at the same age and of the same sex if they want to go out for food afterwards, just like chat, catch up, whatever. That’s the easiest ask. And then on the basis of that, you know, then you can take your next step like towards a mentorship. Like listen, like we just got married. I see that you guys are married. You’re going to like, Mass together for 30 years. It’s stupendous. I mean, I’d love to talk to you. We’d love to have you over for dinner and truth be told, I’d love if you had us over for dinner, but I’m not going to invite myself to your home, except I just did. You know, those types of things I think can grow out on the basis of, but I think it’s like myself to your home, except I just did. You know what? Those types of things I think can grow out on the basis of. But I think it’s like you engage with the Lord and then you engage with each other. And the basis of the fact, this is in private worship, it’s public worship, it’s common worship, and then the worship is going to affect a change in us which brings us together in meaningful relationships to the end of God.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: One of our parishioners gave a talk to our graduating students, and this advice I’ll always talk with me, she said, “When you show up to a new city, take three months or so and find your parish.” Like every parish has a different personality and things like that, but there’s gonna be one that kinda clicks and vibes with you, maybe. Let’s just call it that. You know? And then commit, register, become a parishioner, like commit to that parish, right? And then look at their Sunday Mass schedule. And then, you know, take another, you know, four weeks, five weeks and kind of shop around, not shop around, but like whatever, shop around, you know, go to the different Mass schedules. And then from there, commit to a Mass. It’s like, okay, the 10 AM Mass is going to be my Mass, because you’ll start to see the same families, you’ll start to see the same people. And you build a community through that. And through that kind of, you know, just commitment and the resilience of actually going to that all the time, that you’ll actually then engage in that and meet the people and build that community. And then it won’t be as creepy of an engagement because you’ll be known. You’ll be seen. And the first part of being known is to be seen and not to be afraid of that.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. Exactly. So I think it’s like sometimes we get in our own heads and we trip ourselves up because we overthink whatever it is from fear that we prove ourselves, dopey or for fear that we prove ourselves overly earnest or for fear that we prove ourselves overly earnest or for fear that we prove our, whatever else. But I think that just being simple about, all right, I’m gonna invest in my prayer life and then I’m gonna look for relationships, you know, mentorships or friendships and we’ll see what comes of it because our lives are blessed to the degree that they’re shared, God intends that they be shared with him and with each other. And as I say, often we go together and I think that’s, yeah, there’s something to that in the unit of the parish.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, and I think one of the other things that we have to address when talking about young adult ministry is, is it just a dating factor? Is this just Catholic Match in person? You know, I heard somebody just grab a young at all event like that. They’re like, all of these guys that showed up to this event had already messaged me on Catholic Match. And I was like, that really freaked her out. And I was like, I get it. And I think one of the great tragedies, and I’ve said that four times during this episode, I haven’t said that in our five years of recording this. But ‘tis the episode– But one of the tragedy is of that is that when you see a couple that does get married, then they are like, out of the young adult group.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, exactly.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: And it’s like, so as young adult groups and not a young adult group, it’s a young singles group.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, exactly.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: And that’s just the culture. So if there’s a way to include young married couples, if there are a way to include, married couples, if there are a way to include, you know, maybe have some daycare, have somebody like offer babysitting while a young adult event is happening so that these young couples can come in from their real sacramental experience, which is marriage. They’re living now that can actually help establish these people. You know, I have students, I remember one student recently, went through a break up, um, and I said, well, who, what other guy do you know whose relationship you admire? Like, talk to him about what he should look for, like what you should look for in a relationship. You know, if you see somebody’s life or vocation that you admire, then talk to them about that. How did you go through this? And I think once a young adult group becomes such a way that a married couple, or a young couple that gets married, then can’t show up to that anymore. Or isn’t welcome, you know? Their family isn’t welcome, their children aren’t welcome. Then that really stunts that entire aspect of their journey in the integration that we wanna see in a real community.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, no, I think that’s a great insight. Maybe that’s a good insight with which to conclude. Like to have a young adult group is different than having a singles group. You got to be honest about what you’re having. And if you want to have a young adult group do it, right? Because the problem with the singles group is that people go there to leave there. And if the general trajectory of a group is that you want to move beyond it or graduate past it, well, then it creates a kind of, you know, slouched in your chair, otherwise resentful when things don’t go your way vibe, which you don’t want to encourage because it’s like, if you bring a like a pot of water to boil, it’s going to remain at 212 degrees Fahrenheit because all of the highest energy particles are going to get vaporized, right? And if you’re a younger adult group, just stays at a kind of awkward boil and people just get vaporized into stable relationships then you’re always gonna live at awkward boil.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fr. Gregory: So I think that like if you find that your group is in that situation, maybe it’s time to incorporate young married couples and incorporate the daycare solution, or maybe it’s time for a hard reset. Like put it to bed for a summer and then started under new auspices. –
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Absolutely.
Fr. Gregory: Or, or, you know, like make it such that it admits the possibility of intergenerational participation in a way that doesn’t become creepy or awkward or whatever else, but like make it so it’s just a little less concentrated or a little less hyper-tensed in its focus. You know, there are various ways in which to go about it. You know, but like if you can get people in small groups and then coming together for big groups every once in a while or if you can get people to this event or to that event but ultimately focused on these relationships, then it’s like, you know, it will be something. Yeah. So, all right, final thoughts.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Final thoughts. I’m, it’s necessary. Like, I think what I aim for and what my heart’s desire is for all of this is just a full integrated life. And that means having good healthy friendships with your peers, but also recognizing that the rest of your life from that point on is multi-generational. Your professional life and all these other things. So to not be afraid, to actually open yourself up to multi-generational relationships within the Faith and to actually pursue it because that’s going to allow the individual to be a well integrated person no matter where they are, where they start, where they’re going, that’s going to actually kind of help speed that process of maturation in that way.
Fr. Gregory: Boom. Well here at the end of our episode, let’s just say that the vibes were immaculate.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Let’s go. Let’s go.
Fr. Gregory: Okay, turn it into the listener. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of God’s Money. Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, other things besides. Like, subscribe and leave a five star review, all of which helps to get the word out so that people can go to young adult ministry, slash change young adult ministry, slash redeem young adult ministry, you never know. It’s hard to say. If you’d like to donate to the podcast through Patreon, you can follow the links in the show notes under description, in the same show notes and or description, you’ll find links for Godsplaining merchandise. And then you’ll also find links for upcoming events. At this stage of the game, I know of one, which is a day of recollection in New York City at our parish of St. Joseph in Greenwich Village. It’s gonna be on October 19th, and you can register for that at Godsplaining.org. So, hope to see you there, pumped to see you there. Looking forward to seeing you there. What are other ways to – Okay, so, know of our prayers for you. Please pray for us, and we’ll look forward to chatting with you next time on Godsplaining.