All Ministry begins with this: “Love God; Love each other” (Lk. 10:27).
Our weekly youth ministry meetings are designed to connect teenagers to other Catholics who authentically care about them–mature Catholics who want to serve God and help our teenagers have a concrete experience of God’s love. Here is what a normal meeting looks like:
- We start off in a Large Group
- We play games
- Eat snacks
- Watch funny YouTube videos
- And generally try to be relaxed, have fun, and get to know each other.
- We move into semi-permanent Small Groups
- Ideally, 5-8 teenagers and 2 adults.
- We spend some time chatting and catching up on what has happened in our lives over the last week.
- Then we have a simple Study
- Read a passage from the Bible, Catechism, an Encyclical, or other appropriate text.
- Discuss what it means.
- Try to figure out how the passage is relevant to our daily lives.
- Close by praying together and for each other.
- If we have time at the end, we just hang out as a Large Group for a while.
It’s that simple. And since it is that simple we have plenty of time to get to know each teenager. The more we know about them as individuals, the better we can serve them.
I hope you noticed that I didn’t mention anything about anybody giving a Talk. I’ll discuss “Why We Never Give Talks at Our Weekly Youth Group Meetings” in my next article.
