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Home  / News & Publications /  Michigan Catholic News / 2008 /  CSA helps form tomorrow's Church leaders through youth ministry

by Joe Kohn of The Michigan Catholic
Published April 25, 2008

Joe Kohn | The Michigan Catholic Adriana Galvan, 15, listens to a Gospel reading during a youth ministry session at St. Stephen/Mary Mother of the Church in Detroit.

Detroit — If you're wondering who's going to be a leader in the Church tomorrow, you might just want to ask a young person today.

"I'm here to learn about Jesus," said 22-year-old Elizabeth Rodriquez, gathered with a group of youths and young adults at St. Stephen/Mary Mother of the Church Parish in Detroit on a Thursday night. "I want to learn to be a good leader and teach the little kids — so that the youth group can still be here."

Rodriquez is a part of a ministry called Respeto, through which teenagers and young adults in the Hispanic community learn to minister to their peers and to Hispanic youths.

The ministry is one of several in the Archdiocese of Detroit that focus on teaching young people how to become beacons of Catholic truth for future generations. Because of recent additions to the archdiocese's youth ministry office — personnel and resources funded by the Catholic Services Appeal — the office has been able to beef up the guidance and networking opportunities it offers to parish-based youth ministries across the Archdiocese of Detroit.

"We're doing more parish consultations, more coordination of vicariate programs, and expanding the ministry both in the urban area and the Hispanic area," said Joyce Francois, director of the youth ministry office. "Without funding from the CSA, we wouldn't be able to staff the office properly in order to serve all the parishes."

The Together in Faith process — a long-term reorganization plan which seeks to best allocate resources within the archdiocese — identified youth ministry as the most pressing area of concern amid parishes. The youth ministry office was enhanced to address that concern.

Though the office had long been available to provide help to parish-based youth ministries, it recently recruited four new associates to provide more help, and has placed a special focus on fostering effective youth ministry in urban areas and in bilingual Hispanic parishes.

Joe Kohn | The Michigan Catholic Yaiquis Jimenez guides youths and young adults through a bilingual Gospel exercise at St. Stephen/Mary Mother of the Church Parish in Detroit.

Respeto is an example of the increased focus on bilingual ministry for Hispanic youths.

"The idea is spiritually to help create leaders," said Julieta Oliva, who facilitates the ministry with St. Stephen/Mary Mother of the Church parishioner Yaiquis Jimenez. The two traveled to San Antonio, Texas, last year to learn about the national Respeto model of ministry.

Oliva explained that the youths and young adults who are part of Respeto meet on Thursday nights throughout the year, and often learn about the Catholic faith in conjunction with their own cultural heritage.

"If you want to be a leader, you have to develop those virtues and values," she said.

Though the young people have been raised Catholic, they still benefit from leadership formation into young adulthood.

"They're still learning about Jesus," said Jimenez. "They're still learning about their religion."

Inner-city parishes also have created new initiatives in youth ministry in the past year.

Kathleen Walker, coordinator for urban youth ministry, said youths from parishes in Detroit have gotten together for Masses, a youth choir and retreats.

Joe Kohn | The Michigan Catholic Morco Morales, 25, shapes a cross out of clay at St. Stephen/Mary Mother of the Church on April 10.

Because inner-city parishes typically have smaller populations than suburban parishes, they usually can't afford full-time youth ministers. "We find that, in the city, to have a full-time youth ministry position is exasperating for the budget of the parishes," said Walker, who for years has been a youth minister and educator in Detroit. "So we help them collaborate with one another to expose our children to as much as we can with the resources we have."

The efforts have paid off thus far, she added.

"The youth ministers in the city have always had a great love for the work that they do," Walker said. "I think the connections are really coming together. We're starting to see a larger number of our youth ministers taking advantages of the resources we have."

Suburban parishes, too, are taking advantage of the availability of new associates in the office for youth ministry.

For example, this month Our Lady Star of the Sea Parish in Grosse Pointe Woods held a weekend retreat for members of their youth group who wanted to learn about Christian leadership. Instead of being conducted by their youth minister, Carolyn Coules, the retreat was conducted by Laura Piccone Hanchon, who was one of two experience youth ministers hired last year to be an associate director for the office for youth ministry.

"It was about communication and how people can talk to each other," said Chris Pokladek, 16, who attended the retreat. "It was just great to have a speaker from a different area. She was a really good speaker, too. And it was great to have (Coules) give us a variety. We don't have a whole lot of speakers come here."

Coules herself — who is finishing only her first year as youth minister at the parish — said she appreciated having an experienced youth minister to help her learn the ropes.

"It was really neat to be able to sit back and, as she's teaching the teens, I'm learning how to teach the teens," Coules said, adding that the youths at the parish seemed to enjoy the retreat. "And it makes you feel that you actually have a connection with the office of youth ministry when you see a face."

Piccone Hanchon, who comes with years of experience from having been a youth minister at St. Colette Parish in Livonia, said she keeps busy responding to requests to help with retreats, coordinate multi-parish events and train youth ministers.