Facts of Life 2

The Bridge To Life:



This entry will focus on a break down of our activities with an insight into a weekly schedule. Last time we spoke about how the parish team helps bring NETs public mission to fufilment.

i.e:

1/2 * High School Youth Group
1/2 * Jr. High Ministry
3/4 * Discipleship Groups
3/4 * Young Adult/Core Team ministry
1/2/3 * Confirmation Classes
1/2/3 * Teen Mass
1/2* Retreats for Parish Youth

This time we will take some of these ways and look a bit closer at how i have experienced them. You will notice that i mostly speak about the male youth, well that because NET orders its ministry gender appropriate.

High school youth group:

HS YG (as its written on our schedul es) is held at the church in the Youth Room, a large set aside room with its own office, cupboards full of toys, board games, around 500 museli (U.S: granola) bars - dont ask, a foosball table - im pretty good, a game cube(mario kart) w/projector - i am probably too good, t.v, dvd player and a hi-fi. So you can see that the ground is fertile enough to plant and nuture the seeds, but the initial HS YG turn out was about 4 or 5 girls and a boy.

(Picture on Right of Eric with our schedule! )

Since then we (The NET Team) have had some joy due to the chance of forging relationships with youth from Hastings area. We now have about 5 to 7 men and occasionally 10-15 girls. The youth group is growing. The young men are great, they are clearly searching for a deeper relationship with christ and one another. We have helped them with prayer by showing them the importance of holding one another acountable for spiritual growth. A concept i have never knowingly considered but is esssential to spiritual growth. We do this by giving them accountability partners, encouraging them to txt each other 'hey man did you read scripture today' or 'hey dude hows it going just checking to see if you prayed a rosary' etc HS YG is great place for us to learn more about the specific youth we are ministering to. A reason for this is beacuse of the mens and womens sharing time we have. We split into groups according to gender and talk guy stuff or girl stuff and pray about guy things or girl things.

This helps on a few levels: 1. It breaks down the barriers of thought that say to the mind of young men/women 'what will he/she think if i open up about this?' or 'I really want to impress him/her so i better say what the leaders want to hear.' 2. It encourages the genders to find their identity according to gender - to be vulnrable according to gender.

HS YG has proven valuable to ministry as it helps us bring the youth to a low commitment environment in which they can have fun, experience faith with the added bonus of perhaps showing us a desire for more that would be a signal for us to invite them to experience their faith on a deeper level.

Jr. High Ministry - HS Lunches/FAC

So far this has mainly been focused within HS YG, visiting the HS for lunch on fridays and FAC (Friday Afternoon Club). FAC is holy chaos, get a bunch of high schoolers give them pizza, candy/sweets, soda/pop/fizzy drinks - whatever, open all the cupboards in the youthroom, switch on the gamecube, organise a foosball competition and Roberts your Mothers Brother you have your self mayhem. I love it. Man, if i have learnt anything so far then its how to play foosball (table football)! This time is just fun time. Holy fun.

One of the problems in hastings is the youth have too much of an adults stressfull, schedule dominating, life style so this is a great opportunity for funsies. HS lunches are great to, if not intimidating. We turn up at the high school (which is incredible), and wait for the high schoolers to enter the mess hall, they literally pour in from the stair cases above and fill the hall like starved ganets that have been given access to an un attended fish haul. We sit and eat with them, we make new friends, get kicked off tables by bullies and invite them to YG and FAC. Out of this aspect of ministry I have had the chance to go watch bands and pursue/maintain relationships with the youth.

Discipleship

This is key to our ministry. Traveling teams lead the youth to conversion. Parish teams guide them beyond that to discipleship following the call of Christ from the gospels:

"go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:19-20a).

If you take this (Christs call) to its logical conclusion then we are to in turn encourage the youth to 'make disciples of all nations'. So far, I have been lucky as to source one young man who i am presently discipling on a weekly basis. We meet every week at a coffee house, after i prepare a clear plan and we have a friendly chat, play cards and I teach him what it means to be a christian male, how that looks, what to expect and how to sustain your faith. This is with the aim to mentor him to a point in which he can do... my job for me.

Young Adult/Core Team ministry

One of our established objectives or goals this year is to create a core team. A core team will basically be a group of young adults that can do the job of the NET team when we are gone. This is achieved through the disciples we create. However, Gods providence is unpredictable, in fact one of the Fathers of our host families (families which we live with for 3 weeks at a time) is my age, and he has stepped forward to become a leader. This is a real sucess for the parish as he is a dedicated Christian loyal to the church and a great witness to the faith. Normally you have to disciple the individuals first but in this case the young adult is already at disciple level and is therefore ready for leading.

Confirmation Classes/Teen Mass

We help out here by being present and taking part. Every sunday at 6pm is a youth mass. We will train singers, instruments, servers, readers, greeters and try to orient the mass to best minister to the youth. In the confirmation classes we at as leaven to just be there to support the catechists and the youth. At times we lead a session or give testimonials, play games, show you tube videos like the one at the top of this page.

Retreats for parish youth
Retreat ministry is an extra chance to share our faith with the youth. Each retreat is very structured and consists of games, music, dramas, skits, food, sports, prayer, talks and scripture and can range from one evening to a long weekend. They tend to be a great experience for the youth as they are great fun and they challenge the youth, providing the "meat" of our faith in a relaxed atmosphere which the youth are so evidently thirsting for.

(N.B this finger gesture is a sign on peace in the US)

There are also many other activities and events that we as a team are involved in. These range from service projects to lock-ins. Lock ins are all nighters for the youth, i can barely stay awake all night but the youth love them. The picture on the right is from an all nighter at a leisure center, it was jam packed with all sorts of activities, ice skating, basketball, inflatables, swimming, food, facepainting, arcade games, prayer, mass, jungle-bungle style things and much more available all night. It was really great for us to be there as not many of the youth have good role models in their lives. It was a great chance to bond with them and just be

as an example of a young Catholic adult.

Facts of life

It has been a busy 3 months now since i have arrived in Hastings, Minnesota where i am posted for a total of 8months leading a team of 5 women and 4 men. The ministry has been so engaged and demanding that i have hardly had the time to update my blog so i apologise for this late and extensive update. The next two entries will primarily be focused on filling you in on the facts of our ministry, how it differs to the rest of NETs mission, with a break down of each area. The updates following these two will be focused on the ins and outs of our daily life, team life, living arrangements and some juicy gossip that will add another 40 years or so onto purgatory for me.

Lets get the facts out of the way:

Here is how NET define the areas of its/our mission:


NET Ministries is an international youth ministry organization, and it fulfills its mission by:

1* Proclaiming the Gospel of Christ through a personal witness of faith
2* Inviting young people to live for Christ
3* Forming young people in Christian character through the study and practice of their faith
4* Equipping youth workers and young adults with the ministry skills needed for evangelization.


Our ministry here differs greatly to the ministry of the other 8 NET teams. The difference is quite simple the travelling teams encourage youth to live as young Christians and the parish team encourages young Christians to live as disciples. Why dont we look a bit closer; Traveling team ministry, teams 1-7 and 9, are also known as retreat teams and they fufil the first two points. Their primary focus is to, in the limited time they have, be it a weekend or a couple of hours, lead the youth to a point of conversion through talks, small groups, testimonies, games and prayer ministry. In this sense they literally 'challenge' the 'young catholics to love christ and embrace the life of the church' by not only 'proclaiming the gospel of chirst' through their actions and words but also by 'inviting', through their testimonies, 'the young people to live for christ.'

The parish teams differs as it fufils all four points.'Parish team ministry is focused on long term evangelization and building relationships that will grow throughout the year and beyond.' -netusa.org.

I have numbered the following areas particular to our teams ministry (taken from the Netusa.org website) to illustrate how they fit in with the four mission points listed above.

1/2 * High School Youth Group
1/2 * Jr. High Ministry
3/4 * Discipleship Groups
3/4 * Young Adult/Core Team ministry
1/2/3 * Confirmation Classes
1/2/3 * Teen Mass
1/2* Retreats for Parish Youth

As you can see these different areas fufil all of NETs mission parameters. The other NET teams focus entirely on the last of these points fufiling 1 and 2 of the four mission parameters.

Happy Birthday Mum!