The Call of the Stay-at-Home Parent

by Dan Masterton

Each birthday of my oldest daughter, Lucy, of course marks her getting another year older, but it tallies another year of something else, too. Her seventh birthday last month was also quietly the start of my eighth year as mostly a stay-at-home parent.

It’s not a big milestone or an even, round number. Yet as Lucy, our 4-year-old Cecilia, and our 4-month-old Brigid settle into life with my wife and our mom, Katherine, being fully back to work after maternity leave, and my enjoying a short paid leave from my part-time job, it’s a good time for me to take stock of the call – my call – of the stay-at-home parent.

Why did we decide that I’d stay home?

It starts with my paid paternity leave. Thanks to my job in an Archdiocese of Chicago school, I had twelve weeks off at full pay to spend with my newborn, and Katherine and I decided to take our leaves together. During that time, we got to cut our teeth as new parents before Lucy even began to cut her own. And we had ample time to talk more expansively and relaxedly about what we’d do after those twelve weeks were up.

Practically, our parents (Lucy’s grandparents) were all working at the time and not closeby enough to provide regular childcare. The cost of childcare wouldn’t be hugely different than the reduction in Catholic school salary I’d take going down to part-time. And Katherine was working three twelve-hour shifts each week and beginning part-time doctoral studies, so she had four days that were open and flexible as her shifts were requested and assigned. After some poking around at full-time opportunities, I could tell my heart wasn’t in going back to work fully.

As we discussed it more and more, we both felt strongly that we’d like to avoid daycare and instead care for our daughter ourselves as much as we could. I’d liken our mindset on staying home versus daycare to the breastmilk-versus-formula debate: while some prefer one or the other, there isn’t a clear and definite answer as to which might be better or worse; ultimately, a parent’s job is to feed and nourish their child, on whichever of the routes they choose. We don’t deride or discount daycare; we just didn’t think it was for us. We wanted our daughter home with us, going out from home with us, and spending most of her baby time with us.

My role in a Catholic school could flexibly scale down, and to keep Katherine on a good track to grater professional scope and earning power, we needed to keep her progressing through school. In retrospect, it’s clear that I underestimated the existential and fundamental sacrifice she was making, and I took for granted the ease with which I could make the shift and that, for the life we wanted, she could not.

I went down to 50% time and 50% salary, and I started focusing on life at home, with just two days a week spent at work. My thoughts shifted more heavily to grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, and cleaning; to morning playtime, afternoon walks, and regular social outings; to retaining some ministerial outlet while serving in intentionally narrowed, constrained ways.

Reallocating my focus and energy felt right to the husband, father, and minister God made me to be. I could serve a small group of students in service, prayer, and retreat ministries. I also could dedicate a greater proportion of my time and energy to my wife and daughter to make our household hum and accompany my daughter through her little life’s milestones and daily ho-hums.

Why have I continued to stay home?

I’ve known since that initial decision that I couldn’t be 100% stay-at-home, and I knew I couldn’t do it forever. Approaching it as a 10-to-12-year idea, and keeping a toe dipped into ministry life, I knew and know I can continue doing this with and for my family.

In 2019, as I spent my second year part-time in a Catholic high school and its campus ministry, I was losing my foothold and wondered how I could continue this work. I felt like a weak link on a strong staff, trying to give bits to my students in two days a week while clearly not treating them, the school, or the community as my priority. I was awed by my colleagues’ dedication and service, and I knew I wouldn’t give what they were giving because I wouldn’t overextend myself and dilute my presence at home.

As I weighed nonetheless trying another year at this, a dear friend in a religious community invited me to consider joining their staff. He was proposing one day a week at the headquarters and flexible additional time to add up to a part-time role. That arrangement coupled with the chance to shift more so to back-office support and less hands-on ministry was ideal. I made the tough choice to move on from high schools and settle into this different role for my work.

Katherine completed her doctorate and then moved to a standard workweek as an outpatient nurse practitioner. Now I needed coverage for my day away from the house since she was done with shift-work. Thankfully, we were blessed by familial support. Katherine’s mom had retired from teaching, and my dad had retired from banking since Lucy was born. They were both more than ready to step in while I stepped out, taking turns each week on one weekday with our kiddos.

This sustained balance, where I could take a day away for meetings, independent work, site visits, and some programmatic stuff was perfect to keep me engaged in meaningful work and provide a change of pace (and a break) from home life. Once again, it’s easier to see in retrospect than in the exact moment how my wife simply soldiered on with a full load while I had the benefit of greater flexibility in being the secondary income and moving things around in these ways.

This role in support of vocation ministry, youth and young adult ministry, and social media and communications with my brothers and priests has been a great way to continue developing and honing skills, supporting those in more active, full-time ministry, and staying engaged in Church life. And it’s left me six days a week of flexible time to focus on our family life and household and weasel bits of work into the nooks and crannies where it more easily fits.

I can’t guarantee a comparable arrangement could fall into place for everyone, but I can say that open marital conversations, humble asks to beloved family members, honest conversations with professional contacts and supervisors, and a good sense of humor along the way are all needed ingredients to attempt to assemble such a puzzle.

I’m grateful God made me to be both husband/father and minister, and I’m grateful to be connected to people and communities that embrace these multiple vocations. But part of this is that I have greater peace knowing that this need not be the forever arrangement.

When will it end?

Theoretically, I’ll look to transition back to full-time work when Brigid starts kindergarten in fall of 2029, which would mark about 12½ years of home life. All the girls would be in full-day schools, and our coverage needs would trim down to before and after school time.

However, unlike when Lucy and Ceci were babies and I was fresher into this, I’d say I’m now more open to flipping the switch before then. On the one hand, I more frequently worry that I’m more burnt out than I realize or know, that my creativity and vigor isn’t what it once was for daily home life, or that maybe the kids would be better off with a fresh situation. But on the whole, I still relish assembling the week’s calendar and dropping in park district activities, library visits, zoo and arboretum outings, and playdates with friends and family.

Additionally, I wonder if, after another several years of professional ministry and networking and experience, if a certain opportunity may arise that is too good to pass up. Is there a role or set of ministries that draw me in? Is there a new configuration to family life or new compensation opportunity that can shift our parental and familial roles? Is there someone I know who comes to me with a major invitation?

Who knows.

I’d just say that when Lucy was a baby, I couldn’t even imagine shifting. Now, seven years and three kids into this, I have a little more curiosity as I consider the futures that may be ahead.

For now, my part-time role is perfect for flexibility and a professional outlet, and I’m calmly going bit by bit.

* * *

On the whole, I think of this call to stay-at-home parenting as a strong reflection of the free choice we hope every person and parent would be free to make. In social justice, we long for an economy in which each person can make a stable living and support themselves and their family, making holistic choices in freedom and love rather than totally by financial necessity. We still have a ways to go to universalize paid parental leave, make childcare more affordable and subsidize stay-at-home parents, and restructure the child tax credit to be direct payments to working-class and middle-class families. Because of my parents, my wife’s parents, our families, the education and development opportunities we’ve received all lifelong, Katherine and I now as spouses and parents can approach this with freedom where we can make this set of choices.

In my privilege, I can take my upbringing, my financial stability, and my education and choose to step away from the workforce and the economy and productivity and instead contribute by more directly raising my kids and serving my family. In my privilege, I can depend on my wife’s intelligence, competence, and excellence to earn an outstanding living for our family and work less for a salary and work more for my family.

I want parents to be able to make this choice with the primary motivation being their love of their families, and I’m grateful that we were free to choose this path in this freedom.

Bigger than Ourselves Ch. 6: Be Where Your Physical (and Virtual) Feet Are

by Dan Masterton

I had my first real pastoral ministry job in 2010. In various ways, for 13 years and counting, I’ve had opportunities to engage in faith-sharing, leadership training, and some mentorship and formation with young people.

One interesting question that’s come up in various ways amid various trends, largely from my asking, is “what’s the point or purpose of our technology and social media?” Young people have a wide range of answers, some praise and some complaints. A small few of them are even Luddites!

I’m not one to discourage young people from using the tech and devices and apps; I think that likely only fuels their rebelliousness. Instead, I challenge them to moderation. In shorthand, I like to tell them, “Social media and technology give us additional ways to communicate, but they also give us a ton of ways to ignore each other.”

Now, into the 2020s, I’d also add that they create a lot of avenues for sharing and communication, but these avenues often lead us to passivity and disconnection. In other words, we lose the primacy and importance of face-to-face relationship building and personal invitation.

What’s more, I think many, if not most, of us in some ways fancy ourselves as being influencers and consultants. It’s certainly a temptation I have to grapple with personally. And I think it’s an even greater challenge for people who are cooler and more popular than me, who gain followers, likes, shares, and comments with incredible ease.

When it comes to our faith, and the presence of Christ and the Gospel and our desire for right relationship and social justice, I think the Church, its institutions, its leaders, and its members need to be present online. The goal should be fidelity and witness, not sensationalism or personal vainglorious success.

Much like news media organizations – if they’re really to be doing public service and informing people – must prioritize reliable, timely reporting over sensational or tilted or cheap news while still trying to earn enough eyeballs to remain financially viable, the Church and we as Christians need to share an honest, true-to-life perspective and image of our lives of faith if we’re to be faithful.

The growth of Catholic influencers, personalities, and entrepreneurs is a mixed blessing, in my opinion. It certainly raises the profile of our faith when savvy, dynamic folks apply their media gift toward faith-based efforts. But I find the calculus regarding building and maintaining a following and then also remaining authentic, grounded, and faithful is dicey, to say the least.

In Chapter 6, Fr. Andrew falls prey to this allure, seeking to do a new media ministry in what is at least partially good faith but becoming nonetheless susceptible to the dog-eat-dog world of social media virality. It takes the steady hand, weathered perspective, and insightful voice of a veteran priest to help reset him – not to tear him down or rip away his ministerial impulse but to reshape it and set his feet down so the younger priest can just “be where your feet are.”

In a certain sense, I’m sure many of us in ministry would love to become consultants contracted to come in and give our opinions, speakers paid to travel and share our wisdom or facilitate discussions, personalities turned to for a valued and appreciated perspective. I think, to an extent, it’s healthy to want to be those things, to do those things. But the greatest need exists in serving locally, in building relationships with community members and neighbors right in front of you, and taking those next levels of outreach and ministry more gently as they spring forth from this local focus.

As always, the call is not to financial success or analytical engagement success but to ministerial fidelity. At our best, lay ministers are John the Baptist pointing to Christ, companions on the road to Emmaus contemplating Christ and breaking bread, disciples and apostles witnessing to Christ and bringing that Gospel to others by our words and our actions.

Bigger than Ourselves Ch. 5: Don't Do Service a Disservice

by Dan Masterton

High school campus ministry is a bit of an emerging field, a weird thing to say about a role in Catholic education that has been around for decades.

Often, this role is staffed not by those deeply, actively seeking such a role. It often goes to someone whose job is in danger of slipping to part-time who needs more responsibilities to maintain benefits. It often goes to a young, bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed post-grad, maybe even there as part of a volunteer program, who may or may not have any experience in ministry, or training in theology or catechesis. It often falls to teachers or other staff members who add it onto an already fullish plate. It’s rarer that these jobs are done by people who would be overjoyed to do such a job for a long time, even a whole career’s worth.

As a result, people are often campus ministers who are only passing through – shepherding a program, in some various state of disrepair or efficacy, for a few years until their next thing. And thus, many folks are triaging or learning a few things on the fly or just treading water.

That said, there has been a mild shift over the last few years, at the least to more thoughtful engagement among active and former campus ministers. It’s thanks to professional sessions and informal gaggles at the annual National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) conference, a vibrant Facebook group of these folks that the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry sponsors, and ongoing social ties between some regular suspects. As a result, more thought, more attention, and more development is happening.

As people come together, a few topics tend to fire up some ready-made input, as people respond to oft-asked questions with opinions that come from experience. Some major firestarters include when to place Kairos (junior year vs. senior year vs. a hybrid), whether or not to have co-ed small-groups and/or co-ed retreat experiences, and norms for planning and leading all-school liturgies. But perhaps the quickest, most lively debate springs from this big question: should service hours be required of Catholic high school students?

Whew.

The pros and cons are seemingly limitless, the stories of consolation and desolation varied and vivid. The consensus answer… well, there isn’t one.

In debates like this without a strong and compelling consensus, the practicality in my ministerial heart gravitates instead to best practices. Whether or not hours are required, what are positive, effective, meaningful things that campus ministers (and youth ministers accompanying confirmation candidates and other active teens, for that matter) can do with and for their young people?

Here’s a few from my experience and conversations:

Incorporate processing, hopefully working toward theological reflection.

Whether required or voluntary, service needs to be processed. Students who attend service outings need to process what they’ve been involved in, otherwise these are just more “things they’ve done” and will not turn into experienced memories.

Ideally, this will involve some level of theological processing, at least a see-judge-act type cycle. Here’s a simple way to use that in three rounds:

1. Describe what you saw, heard, and did during our visit. Describe who you saw, what they were like, and how you interacted with them.
2. Think about why this need exists. Why do people need this service? What are these people lacking? What historical, political, cultural, or spiritual factors might impact this need?
3. Consider how to act in response. What ways can you evolve your thinking and how you consider these social issues? In what ways can you take action to do charity by people in need and advocate for greater justice in our social systems?

Sometimes, all you can muster is a quick informal gaggle in the parking lot by the school van. Other times, maybe you can build in a 15-30 minute window back at school afterwards. Alternatively, maybe periodic gatherings could pool service participants from various trips into one larger group for processing. At minimum, it’d be ideal to have students briefly journal, even to just do step one from above in an iPhone note or on a little notepad.

As an introductory milestone, I always hope, especially that freshman and sophomores, can process their way past the very simplest, most basic realizations on their first or second trip. It’s good to “have my eyes opened,” to “become more grateful for what I have,” or to “not take things for granted.” Once they acknowledge these fundamentals, hopefully group sharing and faith mentorship can help them toward something more that seeks human solidarity with people on the margins and develops a mindset that desires more justice for forgotten neighbors.

Embrace a variety of experiences.

I used to be a bit sour on passive actions like drives, collections, and fundraisers, thinking time is better spent on direct service that aids people who are marginalized. But, as with many things Catholic, a both-and solution is ideal. There’s great benefit to these more passive service actions, too, especially as complementary activity to direct service.

First, they are a great low-barrier entry point to service. For those who are nervous about encountering new communities, it creates an avenue to become more active that starts shy of that. Collecting coats or clothes or money can meet a need, usually through an agency or organization, that starts to connect people, even if more indirectly. More creative tasks like making blankets, assembling care packs for people experiencing homelessness, or meal prep and sandwich stations for people who are hungry can facilitate more active, community-based and collaborative work.

This path also helps engage people who struggle to manage their busyness, works for younger groups who may not be mature enough for certain service sites, or makes an opportunity for groups who meet at times when direct service is difficult, such as Sunday night youth groups.

Either way, this collective charitable action is certainly worthwhile. Plus, a small encounter is still possible if a group from the action visits the agency to deliver the donations, and perhaps meets at least with staff who can educate them, if not also some of the clients or community members served.

From there, especially with teens, young adults, and older adults, service needs to involve direct encounter with people on the margins. Basic avenues include serving a food distribution at a food pantry or satellite distribution site; helping with food prep, meal service, and hospitality at a soup kitchen; supporting logistics and hospitality at a shelter for people experiencing homelessness, fleeing and recovering from abuse, settling after migration, or others.

Such direct encounter is huge for so many reasons, not least that it moves those serving to deeper thoughts than eye-openers and self-gratitude. Encounters with people on the margins put names, faces, and stories to issues easily abstracted. It enfleshes solidarity through moments of reciprocity, where greetings, conversation, and even tangible items of aid are exchanged in love.

These interactions are invaluable for helping young people, especially those coming from privilege, to discover the fullness of human dignity in all people in an incarnate, first-hand way. And it sews more fruitful seeds toward forming young people in a faith that seeks justice and spurs them to become greater advocates for that justice.

Strive for an immersion.

A next-level component that I’d hope for all young people to find in one of their faith communities is a service-learning and/or educational immersion.

Let’s walk through it by using the terms carefully and accurately.

First, an immersion differs from a service outing or a service trip because the group participating stays overnight at or near the community in which they’re serving and/or learning (rather than going home each night or to lodging separated significantly away from that community). Additionally, the group undertakes the vast majority of their experience serving, eating, praying, and communing in that community. For example, an urban service week in which suburban kids bus in from suburbs to parts of the city, go home each night to the suburbs, and sleep at their parish or their families’ homes would not be immersive; conversely, a group that travels to a rural community to assist with home building and repair and then sleeps in a community center or local campsite between their days of work would be undertaking an immersion.

A service-learning immersion takes the idea of processing one’s service and seeks to build out that process more fully. This style of immersion couples long periods of service – perhaps full mornings and afternoons – with intentional periods of processing reflection, faith-sharing, and prayer that aims to help young people think and pray about their work, and then form their hearts to become service-minded and justice-oriented.

An educational immersion taps into this same immersive structure but utilizes the time differently. Rather than providing direct service – such as building and repair, food pantry or soup kitchen hospitality, etc. – participants instead undertake learning opportunities. Typically, immersions focus on one topic or set of topics, such as immigration and migration or ecology and environment. The immersion then seeks to educate and inform students through intensive educational experiences.

These components would include things like presentations or Q&A’s with agency and organization leaders, walks through areas with experienced servant-leaders where participants learn about the issue and people it affects first-hand (i.e. migrant trails in the desert or homelessness encampments in cities), and interactions with people on the margins who are clients being served by agencies, to name a few.

Then, similar to other immersions, time is built in to include intentional periods of processing reflection, faith-sharing, and prayer that aims to help young people think and pray about their work, and then form their hearts to become service-minded and justice-oriented.

* * *

In Chapter 5, Larry is trying to get his food pantry streamlined, in part by optimizing his loyal band of older volunteers and complementing their constancy with the vitality and energy of young people. The outreach is tricky, and he has plenty of swings and misses. But when a group does show up, the results – both for the clients served and the young and old volunteers receiving them – are outstanding.

Direct service, in short, becomes a time when we often witness the best of people. And often, it’s the best of both sides of the encounter – the kind and humble people seeking assistance as well as the unpredictable young people. These small moments when we put God’s compassionate love into action are authentic glimpses of the Kingdom of God. Our world is brighter when these glimpses are longer and more frequent.

Bigger than Ourselves Ch. 4: Applying Renewed Thinking to Vocations and Discernment

by Dan Masterton

Vocations, vocations, vocations. Whew.

It’s certainly rare – but not nonexistent! – to hear of a diocese or a religious community where vocations to priesthood and religious life are abundant. There’s a myriad of reasons for this, accurate or overstated, to varying extents. If I had to put it concisely, I’d say we still generally take for granted that people who are baptized Catholic as infants and the families raising them will belong to a parish and participate in that community by Mass attendance and/or more. As a result, we struggle even to sustain the amount of parishes and ministries we have, let alone cultivate vocational awareness and discernment of one’s invitations from God.

In my time as a pastoral minister, and in four years and counting specifically focused on vocations ministry, I’d say there are two extremes too often envisioned or practiced. On the one hand, an old guard remembers a time when novitiates and pre-seminaries had ten new candidates each year with little more effort than prayer and invitation (often “invitold” invitations, at that), and assumes modern vocations will spring forth simply from private prayer and devotions, just “from God.” On the other hand, some folks imagine a very overt, recruitment mindset that is almost head-hunting faithful teens and young adults and trying to track them toward theological studies and religious formation.

In reality, an effective vocations ministry in the 2020s and beyond, one that will speak effectively to GenZ and subsequent generations, has to embrace some evolving norms. Here’s a few that I think are integral:

1. You have to present vocations with universal call language.

Start with baptism.

Identify the theologically central belief that we are all called to holiness.

Remind all the baptized faithful that they are all called to holiness, all called to embrace their nature as God’s beloved children, and all called to respond in loving service to others and God.

This needs to be something that all Christians understand at their spiritual cores.

2. Focus on states of life, vocational awareness, and a culture of discernment.

When speaking to youth and young adults, always acknowledge the full validity and complete fulfillment possible in living as a single person, married person, priest, or professed religious. We have to establish a new paradigm that sees vocation as one’s response to the gifts, passions, and talents that God gave each of us in creating us in love.

From there, we need the witness of people from each state of life to bring color and depth to their lived experience. And this must include religious men and women and priests and deacons. In this full palette of life, young people can see all paths possible and consider them each in good faith.

A major part of this is putting religious women and men and priests and deacons before young people to give witness. And when these religious and ordained people speak to youth, they need to state this spiritual truth: God is inviting young women to religious life, and God is inviting young men to religious and ordained life. And then ask them the question, not necessarily in a personal one-on-one way but at least to the young people as a group: could God be inviting you to religious life or priesthood? The seed needs to be planted intentionally.

3. Commit to accompaniment.

I always liked being a campus minister at a school rather than a pastoral minister at a parish. I liked the “captive audience,” knowing I had my students eight hours a day, five days a week, for the better part of nine months. It enabled me to focus on getting to know them, connecting their gifts and passions with ministry and service opportunities, and seeking to form them to be people of committed and lively faith. I know I would struggle immensely in a parish, where, at best, people come for Mass and maybe one youth event a week or month (or year!), and you’re often trying to build communities from scratch.

Now, with Catholic school enrollments often decreasing and parish populations, attendance, and Mass counts often decreasing, the opportunities to help young people discern and live out a vocation will come less from traditional avenues. We cannot rely on religious ed programs, Catholic high schools, and parish youth groups as strongly as we may have in past times. There needs to be more emphasis on tracking young people as they move on to college, trades, the military, and next steps, communicating by texts, social media direct messaging, calls and videochats, and perhaps videoconferencing or hybrid events (inasmuch as is possible and can be done according to safe environment standards as relates to minors and appropriate relationships between adults).

Vocations still do sometimes come through undergraduate years with young women and men entering formation out of college. But there needs to be more openness and attention to the mid-to-late 20s, 30s, and even 40s, as people live out different faith journeys and progressions, as people mature at different (often delayed) rates, and as people perhaps consider religious life and priesthood more seriously only at later points.

This is a trickier prospect since adults at these ages are only in familiar ecosystems at lower, less reliable rates and we may need to go and meet and engage them anew. We need to honor the differences between these older adults and teens/undergrads and invite their lived experience as independent adults, as professionals, and even as seekers and strugglers. And all of this newer ground has to be seen as potentially fertile for discernment and religious life/priesthood vocations.

* * *

In Chapter 4, Adam lets on, bit by bit, that he may be considering religious life, even just as a teen and new college student. Yet, for his apparent maturity and earlier sharing, it doesn’t mean his discernment will be direct, decisive, and final. As he invites his priest, his friends, and his parents into the circle of trust, there will be bumps in the road, mixed reactions, and a young man who is still growing and learning amid it all. For all the joy of his grace-filled discernment, there is a lot happening and a lot yet to come!

As religious communities and dioceses navigate new and changing norms, the ideals I’ve described here may not even be ideal in just a few years or so. But just as individuals need a growth mindset to be able to understand new things and adapt in positive ways, so, too, do institutions and leadership groups. Our vocation directors and ministers need to keep trying to understand generational trends and changes and do their best to be where young people are. If we can do this faithfully, I believe we will have the vocations we need to sustain the Church, and if that’s a lower number than we’re accustomed to having, then I believe the Holy Spirit can help us toward the evolutions needed to keep fueling our Church’s fire.

Bigger than Ourselves Ch. 3: Embracing an Accompaniment Paradigm

by Dan Masterton

Ministry – and really, faith itself – is largely about giving love as gift. The planning and preparation and administration and leadership a minister brings to the work has to be done with unconditional love, offered to individual people and to a community as a complete gift.

Yet, numbers and head counts cannot be totally ignored. Especially when humanpower and financial resources are often scarce, there has to be some intentionality about how time and money are spent. It’s ok to give new ideas a pilot runway and try them out over a trial period of time, even if quantity or quality of engagement starts off quite low. But eventually, tough decisions have to be made, which sometimes includes opting to end a project, to pivot to different ideas or priorities, or to try a different strategy or approach.

So ministry is often about juggling the pure charity of love with the cruel realities of pragmatism.

When it comes to ministry with youth and young adults, I think many segments of the Church need to confront a difficult truth: the reservoir of loyal, committed families who simply show up to everything is drying up, and in some cases is already emptied. In parishes, the core families who regularly come to Mass, who consistently re-register their kids for religious ed, and whose parents volunteer as catechists and support staff are often not as numerous as they may have formerly been. In schools, the amount of students from families who have perennially practiced their faith in stable parish belonging and raised their kids with steady faith formation is dwindling, and often the pool of kids interested in ministry, service, and Christian leadership is then also smaller. We are now rarely operating from a pre-existing high baseline of engagement.

But we shouldn’t confuse this with the death of faith or of the Church. Even if belonging, engagement, and other metrics of faith life are down, a human desire to be spiritually engaged and fed, and to be a part of something bigger than one’s self, surely remains. Instead of being fatalistic, we have to acknowledge the need for a greater paradigm shift. We have to stop expecting turnout for ready-made, copy-paste events and shift our planning-and-preparation energy to what I’ll call “retail ministry.”

Pardon the cheap phrasing, but it comes from a parallel that I see to political campaigns. Consider candidates for office: imagine them in small-towns going table to table at coffee shops and diners, at senior living facilities and VFW halls, “buying” votes through one-on-one and small-group conversations, fifteen minutes at a time, day-in and day-out over the course of a long campaign. Catholic ministers need to embrace this grassroots, relationship-building mindset and bust out of office-based, calendar-driven, programmatic, bulletin-ad-running, announcement-at-Mass ministries. These things can still continue in a reduced, complementary role, but people who are paid to shepherd Catholic ministries professionally need to structure their time to allocate a greater proportion to retail ministry.

This will mean more home visits, calling parents or young adults and asking if you can pop by with an appetizer to share or resources to drop off and explain in person. This will mean more coffee chats, meeting out at a cafe or setting up a coffee bar in a room at the rectory or school where you can host parents and young adults (or even teens!) for friendly conversations. This will mean checking in with young adults at college campuses within day-trip range, maybe loading up a car with a priest, a DRE, and a youth leader to go see your young people in their element for a day (and maybe share a meal or Mass with them there!).

And from there, it will mean slowly developing programming such as faith formation, shared prayer, or social fellowship around the ideas, the gifts, the passions, the interests, and the explicit ideas of these people. It means building relationships where your conversations with them reveal the ways in which they want to be fed, the ways they want to serve or lead, the ways they want to belong and be formed. Surely, you may have to redirect or adjust an idea to make it more substantial or relevant, but the efficacy could be totally different when it starts with them.

The longer we hang on to dated mindsets – planning things on our own and doggedly pursuing low-yield advertising strategies that struggle to engage people passively – the longer we’ll struggle without progress in engaging more youth, young adults, and families.

In Chapter 3, Hope pulls herself back from the cusp of burnout by deciding to take a rest, study the society in which she seeks to minister, and rebuild an approach that can renew her, renew her ministry, and better serve the young people she feels vocationally meant to serve.

In these regards, I struggle with the part-time work I do around being a mostly stay-at-home parent. My job was intentionally structured to saddle me with as much office-based support work as possible to free up our full-time active professed religious to do more quality and quantity of pastoral ministry for youth, young adults, and discerners of religious life. I’m hoping that my future full-time roles in Catholic ministry will be opportunities for me to call my own bluff and attempt this sort of focus in my own work. In the meantime, I hope it can be an invitation to reevaluation for those of you in the vineyard full-time now!

Bigger than Ourselves Ch. 2: Working with Kids, Especially the Ones up for Grabs

by Dan Masterton

Working with young people is rarely dry or dull.

They are in such a time of growth and self-discovery that they are frequently changing, sometimes drastically, but more often in small, incremental ways. You have to do your best to judge their character and invite them to grow, to be good and do good. And you have to try to discern where each of them are at, all along a wide range from immaturity and to wisdom – a practice that will often humble you by showing you things you missed or misunderstood in them.

Even as they let you down and/or confirm your best hopes, you have to above all give them opportunities. You have to identify gifts and passions – in both the immature and the wise – and bring them to opportunities to share their best traits and serve others. Often, ministers find ourselves leaning on the “good ones,” perhaps taking advantage of their reliability, their responsiveness, their desire to make adults proud of them; often, ministers find ourselves bemoaning, chasing, and scolding the “tough ones,” perhaps playing into tragic scripts they’re trying to write. And even as ministers have to check themselves on both ends of this spectrum, there exists also a sizable middle group.

These kids in the middle may have neither discipline problems nor model behavior, may not have academic struggles nor intellectual excellence, and may not have poor judgment nor blossoming faith. Often, they’re just quiet, understated, largely average kiddos just doing their thing. And these can frequently be the kids who get overlooked, underutilized, and even forgotten. Often, all while being susceptible to negative influences if they get there before positive ones do.

One of the most complex yet fruitful processes I was ever a part of in my pastoral ministries was assembling a Kairos retreat leadership team. Whereas one-day retreats are often just a group of plucky volunteer students with a morsel of training, most schools (mine included) use the multi-night Kairos as a chance to do intensive faith formation and student leadership training with young people.

On the one hand, you need some kids with preexisting competencies that you can really hone and shape; on the other hand, you want to take a chance on some kids who maybe have an emerging gift or passion and use the intensive process to give them a lot of close attention that can help them grow in awesome ways.

You get and read written applications. You interview the kids individually. You talk to teachers, support staff, and admins about them. You get in greater depth with counselors about the bits they can share about the students. You try to build a hearty portrait of each one.

And then you attempt to build a balanced team with diversity in many different respects. And you hope you’ve hit upon a vocational moment that the Holy Spirit will nourish as each kid is formed to lead by serving.

All of this is to say: there are tons of layers to young people, especially when it comes to engaging their faith. Teens have so much to navigate, both in their social surroundings and within themselves. It can be a bit of a crap shoot for ministers to be effective companions, and we’re simply called to fidelity – to a good-faith best effort that prioritizes the young person and their growth. This means striving to offer consistent invitation to service and faith formation, encouragement to be in strong community settings (like retreat teams, service groups, liturgical ministries, and more), and trying to facilitate healthy, faith-forward relationships with both adult faith figures and with peers.

In Chapter 2, Madison is a kid up for grabs. Cristina is a kid seeking deeper faith and trying to bring others with her. Katy and Eileen and turning away and trying to bring others with them. And Ms. Hope is calmly watching to see what she might be able to do.

In my ministry, I hope to help young people reach a few milestones: (1) engage with matters of faith authentically, (2) develop a desire to be a part of something communal and bigger than themselves and contribute to charity and justice in our world, and (3) to thoughtfully ask and explore challenging theological, social, and spiritual questions. Hopefully, this would lead them to belief and belonging, hopefully rooted in the Church, but often, that’s not something teens are quite ready for. These three earlier targets were the stepping stones we tried to trod.

Doing Stewardship by the Right Road

by Dan Masterton

I feel like many of us, at some point, have found solace in the Thomas Merton prayer about striving to do God’s will. To take one of his key points in shorthand, Merton asserts that (1) even if he’s following God’s will, it doesn’t mean he actually is and (2) either way, a faithful effort to do God’s will still pleases God.

Lately, this mindset reawakened in me as another spring has invited me back outside into the yard of my family home. As I bandy about different ideas for the bit of the earth that we steward, I feel a little torn. I have plenty of zeal and, a tribute to my kids’ love of playing outside, a good amount of time. On the other hand, I have almost zero pre-existing know-how – all I have is the four years of trial and error as a homeowner and a dependence on bread crumb trails of social media posts, tags on plants and seeds, and catching just the right tip from just the right person.

So, see if you catch my vibes here as Earth Day prompted me to recollect some of the stuff I’e been trying lately…

+ + +

I have a mail-order subscription with a regenerative agriculture company that ships us the ground beef we use for cooking. In the last shipment, they included a “milkweed mix” seed pack. They hope customers will join their efforts on their land to restore this plant, help the monarch butterfly population, and improve pollination.

I was all too happy to turn up some dirt in our vacant deck planter and get these seeds planted, which my trusty assistant, Cecilia, took charge of happily – a little ditch for planting, a cover-up and sprinkling, and some sun and watering steadily can help them grow!

But it turns out, they may have needed to be cold-stratified? Or maybe the temps in our region and the still-cold ground will take care of that? Not sure. We’ll see. Even if they don’t grow, we can move the planter’s contents to the ground and give them another winter to see again. For now, we wait…

+ + +

Ceci took a break from
backyard trike-riding
to come finish the mulch!

I wanted to plant a tree. Well, I wanted to avoid adding too many material things to my Christmas list. And I also wanted a tree to plant. So I asked for a tree. And my family got me a tree!

It’s really cute and tiny for now, like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. And it’s supposed to be a really good one for carbon capture and climate considerations.

But now that’s in the ground, the suspense is on. Will it grow well? Will it struggle? Did I plant it right? (I swear I read the instructions exactly.) Are we watering it enough? Are we not watering it enough? Is time, like hope, actually an illusion? We’ll see!

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And my coup de gras for this spring, I decided to step up our native plants game. I’ve done milk-jug planting for two years now, and our little native seeds have gotten nice winter jumpstarts in there! The next puzzle to solve is the low part of our yard where water pools badly after rains, to the point where the grass doesn’t grow and the ground muds out.

This year, I decided to throw down a few bucks – I ordered a pre-arranged rain garden of 32 little impeccably shipped 3-inch-potted-plants, and I followed their awesome chart to plant the garden. It’s meant to catch the rain through awesome root systems, help more with pollinators, and keep the water within our neighborhood to recharge our grounds. It was fun to dig and plant and tag and prep.

Prairie Nursery includes
an awesome two-sided guide,
laminated for the work-station,
to spacing your garden
and tracking size and bloom timing.

But then as soon as I finished, I’m looking more closely… Did I sink the plants far enough? They said full sun is needed, and even a slightly shady 6-hours-a-day spot should work – is this good enough? Should I go get fancier mulch types they talked about, even though they said dried lawn clippings work fine? Was it worth breaking my no-mow April to mulch this new garden? Are the neighborhood critters gonna destroy this? Can I find natural repellents that will keep these flowers living and growing but not hurt the animals that I’m trying to repel? Agh…

+ + +

On the whole, I feel good. I feel glad. I feel like I’m doing something with our little part-acre that is good for the earth, for the animals, for the climate. It comes from a place of practicality as well as a place of spirituality.

Yet I still have these creeping doubts. Is it a waste of money? Am I making tons of mistakes? Am I getting any better at caring for this land?

So what I come back to is this Merton maxim: I think my faithful effort to do something good is good in and of itself, and somehow pleasing to God. So I’ll try to seek and take feedback and guidance in stride, with good nature, and take my lumps when little stewardship projects go awry. Because, I hope and think and believe that, at the root of all this, is a very practical and spiritual desire to do God’s will by stewarding God’s Creation. And I know God will ultimately lead me down that right road.