The Push-and-pulls of Ministry (Pt. 1)

To cap a summer of active, first-hand ministry, Vision peeps celebrate with a tasty Legends dinner, general laughs and stories, and a super-fab dance. Certain people are honored for coming back and/or doing an especially sweet job, and sometimes others get recognized too. Some, like Raquel, get epic slide shows comprised entirely of photos of herself. Others get a sweet gift kind of secretly.

I was super pumped when Shep asked me to give my witness talk to the CYMs. Writing my talk was an arduous, taxing, but ultimately positive process for reasons beyond outlines and word choices, and it was unexpectedly affirming to get this cool invitation to share my talk.

I wrote about my discernment history and how I understand it now. I knew when I wrote it that I could never give it to high schoolers in a big auditorium during any panel any time, but I wrote what was in me, coming off the scrap heap of trashing my first talk. Shep embraced what I was saying and created this opportunity for me, and I am real grateful.

As I waited for my date to arrive to Legends (I bungled the whole time-and-place-for-meeting-pre-arrangements), Shep pulled me aside and slipped me a card and book to thank me for taking her up on her offer. I was really touched by her guidance the whole way and that was just the icing on the top. Her card and notes were so sweet, and I have finally gotten down to reading the book, The Godbearing Life, during break. It's a fascinating work on (at least so far) shifting the ministerial focus from of tasks, programs, and doing and toward a more holistic missionary style of ministry. There's much to chew on and absorb, and I'm far from being able to write on it.

However, it is bringing back some of the questions pertaining to ministry that came up while I worked this summer as a mentor to the high schoolers. These aren't definitely-answered questions, but they are gestures at things that I foresee developing more personal philosophies on, and, taking the advice of the book, will consult other ministers about, using community among Christians and ministers to uphold ourselves...

How much of ministry is delegation/getting out of the way and how much is direct leadership?

An important element of ministry with youth is allowing them to be ministers to one another. However, not all of that can happen organically. Some will be brighter lights of Christ to the others. Some formation has to make those lights brighter and light the candles that haven't yet ignited.

On the foundational level, a certain amount of intentionality has to be put into developing leaders, both formally for retreats and small group facilitation and also for everyday life, for embodying the Gospel. On either level, there's some delicate balance to be struck in giving them the tools to realize their gifts and potential but also in staying out of the way of their forming and upholding one another.

My tendency is to prefer conversation to interview, to push flow of talking rather than prompts and responses. In formation situations involving leadership, I'd hope to just spur conversation around leadership that aims toward the things I'd like them to consider, reflect upon, and learn. But again, there must be care taken to know when the direction is something I have to define or to allow them to feel out some of the path themselves.

I would hope regardless of the style that I would discern well enough the personalities and capacities of the people in order to know what/when to delegate in terms of faith leadership. I would hate to be the leader that delegates only to breathe down the neck of the person and doom them to failure under pressure.

I'd aim to allow them to feel some autonomy in knowing that they share with me and the Church's leaders the sometimes-scary-but-ultimately-incredibly-beautiful opportunity that we have in holding "accountability for the souls" (from TGBL) of our brothers and sisters. If there was a way to communicate that to present the great opportunity therein without absolutely freaking out young people, I'd love to find it and use it.

Is ministry about bringing the faith to people or bringing people to the faith?

It's easy for me to just go with the flow of the mainline Catholic Church because it's what I've basically always believed and practiced. It helps that I've taken increased ownership of the things I've grown accustomed to, but it's much harder for kids who are either fighting it or struggling to take that step of personal agency.

This is one of the reasons I personally believe that confirmation should be moved to the latter half of high school--it allows for maximal personal reflection in that the confirmandi are in the last years before a huge increase in independence and have gleaned a great deal of knowledge and experience, getting increasingly solidified from 2-3 years of high school life. The dilemma of forcing the kid vs. choosing freely endures but differently than with a 12- or 14-year-old.

Anywho, I struggle with stuff life LifeTeen and praise-and-worship-heavy youth ministry. I think the differences faced when teens move into regular worship again are too drastic and jarring, and it segregates the worship that is meant to be universal in the Church. If kids, teens, and adults all celebrate differently, it becomes difficult to bring them all together and allow believers to develop within a united Church. A positive example of distinctive worship occurs across cultures--here, a people celebrate their mass slightly differently than another people might, but each people celebrates their worship across all ages, open to the exchange across cultures in sharing the distinct practices within the Church. The divide between LifeTeen-ish stuff and traditional mass gets too deep and turns into an either-or.

Tilts to celebrating the mass like Praise and Worship music are fine so long as they do not deeply alienate believers. On the other side of it, compromises to the mass that alienate the orthodoxy of the mass cannot be accepted. Some line must to be toed to allow believers to engage the Church and its Tradition in a way that is accessible to them without changing the nature of what it is.

I enjoy the way the Basilica allows for diversity within the Church at Notre Dame: our Liturgical Choir sings a more traditional, higher mass at 10am, using organ exclusively and repertoire that is more classical, with things like Latin texts; our Folk Choir sings a more contemporary mass at 11:45am with more diverse instrumentation and song styles. Both groups are deeply informed theologically and catechetically in their music selection and ministry. Both masses have a loyal, if distinct congregation. But most importantly, both masses rest on the Church's Tradition, and both are accessible to any Catholic.

The mass has been carefully constructed through 2000 years, based on local custom, close reading of Scripture, the directives of Christ, and the guidance of the bishops. We should trust strongly in the believers that came before us, and the Church under the Spirit's guidance. Extraliturgical services should be assembled with an eye to the already existing mass norms and sacraments so as to be a complement to them or perhaps be discussions that gesture toward the sacraments.

Dean & Foster put the overall dilemma plain and simple for ministers:

"If we were more sensible of conditions--if we had a clue--we would not hesitate to send youth out to carry God's salvation into the world, and to be unashamedly and unapologetically Christian about it. Instead, we are cautious evangelists. We respect pluralism. We recoil from cramming our faith down someone's throat. We believe in human freedom. We want to be liked. Because we hope youth will chart their own course, we allude to faith more than we proclaim it. Yet behind these honorable reasons for Christian reticence lurks a more dastardly one [and this is where they get ya]: Our reputations as reasonable people are on the line."

The trap that ecumenism is increasingly laying is for Christianity to get genericized and watered-down into something everyone can swallow easily and together. Catholicism is not about invalidating other traditions, but it is about upholding its own tradition strongly. We must educate each other across faiths. Within our own churches, we need to bring people to the faith. Not through stream-lined and flimsy-ized masses but through well-informed catechesis, sharing the existing faith, and finding people's access points to the standing Church rather than creating a new or fake one.

[Part 2 to follow...]