The Death of the Youth Group

By Nolan Reynolds
October 13, 2009

When I was in 7th grade my mother went through a phase of encouraging me to join the youth group at our local parish. Now I was no stranger to church. After all, my parents had been dragging me there every Sunday for as long as I could remember. Still, the idea of wasting a Friday night in the parish hall with a bunch of strange kids and adults my parents’ age did not excite me. I told my mom I didn’t want to go, and I was pretty adamant about it.

    “But they play basketball there, and they eat pizza,” she explained.

As with many middle school boys, playing basketball and eating pizza were two of my favorite activities. So, for approximately 30 seconds, I considered looking into this youth group thing based on that last minute bait Mom had so desperately cast out to me. Then I came to my senses.

    “I can play basketball anytime. We have a hoop outside. And Friday is family pizza day anyway.”

My smarmy response may have merited a slap to the face, but my analysis was dead on. The truth was youth group had nothing to offer me. I had friends, so I wasn’t looking for a place to meet new people. Weekend entertainment? I had that too - in a formulaic pattern of movies, trips to the mall, bike rides and sleepover parties. The parish’s pitch of basketball and pizza was just all too ordinary, and it wasn’t going to break me out of my routine. 

For years a Catholic parish could reach out to its resident teenagers by gathering them in a single group for prayer, fellowship, discussion, and social activity. Yet, somewhere along the line this medium became terribly stale. As Mass attendance dropped and people fell away from the church, so did their children. The world around them became more attractive, more exciting, and much more like “home.” Teenagers found other ways to fill their time and other places to do so.

To this day, however, many parishes still employ the youth group format and are in disbelief when only 5 or 6 kids show up. They make their annual pitch, hijacking the weekend Masses to speak to the congregation about what the youth is doing. They craft a beautiful page in the bulletin describing all the fun non-group members have been missing out on. And they send a neon green flyer to every kid in the Religious Education program inviting them to the first meeting of the year. Then they wait for the flood of kids to come pouring through the gym doors. The problem is, the only teens at Mass were the 5 or 6 “youth groupers” from last year; Grandma reads the bulletin but she’s a little bit past the age-range to sign up; and those who weren’t blinded by the neon flyer gave it a quick glance and tossed it. They have plans for Friday night.
Some youth leaders have chosen to suffer, setting themselves up year after year for disappointment. Others have beat the “quality, not quantity” mantra into their heads and are satisfied with the small, stress-free group. Still, others are burned out, fed up, and decide to just walk away. None of these responses do anything to help the ones that matter – the teenagers.

My parish has about 1300 registered 7th-12th graders. Neither I nor anyone else on the youth ministry team knows a quarter of them. That’s a very serious concern. There are thousands of baptized and confirmed Catholic kids out there living in our parish communities who haven’t set foot in the church, or any of its property, since they received the Holy Spirit on one of those two occasions. They’re wild, confused, and bombarded by the media of a morally-challenged secular culture seeking to pry any sense of religion from the world. And the parish’s remedy – youth group – is no longer effective.

Within that range of registered parish teens are multiple levels of maturity and spirituality. Each kid comes from a different home with unique experiences and perspectives. They have their own interests, hobbies, and opinions on life. What is the same however, about every young person, is their need and desire to be loved. The Christian knows that this yearning is from God, as He is the greatest source of love; the only one who can truly satisfy us. Youth group assumes that teenagers already know this, but generations have gone by looking for God in all the wrong places.

What I propose is that we follow Christ’s example of going out to reach the people where they are. We have to stop assuming that teenagers are looking for us and challenge ourselves to enter into the dens of sinners. If we really do care about them, we must start acting like it. We must go out, find them, and invite them personally to follow us. There isn’t a youth minister on the planet that has the charisma and presence of Our Lord, but we would all be pleasantly surprised by the reactions of teens if we began to show even the slightest interest in their lives.

In this column, I look forward to discussing ways to reach out to this seemingly lost generation. I would like to bring to the table ideas that embrace what Pope John Paul II called the “new evangelization.” I hope to offer an understanding of youth ministry that is comprehensive, exciting, and whole-heartedly dedicated to re-introducing teenagers to Jesus Christ and the goldmine that is the Catholic Church.

And we might just find some extra time for basketball and pizza.

Mr. Reynold's next article will appear January 1st.

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