Set up communication with pastor: This step is absolutely essential for being “on the same page” but also for peace of mind. So many conflicts are rooted in miscommunication and varying levels of expectations. Consider this: if you can establish a weekly method of communication, you will eliminate any areas of gray hopes or confused lines of expectations. This can be accomplished rather easily through any of the following: a weekly memo, a weekly meeting or sit-down, a weekly email covering events of the last week and what you hope to accomplish the following week, or some other method that you might design with your pastor. If you have his support and can establish a good line of communication, even if you’re not seeing results, you will still feel OK about it and about yourself.
Contact the diocesan office: by doing this, you are setting up a nice “thread of accountability” which is vital to healthy youth ministry. The chancery office will get to know you and visa versa. You can articulate your needs and find out about training opportunities as well as diocesan-wide events that you might want to plug into. This step also builds important rapport with key contacts so that when you leave your parish (it will happen some day), you have an advocate and person who can help you find other places of employment.
Invite key students into your program: though you will have to do a more broad invitation eventually, this step ensures that you will have a good foundation or base of quality, faith-filled students. Remember, you don’t want a shaky foundation and so that means you must ask around, “who are the kids you would recommend I recruit for this ministry?” Once you have a list of 10-12 students, go after them. Take them out to eat, visit their homes and show them that you care. Never forget the saying, “I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care.” Let them buy into your vision of youth ministry and ask them for their feedback.
Meet with parents: great youth ministers have a unique skill of building key connections with parents, earning trust and valuable resources. Therefore, a new youth minister must work hard to develop the lines of communication and threads of trust. Youth ministry expert and mentor Art Canales recommends having a “parents meeting” within a few weeks of your arrival in the parish. Hold two separate meetings at different times so that folks who work can still meet you after hours. This meeting is crucial and holds a heavy weight because first impressions may be your entry point to earning their trust and time with their kids. Be prepared – I can’t emphasize this enough. Consider that many laypeople have an impression that parish staff persons are just glorified volunteers. Win them over. Be organized. End on time. Gather their feedback. Let them speak their minds. Then, follow it up with a note or letter, acknowledging that they have been heard.
Recruit adult volunteers: adding an adult volunteer team to your ministry will keep you sane and bring a whole new life to your program. Usually, single folks or couples who do not yet have children work best if not simply for their availability and schedule. If you have a strategic plan which is typed out and in your head, your interest and effort in selling the program may win them over and help them to sign on. Always be sure that you communicate that their commitment is for a year at a time. Make it formal, with a form that the pastor will eventually see. Do what you can to ensure that each volunteer has no criminal past. That would undermine much of what you are creating and may put kids at risk. Be up front with them about their need for going to weekly Mass and being role models for the kids. You will quickly find out which adults are really into ministry and reaching kids for Christ. For those less than committed, give them a lesser role and develop whatever gifts they do have.
(Michael K. St. Pierre is a teacher of theology at Oratory Prep School in Summit, NJ, and co-founder of CatholicVentures.com.)
