Bucking a trend, these churches figured out how to bring millennials back to worship

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Clare said:
I don’t think if it was at someones house I would want to go, especially if I didn’t know the person that was hosting it.
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This is both a blessing and a curse. The group use to meet at a parish, but then it gets known as the young adult group for that parish. If I go to the other parish, then what do I do? So we operate at the deanery level - a combination of parishes with support from nearly all the parishes and pastors in the area.

The problem is that, at least for our deanery, there is no facility - there’s no gathering place. Rotating parishes for the main meeting would simply be confusing. So we use a house. One of the major things that allows their house to perform better than a parish hall is that houses are comfortable. Parish halls don’t have that comfort level - they’re utilitarian in nature; plastic chairs and tables, concrete slab floors, etc. A home will have couches, dining tables, a kitchen with a fridge, etc. Not every home is equal to another, but it’s easier to feel at home when your in a comfortable home. One other point worth considering is that a house allows to feel like your leaving the public square. When your at the parish hall, it’s not private. Although anyone and everyone is welcome, a house feels more private.

Of course, getting past the initial hesitation is the hardest, as people do assume we’re not connected with the Church since we’re meeting at the house. I make it clear that our pastor entirely supports and endorses our group when I have that conversation. That tends to help. Although, suggesting to meet at a social event where we meet in a public place may also work, such as when we go to a coffee house to do our weekly Sunday readings study.
 
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I’m guess your parishes are quite close together then? That wouldn’t work here, it’s too spread out, it would have to be either at the church in the parish room or someone’s house in each parish.
 
That does sound pretty cool, I think having that range of people would make everyone more likely to feel included.
 
I think this must be regional. It could be easier for a city to have interconected parishes maybe. I also get the impression that virtually everyone in the US drives from their late teens unless they have a disability that prevents it which would make combining parishes or even a whole diocese to bring young adults together feasible.

This isn’t so much the case in UK where a lot of my friends felt they had to wait until they were 25 (much cheaper insurance) before they could get cars and others have an expensive public transport commute to places like London and can’t afford the additional expense. I have seen attempts to bring young adults together in this way but they struggle for this reason.
 
Yeah I think in the UK as well we are less willing to travel far especially for an hour in the evening, or me it’s about 45 minutes, maybe an hour to the city but I don’t know anyone around here that would do that trip for a young adult meet up. It’s hard enough just to get people to go to the next town over for things!
 
In my experience the traffic in the evening here us almost always awful and it’s the last thing you want to do after sitting in traffic getting home from work. If you don’t have a car the public transport probably isn’t going to be good enough to get you to various locations in the evening.
 
Oh no there’s no chance of getting anywhere by public transport in the evenings, the buses here stop at 8pm and we don’t have a train station! Plus in winter when its dark those with cars don’t necessarily want to drive especially on motorways.

I guess it’s one of those things where rural parishes will always find it harder than city ones, and we are always going to have to face these issues.
 
Agree, when we were single we never cut off our friends because they married (I take that back, one friend of ours actually sat his single friends down during the wedding reception and told them “this is it, the end of our friendship” and that was very strange!)

When we married, and still decades into marriage we have friends who are single and who are married. I really don’t get the concept of having friends from only ONE column of the spreadsheet.
 
If you live rurally you are lucky to have an accessible parish at all. I’m feeling guilty as I’m spending Christmas at my in laws and won’t be able to access a mass as the little Catholic congregation near them stopped being served. It must be very hard to be a rural Catholic these days.

I agree it’s very sad when people marry or even just enter a relationship and stop making time for friends.

Some congregations are inevitably going to leave young adults out and I wonder if we need to be more honest about this. Maybe during confirmation prep we should warn them that they may well need to practice their faith alone one day. I also wish there wasn’t such pressure to find Catholic sponsors when some may not have anyone.
 
Yeah we are basically only going because we’ve become a dual parish, paying the other for use of the priest! It does make Holy Days difficult as often there’s only Mass in the other parish. I’m lucky in that I do drive so can travel to Mass when I am able to, but the other parish is very much geared to the retirement age, so it’s rare I can get to any over there.
 
Yes, I just doubled check, and I can get to every one of our 5 parishes in my area within 7.5 miles/20 minutes, with my parish being only 7 minutes away. It’s a blessing that we have as many parishes that we do.
 
ConfusedLucy said:
I also wish there wasn’t such pressure to find Catholic sponsors when some may not have anyone.
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I don’t have any Catholic family, so for me I had to ask a parishioner to be my sponsor. I think however if young people aren’t able to feel that they are welcome within the parish that would be a lot harder.
 
Wow, I really appreciate your replies! It sounds like what your group has done has really worked for you. I’m so glad for that a lot of what you describe is what I had been wanting to find in a young adult group when I was single. That’s great!

Maybe eventually we will get something started here… 🙂
 
ConfusedLucy said:
If you live rurally you are lucky to have an accessible parish at all. I’m feeling guilty as I’m spending Christmas at my in laws and won’t be able to access a mass as the little Catholic congregation near them stopped being served. It must be very hard to be a rural Catholic these days.

I agree it’s very sad when people marry or even just enter a relationship and stop making time for friends.

Some congregations are inevitably going to leave young adults out and I wonder if we need to be more honest about this. Maybe during confirmation prep we should warn them that they may well need to practice their faith alone one day. I also wish there wasn’t such pressure to find Catholic sponsors when some may not have anyone.
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I am originally from a rural area, and my parents still live there. Our diocese is also in the midst of making some changes with the rural parishes that have some people upset. It’s hard when the priest and diocese decide to take away Saturday night Mass if that’s the only one you ever went to growing up, forcing you to go Sunday morning or to a neighboring town. 🤷‍♀️ Hard to get the few young people there are to be involved when things are in the process of change and adjustment.
 
Obviously the diocese has to do what they can with the resources they have and you can’t please everyone. I do feel bad for these older folk who have probably been committed Catholics all their lives and don’t have anyone to take them to mass.

I wonder if young adults (along with most people) are attracted to what’s thriving and dynamic and instinctively want to avoid something visibly struggling.
 
I would agree, I know several young Christians (non Catholic) that have joined or at least attended these new churches that have bands and do a lot of modern songs.

I think a lot of young people want to be accepted but also want to experiment, where that be with clothing and hairstyles or other things, and they may feel that if they have pink hair or whatever they can’t attend Mass.
 
Your right with your first answer it is not a service it is a sacrifice everytime we go to Mass so why would someone want to be feed else where to. Protestants are our brothers and sisters in Christ but I use to go to a Baptist Church years ago and the preacher would preach on no purgatory and how Mary was a special person but had sin on her soul and they would pass out these crackers and juice for the Lord’s supper one time every month. And say it’s a symbol. We have the real thing every day. So why would a Catholic want to go hear a Protestant preacher, peach against Catholic doctrine. God bless
 
I think it’s fair to say many of these congregations have advantages for young adults. When visiting my husband back when we were long distance and attending services with him it was so nice to be able to worship with people my age, have people to talk to and get together for food after church. I’ve never had this at a Catholic parish and while the Eucharist is more important I do miss the fellowship.
 
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