Groups for Young Adult Catholics 18-30?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Melodeonist
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I think a mixed group can work, what’s more awkward is when you have a group all at the same life stage and you are the odd one out.
 
ConfusedLucy said:
I don’t like how young people are over protected and age segregated (I will also readily admit I was a tad spoiled by the community at my university parish) but I don’t know how we best convince these young adults to stick with parishes where they feel they don’t belong.
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Sometimes it can be the opposite too. I’ve had some adult groups where I felt very much like I was a child being indulged by the grown-ups.
 
Great response. I know in my experience once you aged out of all the Youth group age stuff you were largely left alone. There were no groups or organizations for that age group. Eventually I went ahead and joined the older aged groups whose members were largely 50+ and still enjoyed it and they liked having me. However now that I have young children and work shift hours I am unable to do pretty much anything. The groups want to go do some kind of charity work and we got the baby so can’t go. Our parish has started some family adoration blocks where small children or accepted so that’s a great start, but I would love to see more family events such as monthly potlucks etc…
 
One thing that always made me uncomfortable was how the older adults didn’t know whether to treat me like an adult or a teenager.
 
I still like my idea of connecting women with children and roughly same-aged single women. As a single woman, I tend to have more time but have a hard time making connections. And I’ve been told many a stay at home mother would love to have someone show up, fix hot chocolate, and have a grown-up conversation.

Coming up rapidly on 30, though, I have honestly ceased to consider myself a young adult.
 
I’ve often been a bit :roll_eyes: at older adults pretending to be younger adults and now I’m 30 I can say that without feeling like a jerk.
 
Well, Toddlers are taught stranger danger so they won’t just go with any adult who tries to get them to go somewhere with them, but parents usually change the education as the child ages, so that hopefully by the time they are adults, the understand that not all strangers are out to get them, rather that they should be naturally cautious.
 
I don’t think anyone intended to keep kids and adults apart I just think there are loads of factors (stranger danger, extended families living apart, frequent moves so you don’t get to know neighbours, kids not being allowed to play out, people spending longer in education) that have led to young people growing up age segregated and it can be a huge step out of a young adults comfort zone to join a group where everyone is a lot older.

It also doesn’t help that a lot of parishes struggle with fellowship in general.
 
This does require there being other young adults in the parish though, where I am it would have to be several parishes together to get a group of young adults.
 
Melodeonist said:
Parishes (at least in my area) seem to exclude young adults group wise. So we got youth groups that are exclusively for high school kids, groups for seniors, groups for men and women (mostly old folks), but nothing for young adults. Why is this?
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Around me, Young Adults fall into one of 3 categories (plus the general group of adult - 18 to 100+)
  1. 18 to 20 (or 21) - college aged groups which most parishes do not support unless they have a college ministry because they the parish church for a college campus.
  2. 21 to 30 (or 39) - young adult groups are OFTEN on a diocese or regional basis. Some parishes do have young adult groups, however, most are on regional or diocesan level. The reason why the young age is often 21 is because many of these groups like to occasionally have an event called Theology on Tap which is an event where young adults come to discuss God, talk, socialize, get to know one another, etc. So drinks are often involved.
  3. 18 or 21 to 30 (or 39) - young adult groups at the parish. If a parish has enough young adults, then a parish will have their own young adult group. Otherwise, they will often defer to the diocesan or regional group.
I pray this helps.
 
Diocese level groups can be tricky, I’ve tried these and it’s hard to bring people together over a large area to form a regular group.
 
I see that you live in Connecticut.

Check out Catholic Underground Connecticut - http://www.catholicundergroundct.com/

Catholic Fellowship of Connecticut - https://www.meetup.com/The-Catholic-Fellowship-of-Connecticut/?_cookie-check=TzyOhvh_SFQWsrnp

Another example in CT is that St. Theresa Parish in Trumbull is the host site for a young adult’s group for young adults from St. Theresa’s, St. Pius X in Fairfield and St. Anne’s in Bridgeport parishes. So the three parishes share one Young Adult group.

I pray this helps.

God bless
 
ConfusedLucy said:
Diocese level groups can be tricky, I’ve tried these and it’s hard to bring people together over a large area to form a regular group.
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Depends on the Diocese. If you live in a small geographic diocese like the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, then no problem. If you live in a large geographic one, then yeah, very hard.

But that’s why many are on a regional level, which means they support x number of area parishes or a county or city.
 
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True, some parishes will be more interconnected than others and this might work better. I think my diocese is too spread out and also traffic is really bad in the evening which makes travelling outside the parish difficult.
 
ConfusedLucy said:
True, some parishes will be more interconnected than others and this might work better. I think my diocese is too spread out and also traffic is really bad in the evening which makes travelling outside the parish difficult.
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There are also regional ones established without parish or diocese involvement. Just like we used to have Catholic bowling leagues, there’s no reason why young adults can’t get together can establish a Theology on Tap or Catholic Underground group in their areas (without direct Church involvement)
 
But I think it’s fair to say you need a decent number of people in a reasonably small area. It’s no different to starting any other kind of group really.
 
ConfusedLucy said:
But I think it’s fair to say you need a decent number of people in a reasonably small area. It’s no different to starting any other kind of group really.
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Agreed. And a “reasonably small area” can change depending distance, traffic, etc.

Also, there are many Young Adult Groups in downtown areas too in the major cities which meet after work. So they don’t always have to meet where people live, but can meet around major areas of employment.

God bless
 
It’s probably better for young adults to stick to more urban areas if they can.
 
Which is not good for those of us that live out in the country! I just checked my Archdiocese website, can’t see anything on it for young adults, and it’s not looking good on the next nearest diocese either!
 
Blockquote ConfusedLucy3m
It’s probably better for young adults to stick to more urban areas if they can.
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This. If you’re in a college town there’s the Newman center, but speaking from personal experience, rural areas and suburbs are dead zones for any sort of young adult ministry. Cities are better but the young adult groups will cluster to specific parishes.
 
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