Parish Dos and Don'ts from Millennials

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tafan2 said:
But sticking our head in the sand and doing nothing, as you seem to support, isn’t working out too well.
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That’s a little unfair, don’t you think? Saying “I’m not sure that this solution is the silver bullet” isn’t the same as saying “I don’t think we should do anything at all”… 😉
victrolatim said:
A half hour before Saturday Mass is not sufficient. One evening a week would be helpful.
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The “half-an-hour prior to Saturday’s anticipated Mass” is something that doesn’t sit well with me, either, but you’ve got to admit: it is a convenient time for folks. After all, if they are able to get to Mass, they’re able to go five minutes early and go to confession. And they don’t. (Well, at least, in my experience, not to any great extent.)

In my current parish, we offer one weekday evening and one Saturday morning. On the times I’ve been there, I haven’t seen more than six people, and there have been times that I’m the only one there.

I get it that folks want to say “build it and they will come”… but that’s not really true. As some have said, we have to build the culture that appreciates the sacraments and longs for them. Talking about confession from the pulpit might help a little, but not if confession has become a foreign subject to some folks. So… how do we change the culture? That’s the silver bullet we’re looking for, I’m afraid…
 
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LawyersGunsAndMoney said:
Keep in mind that younger people are more likely to have small children they’re trying to cook breakfast for/get ready for school. Not to mention the horrendous commuting a lot of people do. Arriving at work at 830 doesn’t mean you leave at 815 for a lot of people.
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Yeah, in order to get to work at 9am reliably, I leave the house at 7:45. I’m in the DC area, so that’s really common.
 
Well, it might be a little unfair, but that’s just the impression I get from nit picking and/or taking exception to ideas that have worked elsewhere.

Obviously your parish’s experience is different with regards to confession times as the ones around my area. I am claiming no silver bullet, just what I have personally witnessed in my area.

Perhaps one isolated parish offering in an area doesn’t work as well. Perhaps it is cultural, parishes around here are extremely diverse ethically, we have lots of Vietnamese, Filipinos, Latinos, Africans, etc. All if which are traditionally more devout than white American Catholics, but it does seem to rub off quite a bit. I have family in the Midwest, and there is a huge and noticable difference in level of devoutness between here and there. Indeed, the Catholic Church that is even open during the day for visitations seems to be almost the exception there. Here it is the norm, except in a couple of parishes that are in the wealthier parts of town.

But, unless we get people back to the sacraments, and back to various daily devotions, and back to adoration, it’s hard to see how things get better.
 
It seems I have caused the thread to surve somewhat, I ask the thread people (including OP and Bear) for remission.
 
There are two churches that I know of in my greater area that are mainly school districts with a church inserted in there somewhere with the school buildings, very hard to find. They don’t attract me, since they really stress the school things that are not my interests.

I attend my local church, which is overloaded with those old fossils that so many people are complaining about “hanging on” (not knowing when to check out?). I and the other oldies love the place.

So, I had a thought, Gorgias, and I wonder if maybe we’d be in agreement here. Is it so bad to have an overload of seniors in one church, and an overload of young families in the next church up the street? Couldn’t we approach it in a “let the market decide” sort of way? People could simply attend church where they feel the most comfortable and the most welcome. Is it so awful if one church is full of old people and another church is youth-oriented?

I think it’s really attitudes that are the problem, not times. If you want to go to church bad enough, you’ll get yourself there.

Time constraints here. Just, my thought. An “invisible hand” solution. Left alone, it will work itself out.
 
One thing I get sick and tired of hearing about is how to make things more user-friendly for millennials.
You are going to Church to worship God at Mass. If you think that is important, work your schedule around the schedule for Masses and other Church events.
Same goes with everything else having to do with the Catholic Church.
 
JoeShlabotnik said:
If you think that is important, work your schedule around the schedule for Masses and other Church events.
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I think this is exactly what people object to. Many of us ended up in low-level jobs. “Work your schedule around the schedule for church events” basically means " find a 9-5 M-F job where there’s affordable housing close by." That’s not something we can simply snap our fingers and do (and when we try for it we get called entitled for it too!). We’re trying to hold down jobs and pay our bills, not running off to sports games instead, and a lot of times those jobs would quickly fire us for someone more available if we tried too hard to fit in church activities past Mass once a week.
 
Amen to this.

I’m very firmly GenX and have felt many of these same things since '00.

I joke with my wife about my battle with the retirees for the mid morning confession spot near my Church. I have to get there an hour prior to confession in order to be able to get a line because the retirees with no job can arrive that early LOL.

She felt excluded because the ‘Catholic Mom’s’ group only met during work hours. I guess you don’t get to be a Catholic Mom if you work?
 
JoeShlabotnik said:
You are going to Church to worship God at Mass. If you think that is important, work your schedule around the schedule for Masses and other Church events.
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You remind me of a friend of ours, a stay at home mom of teenagers, who complains about one of the local daily masses being only 20 minutes long (including communion). Nothing is rushed, but most if the options are left out. It’s has an great attendance, but it drives her crazy.
The Church has structured the mass so that is can be very short. There is a reason for this. Why make it hard in people? Why make them choose between work and mass anymore than us needed. We live in a world where we have to work.
 
I think this is why daily mass is not required; the church understands that we also have to do mundane things like earn a living, go grocery shopping, gas up the car, go the dentist, etc. If you can get to daily mass, great, but if you can’t, no one should hold it against you.
 
Of course not hold it against anyone, but if you are saying that it really doesn’t matter how convenient things like daily mass and confession are for people, because it’s not required anyway, I take great exception to that attitude. Note, I don’t think you are, but it almost seems that us the attitude of many.
 
Peeps said:
My daughter has stopped going to Mass. In the two years that she was attending, no one reached out to her in spite of her many many heroic efforts to get involved, make friends, join groups, volunteer to help, etc. No one even called her when she invited them to attend a play that she was working on and thought Catholics would be interested in.
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You speak often of your daughter who works in the theatre.

I would hope she has checked out the Actor’s Chapel:

https://actorschapel.org/
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Do your fellow parishioners know your husband is sick? When someone from daily Mass or my prayer groups is hospitalized, many people ask after them, send cards or visit. Usually someone needs to broadcast the news though. Catholics aren’t as uncaring as the picture you’re painting, and millennials are no more lonely than the last 3 generations of young people before them.
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This. The parish does not know someone is in the hospital or ill unless the person/their family lets the office know.
 
It didn’t bother me. (Shrug).
LawyersGunsAndMoney said:
I think this is why daily mass is not required; the church understands that we also have to do mundane things like earn a living, go grocery shopping, gas up the car, go the dentist, etc. If you can get to daily mass, great, but if you can’t, no one should hold it against you.
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That’s very true.

A lot of us are trying to enrich our faith and would love to do so through daily Mass and frequent Adoration.

Those of us already deeply involved in the faith can find creative ways to supplement, e.g. I’ll sometimes listen to a Scott Hahn CD in my car while running errands.

But to attract and engage neophytes, millennial or otherwise, it would benefit parishes to offer the more flexible scheduling.
 
I’m not a millennial, however did you know, 50+ years ago, it was NOT uncommon for some parishes to have a Sunday Mass very early in the morning.

I’m talking 1AM, 2AM, 3AM, 4AM, or 5AM to accommodate people who worked 3rd shifts and/or started very early on Sundays. The Catholics working in the Newspaper industry were a huge example of this.

These Mass times were convenient for people who were on their way home or to work.

So it’s not like the Church never accommodated work schedules before.
 
Yes, my mother was a nurse, and she always talked about Sunday shits starting at 7:0am so they would go to Sunday mass at 5:00 am in the 50s. It was very difficult to keep the communion fast through the end of the shift and attend mass after the shift.
I believe when she worked at a Catholic hospital, they had a daily mass that would fit before the 7:00am shift, but I will have to ask her to make sure this is accurate.
 
And everyone else isn’t working hard at their jobs?
Going to Mass is not like going to a vending machine and putting in a couple of dollars at your convenience.
 
JoeShlabotnik said:
And everyone else isn’t working hard at their jobs?
Going to Mass is not like going to a vending machine and putting in a couple of dollars at your convenience.
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Workers who have been in the workforce longer, or who entered under better economic conditions, are far more likely to be in a position to have a lot more flexibility to their schedule at their job, or to be able to find another job more easily. Younger workers are more likely to be in the position of “take the shift we assign you or you’re fired.” They also are more likely to have to live farther away due to costs and not making as much money. Plus, as has been mentioned upthread, a lot of times church events outside of Sunday Mass are attended almost entirely by retirees.

I would like to know what world you live in where being able to pay your rent and eat is a convenience.
 
No, but it should be possible, if one does not have kids, to make an early mass before work starts at 8:00 am. Or a mass over lunch break, or perhaps at 530 or 6 on the way home.

Do you go to daily mass ever? How much do you personally have to work your schedule around mass? Me, I have little flexibility most days. 630am works normally. And a 600pm mass nearby works at times. But most of the time, the 8am, 830am, and 9am masses close by, I cannot work my schedule around.
 
Yeah

Just because one does not need to worry about job issues does not mean no else does.
 
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