What if your pastor announced that from now on all altar servers will be adults?

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Upon seeing various forms of undesirable behavior from both boy and girl altar servers, your pastor thinks this is not an effect of sex but of maturity. He decides that from now on all altar servers will be adults. Discussion?
 
Leopard said:
Upon seeing various forms of undesirable behavior from both boy and girl altar servers, your pastor thinks this is not an effect of sex but of maturity. He decides that from now on all altar servers will be adults. Discussion?
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Maturity is no guarantee against immaturity.
 
I would hope that any pastor who did that would have a plan to recruit and train adults for the service.

The real advantage to such a programme would be to reduce the amount of recruiting and training of altar servers in the future. Adults would presumably be able to serve indefinitely.

If a church has no problems in recruiting readers, EMHC’s and ushers, there should be no problem in opening up altar service to the adults as well. The priest should easily be able to determine the plan’s viability.
 
since this thread no matter what the title promises to be a rehash of the same debate on the other two altar server threads, I will only add that under this pastor this parish has never had girls as altar servers, and for the last 3 years there have been at least two male adult servers for the busiest Masses (including our deacon candidates, but also some of the others who have completed the diocesan training).

Our pastor just does not announce a decision from the pulpit at implement it. He studies the issue, meets with parish council and those concerned, such as the Mass coordinators and Eucharistic ministers and deacons, discusses the issue, presents his idea, hears discussion and disagreement, comes up with a plan for implementation including educating the parish on the change and the reason for it, and training those involved in the new practice, and then puts it in place. We don’t get those little surprises here because that is not his style.
 
There are parishes in this area without schools who use adults all the time for daily Mass/funerals.
Good luck getting crews together in my parish.
 
In some cases it might not be a bad idea. This Sunday will be the fourth Sunday of the month. The first 3 I have attended this month have been impeccably served by adults.

This Sunday however we will be treated to a brother and sister duo who would rather not be there. He will wear shorts and loud sneakers under his alb. She will be preoccupied with her hair. They will both stand and sit vacant-eyed with no idea what to do. They will sit-down during the consecration and likely forget the lavabo altogether. We’ll be lucky if they remember to set-up the altar.

Neither they nor their parents are open to any (name removed by moderator)ut or training. It shouldn’t matter at this point anyway – they have been serving for 2-3 years and should have enough real experience to do things right.
 
Hmmmm…

Well, if we are still expecting altar servers (boys) to be influenced to a priestly vocation by serving, than there seems to be no good reason to recruit married men to serve–unless your parish/diocese is looking for an increase in vocations to the prementant deaconate. Now older boys/young men (say high school and up), I could see because they are more likey to behave themselves than 4th graders and still have a potential for vocations.

If your adults are the same husband/wife teams who act as ushers, lectors and EMHCs, than perhaps you have more capable servers, but you still don’t have vocation potentials. And women at the altar should have the same problems as girls at the altar (aside from the example of a nun’s funeral recently given).
 
My parish asks an adult to serve if no children are available. The nice thing is that any adult who pays attention to Mass already knows what to do without any training. In my mother’s old parish which was closed last month due to lack of parishioners, the deacon’s wife was the altar server for about 5 years because there was no school and no children at all. I prefer boys serving Mass, but have noticed that when boys or girls serve, they look like bored waiters/waitresses. The kids never even open their mouths to respond to the prayers. When adults serve, they actually respond to the prayers.
 
In our parish, we use adult servers for daily and funeral masses, but children for all weekend and holy day masses.

I coordinate the young servers for my parish, and am a bug on training, and scheduling new servers with more experienced servers. In fact, I took over this job for exactly that reason - my son became a server and never received any guidance or training. So I wrote a manual based on the GIRM (not much there for servers, actually) and insist that my servers learn the parts of the mass, and why their participation in it is so important.

I grew up in the age of felt-banner catechesis, and learned my faith serving at the altar from a dedicated young priest who took us in hand and taught us not just the rubrics, but what they symbolized, and why they are important. It was one of the most important experiences of my life, and I am dedicated to giving that same experience to the children in my parish.

In fact, I have a training session tonight (and last night) for the new servers we gained at “sign-up Sunday” a few weeks ago. Within a month these young kids will be on the schedule and serving at the altar of the Lord, just a few feet from the greatest miracle ever known. And they will know and understand it, and be proud to participate in it.
 
Leopard said:
Upon seeing various forms of undesirable behavior from both boy and girl altar servers, your pastor thinks this is not an effect of sex but of maturity. He decides that from now on all altar servers will be adults. Discussion?
Click to expand...
Men do serve occasionally at my parish if servers don’t show up but adult women are not allowed by my bishop. If the pastor decided to switch to adults I wouldn’t mind. I only hope he’d go a step further and start instituting properly trained and discerning men as acolytes
 
Our previous chaplain at our military hospital chaplain lamented that all his altar boys (yes, just boys, never had girls) all stop serving once they reach the age of 18… which, he told us, is the age at which they are allowed to BEGIN serving at St. Peter’s Basilica!

His dream was to have four altar boys for every Mass. Right now, the current chaplain has just my son. But this chapel community doesn’t have a lot of young families attending Mass there, so they’re very fortunate to have ONE and my son LOVES serving Mass, since he gets to wear a cassock and surplice at the chapel… something we never see anyplace else around here (my son can’t stand having to wear the white alb, which he did when he once helped out at another church–“I look like the ‘flying monk’, Mom!”)
 
I grew up with a dad who was an altar server regularly from the age of 12 to the age of 40 around the time that I was born. He started again on weekdays after he retired. Adult altar servers seem perfectly normal to me.

In my present parish we can rarely count on having a kid altar server present even at Sunday Mass so adults will serve if no kid is there to do so.
 
I think we have altar servers at my parish. We do not have servers at the Mass my wife and I ususally attend.

If the pastor making unsolicited pronouncements bothers you, hold new auditions.

John
 
I think it would be kind of sad in a way. It’s both sad that the youth in your parish aren’t taking their responsibilities seriously and also that there won’t be the opportunity for the boys in your parish to feel the call to the priesthood by serving at Mass.

I kind of like the way the priest at my parish always takes the time to thank all of the many altar servers (usually 5 to 8 per Mass) for their dedication. He knows and acknowledges them all by name, occassionally inviting individual boys to consider a vocation.
 
I think it’s a great idea.

One church I know of had the Fathers acting as altar servers with their sons.
 
What if your pastor announced that from now on all altar servers will be adults?
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I would sign up to serve.

( Actually, I just did, our parish is starting a Mass in the Extraordinary Form, I volunteered to serve until a regular complemnt of boys are fully trained.)
 
I wish. I’m 61, converted and was confirmed in '05, which means I never had a chance to be an altar boy.
 
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