What will make more younger people come to mass?

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Maybe I’m reading too much into everyone’s posts, but it seems to me that almost everyone is basically expressing the same desires for themselves and for our children in terms of a need to instill a deep spiritual life. I think everyone agrees that “action speaks louder than words”. I remember being taught as a child in Catholic school and at home that simple actions in our every day life witnesses the love of God and of Christianity better than anything else.

So, living a spiritual and faith-filled life, plus having a deep reverence for the mass, showing how important it is and how it helps make you a better person in everyday life, plus proper cathechesis all make for a person filled with and growing with spiritual depth and love. One’s spirituality is very important. I know plenty of deeply spiritual people of other faiths - Christian and non-Christian. But we also need the other aspects to be"Catholic".

It starts with the parents/guardians and family, then to the teachers and other spiritual mentors. CCD, as it is now, is a total joke. Take it from someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s and had many friends, including my husband, who went through CCD and felt like they learned nothing. Most of well-meaning mothers who do their best to teach, but they’re not that qualified and most don’t really don’t understand it that well themselves. My dear aunt was one of those. She did her best, but even she admitted that she just didn’t know enough, among other problems with her own catechesis.

So a revamping of CCD and religion classes are important. I personally enjoyed the academic learning of religion and biblical history. But I was also one of those “weird” kids (as my family and friends would call me) who always dug deeper into what I learned, especially if I was interested in it, and incorporated what I learned into trying to make a deeper prayer life for me. So, I do admit that not all kids were like me and may need a different approach, especially if they don’t go to Catholic schools or don’t have parents who are too involved in their spiritual lives.
 
I had a wonderful answer all typed out- but I am debating whether or not to even answer…

Fine- so the Protestants go on and on and on and on about their “personal relationship with Jesus Christ”. Well, guess what? I have one too, and, to top it all off, I receive him Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist.
How did I get this relationship? I didn’t sit around and wait for some person, or the Church, to tell me to read my Bible. I didn’t wait for some pastor to invite me up for an Altar Call. I cultivated it on my own, as other people, and youngins, are going to have to do.

As a wonderful friend of mine pointed out- My generation wants everything GIVEN to them. There is no concept of going out and doing it yourself. How does one cultivate a relationship with a new friend? One goes out and spends time with that new friend. One does not wait for a third party to invite them.

I amend my answer to the OP.
What will make more younger people come to Mass?
A complete and utter overhaul of contemporary society.
 
anniemart said:
ridiculous!! a child is incapable of conceiving even the slightest notion that the mass has reverence? who’s to blame here? the mass as it’s designed or the parents?
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Please don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t say that a child is incapable of that, nor am I arguing for “redesigning” the Mass, I don’t know where you got that idea. But It is definately not ridiculous to say that most young people don’t understand the Mass, and don’t have any reverence for it. I play music for the Church, and our PSR Mass (CCD) 3 x a school year it is so obvious that these kids have no sense of the sacred space or what is going on.

The first example being myself…so no, it is not ridiculous. It was actually quite insulting that you called it that because I experienced this first hand.

And the argument here is not about laying blame. We’ve got young people that don’t have good parents, uncatechized folks, for whatever reason.
 
PatienceAndLove said:
I had a wonderful answer all typed out- but I am debating whether or not to even answer…

Fine- so the Protestants go on and on and on and on about their “personal relationship with Jesus Christ”. Well, guess what? I have one too, and, to top it all off, I receive him Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist.
How did I get this relationship? I didn’t sit around and wait for some person, or the Church, to tell me to read my Bible. I didn’t wait for some pastor to invite me up for an Altar Call. I cultivated it on my own, as other people, and youngins, are going to have to do.

As a wonderful friend of mine pointed out- My generation wants everything GIVEN to them. There is no concept of going out and doing it yourself. How does one cultivate a relationship with a new friend? One goes out and spends time with that new friend. One does not wait for a third party to invite them.

I amend my answer to the OP.
What will make more younger people come to Mass?
A complete and utter overhaul of contemporary society.
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:clapping:
 
PatienceAndLove said:
I had a wonderful answer all typed out- but I am debating whether or not to even answer…

Fine- so the Protestants go on and on and on and on about their “personal relationship with Jesus Christ”. Well, guess what? I have one too, and, to top it all off, I receive him Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist.
How did I get this relationship? I didn’t sit around and wait for some person, or the Church, to tell me to read my Bible. I didn’t wait for some pastor to invite me up for an Altar Call. I cultivated it on my own, as other people, and youngins, are going to have to do.

As a wonderful friend of mine pointed out- My generation wants everything GIVEN to them. There is no concept of going out and doing it yourself. How does one cultivate a relationship with a new friend? One goes out and spends time with that new friend. One does not wait for a third party to invite them.

I amend my answer to the OP.
What will make more younger people come to Mass?
A complete and utter overhaul of contemporary society.
Click to expand...
I agree with your final statement, however we don’t live in a perfect world.

How you came to this conclusion bothers me a bit though.

You said :

How did I get this relationship? I didn’t sit around and wait for some person, or the Church, to tell me to read my Bible. I didn’t wait for some pastor to invite me up for an Altar Call. I cultivated it on my own, as other people, and youngins, are going to have to do.

This means you had some sort of intrinisic desire. What about the folks that don’t? The young folks who see no need for God, or don’t believe in sin. They have no reason to long for anything, they don’t know their own need for God.

This flies in the face of missionary work and the basic Christian call of “spreading the Gospel”. If people are just left do it on their own, then what’s the point of preaching? We are all called to evangelize, teach, preach, get the folks to understand their own need for God.
 
PatienceAndLove said:
I had a wonderful answer all typed out- but I am debating whether or not to even answer…

Fine- so the Protestants go on and on and on and on about their “personal relationship with Jesus Christ”. Well, guess what? I have one too, and, to top it all off, I receive him Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist.
How did I get this relationship? I didn’t sit around and wait for some person, or the Church, to tell me to read my Bible. I didn’t wait for some pastor to invite me up for an Altar Call. I cultivated it on my own, as other people, and youngins, are going to have to do.

As a wonderful friend of mine pointed out- My generation wants everything GIVEN to them. There is no concept of going out and doing it yourself. How does one cultivate a relationship with a new friend? One goes out and spends time with that new friend. One does not wait for a third party to invite them.

I amend my answer to the OP.
What will make more younger people come to Mass?
A complete and utter overhaul of contemporary society.
Click to expand...
So, The Holy Spirit played no role whatsoever in your personal relationship with Christ? The Holy Spirit had nothing to do with you wanting to read the Bible? The fact that some person or people (perhaps your parents) introduced you to Christianity had nothing to do with you embracing it? You just had a personal revelation that God played no role in, and no person influenced, and it brought you straight to Jesus? You did it all on your own? That gives you the authority to point fingers of judgment at all those who didn’t have that same personal revelation that was in no way influenced by other people or The Holy Spirit? Do you have any idea how prideful you sound? You need to think outside of your egocentric box and realize that not everyone was GIVEN what you had been GIVEN, both in the divine sense and from human witnesses. You should thank God for all your blessings, rather than use them as a means to act self-righteously superior to others.
 
PatienceAndLove said:
How does one cultivate a relationship with a new friend? One goes out and spends time with that new friend. One does not wait for a third party to invite them.
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But one may need to be invited by one friend who can introduce them to another and help initiate the conversation that yet another friendship with Jesus may develop.
 
I know that very few on this forum will give this response serious consideration because of the source of the data, but here goes anyway.
Dr. A. Greeley has done extensive sociological research into the effectiveness of various methods of getting people into the pews. His research indicates that various programs currently in use and bearing the approval and encouragement of local bishops pale before the most effective tool of all. One program alone is largely resoponsible for high levels of good marriages, devout lives, deep prayer life, weekly attendance at Mass, and much more. That program seems to be falling by the way because of lack of support from bishops and clergy. What was Dr. Greeley looking at? Catholic schools.
If you want young people in the pews, send them to Catholic schools. No other system has been found to work with a fraction of the success of the schools.

Matthew
 
Based on my experience working with teenagers, the first thing you need to do is never, ever say, “When I was a teenager, I…”

That will make them turn up their noses and utterly disregard you.

I’m basing this on personal experience, not on my own opinion.

Now once you get to KNOW them, and they trust you and even love you, THEN you can ask them if they’d like to hear how things were back in the old days!
 
drafdog said:
If you want young people in the pews, send them to Catholic schools. No other system has been found to work with a fraction of the success of the schools.

Matthew
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This may be true. (And I actually do tend to respect the sociological work of Fr. Greeley.)

That said, I don’t believe that Catholic Schools, alone, are getting the job done effectively. Indeed, many catholid school students are precisely the ones who end up most lost to the faith, either after they graduate or even while they are still attending those institutions. So, clearly, they are not getting the job done effectively, may be doing something wrong, and often require support systems to reach out to the young people who attend them in order to more effectively involve them in the life of faith.
 
FrankLawrence said:
What is the Pioneer Club?
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Pioneer Club is a non-denominational Christian club for children ages 3-teen (although most churches offer it for elementary-aged kids only).

It is similiar to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in that you can earn badges. Most of the badges are earned in the club meetings. Badges are for both spiritual things (e.g., memorizing certain passages of Scripture, doing a project to help the poor, etc.) and secular things (e.g., bicycle maintenance and safety, camp-fire building, arts and crafts, etc.)

It is NOT simliar to AWANA at all. In Pioneer Clubs, the emphasis is on older Christians (adults) modeling Christ in their behavior and words around the kids. The motto (back then) was “Christ in every part of life.” This was a neat motto, because it taught the children and teenagers that Christ wasn’t just your “church pal,” but that He was with you everywhere you were, all the time.

There is a lot of time in a Pioneer Club meeting for one-on-one with each child/teen. This works so well and is very laid-back. AWANAs can be rather frenetic at times, and not all kids like this.

There is no “competition” like in AWANA. And only a few verses are memorized, and Pioneers emphasizes the “Life Application” of these verses. In Pioneers, it’s more important to understand the verses and their context than it is to memorize them and spit them out.

Although there may be games in Pioneers, the games aren’t like the AWANA games. They are usually more like activities (we like “Pass The Can” in my club!).

I loved leading Pioneer Clubs and did a lot of cool things with my young teens. At one point, I had 17 teens coming every week, and only one kid was from my church! Many were Catholic.

We did things like stenciling baby t-shirts and visiting the Pregnancy Life Care Center (pro-life) in our city and giving the shirts to the director, who in turn gave a short talk about the Christian viewpoint of sexuality.

We also did a lot of cooking, which made all the boys in Boys Brigade/Stockade jealous! They all wanted to cook, too!

We did some outdoor things like fitness, camp-fire cooking (I invited a man in our church who loved to hunt, fish, and camp to demonstrate for us–it was a wonderful experience for him to be adulated by all those girls–it showed him that God could use HIS talents for the Kingdom of God, too!).

We did some very serious things–one spring before Easter I invited a young apologist (college-aged) and we met at an historic graveyard, and after doing some “tracings,” we listened to the apologist discuss the evidence for the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

We tried crafts. I reek at crafts and so they usually failures. That’s when I started inviting “guest crafters” to our meetings, and then our crafts improved. This approach also got people involved who usually never got involved with church activities other than Sunday morning worship!

Pioneer Clubs can be coed, or single sex. I’ve worked in both. I prefer single sex because you don’t have all the flirting and lack of concentration.

I learned on CAF that the Catholic Church has a club called Little Flowers for girls. I plan on talking to my parish Christian ed. director about starting one in our parish. However, the parish already has a huge, thriving Brownie/Girl Scout organization through the school, so I doubt they will want to add something else. Oh, well.
 
agapewolf said:
I agree with your final statement, however we don’t live in a perfect world.

How you came to this conclusion bothers me a bit though.

You said :

How did I get this relationship? I didn’t sit around and wait for some person, or the Church, to tell me to read my Bible. I didn’t wait for some pastor to invite me up for an Altar Call. I cultivated it on my own, as other people, and youngins, are going to have to do.

This means you had some sort of intrinisic desire. What about the folks that don’t? The young folks who see no need for God, or don’t believe in sin. They have no reason to long for anything, they don’t know their own need for God.

This flies in the face of missionary work and the basic Christian call of “spreading the Gospel”. If people are just left do it on their own, then what’s the point of preaching? We are all called to evangelize, teach, preach, get the folks to understand their own need for God.
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True.
As all of us know, you type stuff out and it makes sense, then. And you go back and read it, and read responses to it and you go “doh!”

I guess what had something to do with me having the desire and will was the Grace of the Holy Spirit, and at first being required to read the Bible as part of my religion class. From there- I really couldn’t tell you what made me read it, and what made me think of Our Lord as someone more than just some far off God.

I guess I becoming too far disconnected with the younger ones. And at 23, I find that little scary. I start my block teaching and observation tomarrow, and I question how I am going to deal with the kids. I hated teachers who tried to be “cool” (who wants to hear an old person say “jiggy”?), but I hated the aloof “I am smarter than you neer-neer-neer” types. sigh
And I guess this is what Mother Church is wondering as well.
Perhaps I just need to step out of this thread?
 
FrankLawrence said:
So, The Holy Spirit played no role whatsoever in your personal relationship with Christ? The Holy Spirit had nothing to do with you wanting to read the Bible? The fact that some person or people (perhaps your parents) introduced you to Christianity had nothing to do with you embracing it? You just had a personal revelation that God played no role in, and no person influenced, and it brought you straight to Jesus? You did it all on your own? That gives you the authority to point fingers of judgment at all those who didn’t have that same personal revelation that was in no way influenced by other people or The Holy Spirit? Do you have any idea how prideful you sound? You need to think outside of your egocentric box and realize that not everyone was GIVEN what you had been GIVEN, both in the divine sense and from human witnesses. You should thank God for all your blessings, rather than use them as a means to act self-righteously superior to others.
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I never meant it to sound self-righteous, prideful, egocentric, or the host of other adjectives you just used. Obviously, the Holy Spirit whacked me upside the head and the soul with a metaphysical 2x4, and that made me go.
Please read my post above.
 
chicago said:
But one may need to be invited by one friend who can introduce them to another and help initiate the conversation that yet another friendship with Jesus may develop.
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True. sigh I need to learn to keep my mouth shut sometimes.
Unfortunately, I seem to have acute foot-in-mouth disease.
Anyone have any crow?
 
Cat said:
I learned on CAF that the Catholic Church has a club called Little Flowers for girls. I plan on talking to my parish Christian ed. director about starting one in our parish. However, the parish already has a huge, thriving Brownie/Girl Scout organization through the school, so I doubt they will want to add something else. Oh, well.
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Wow. Your Church actually allows Girl Scouts? Most Churches I know don’t allow Girl Scouts.
 
PatienceAndLove said:
True.
As all of us know, you type stuff out and it makes sense, then. And you go back and read it, and read responses to it and you go “doh!”
I’ve done that myself, before, including with words I’ve spoken. I appreciate your humble realization, and respect you for it. We are indeed siblings in Christ.
One of the key things you mentioned was that you were required to read the Bible. The sad reality is, many of today’s Catholic children never are. I believe(perhaps egocentrically) that once someone reads the Bible, for the first time, they see Jesus in a whole new real and personal way that changes their lives for the better. That is what happened with me, and I must admit, while God was ultimately in control, He used Protestant influence to inspire me to read the Bible. I wish I could have gotten that inspiration from the Catholic Church, and perhaps I have only my own apathy to blame, but I still thank God that He has shown me that the Truth remains in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
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