Youth Mass??? Help!!

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My parish is planning a Sunday evening youth mass. We are looking at different options and I wanted to see if anyone on here could give me any good ideas. We have 4 different options for our worship space. 1st is our church, which seats 1,600 in chairs that don’t move. 2nd is our Eucharistic Chapel, that seats 25 in seats. 3rd is our former church, now used as a parish hall, that seats 250-500 depending on how many seats are in place. The 4th option is our parish parking lot where we can seat up to 250 with the chairs from the hall. During the summer we hope to use the outside space for worship. We hope to use the hall for worship otherwise so that we can move the seats (we like to have seats on at least 3 sides of the altar). We have very dismal attendance and we hope to get anywhere from 20-50 people. We would like to use contemporary music with guitar. Any help about what worship space we should use or what type of service we should have would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Ben
 
A proper church with a consecrated altar is always better than a random space. I suggest either of your “real” churches, or the chapel.
 
I’d say the Chapel (full chapel with altar and all?).

When attending events- religious or not- it always feels more comfortable to me if the event seems well attended/full, rather than mostly empty.

Could chairs be put along the back or sides of the chapel for add’t seating?
 
The chapel is packed full with 20 chairs. We also want to have a liturgy band and the chapel can’t accomodate them.
 
Oh, and yes the chapel has a full altar. We have our tabernacle located in this chapel.
 
BenCatholic said:
My parish is planning a Sunday evening youth mass. We are looking at different options and I wanted to see if anyone on here could give me any good ideas. We have 4 different options for our worship space. 1st is our church, which seats 1,600 in chairs that don’t move. 2nd is our Eucharistic Chapel, that seats 25 in seats. 3rd is our former church, now used as a parish hall, that seats 250-500 depending on how many seats are in place. The 4th option is our parish parking lot where we can seat up to 250 with the chairs from the hall. During the summer we hope to use the outside space for worship. We hope to use the hall for worship otherwise so that we can move the seats (we like to have seats on at least 3 sides of the altar). We have very dismal attendance and we hope to get anywhere from 20-50 people. We would like to use contemporary music with guitar. Any help about what worship space we should use or what type of service we should have would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Ben
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Just celebrate Mass in either in one of the churches or the chapel. That’s a no-brainer.

If you have a consecrated space available, you should be using it, not some “outdoor space” or hall.
 
Well, both the hall and the parking lot allow us to position the altar in a more central fashion. We wanted to have a very flexible space for worship.
 
Why not just have it like any of the other masses in the Church?

Also, just a question, why do you want a “band”?
 
The church would be so empty and we want to have a more active yet intimite service. We also want a band to have lively contemporary music for the service.
 
While it’s great to reach out to the younger people, I suggest that you (meaning the planning group) read the Church’s documents about celebrating Mass before you go too far afield with having a liturgy in the parking lot, or having all the kids gather around the altar for the consecration, or using a drum set with electric bass, etc.
I know you really only mentioned the parking lot, but many other youth Masses do the other things I list, which I’m hoping aren’t part of your plan 🙂
Also consider that everyone’s supposed to kneel during the Eucharistic Prayer – are any of your 4 options conducive to that?
 
We use drums on a weekly basis in our church. We also do not kneel at any time during any of our services. Really our parish celebrates a very liberal and informal liturgy. We have all the Eucharistic ministers gather around the altar table during consecration. Even if we wanted to kneel our parish we couldn’t considering we don’t have any kneelers
 
BenCatholic said:
We use drums on a weekly basis in our church. We also do not kneel at any time during any of our services. Really our parish celebrates a very liberal and informal liturgy. We have all the Eucharistic ministers gather around the altar table during consecration. Even if we wanted to kneel our parish we couldn’t considering we don’t have any kneelers
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Then it sounds like the group – well, the pastor – needs to brush up on things and get in line with Church directives. I’m not being legalistic here; this is Catholic 101 stuff.

I know you love the Lord, but … “Liberal and informal…” :confused:
 
As a “catholic community” our pastor does not care what the church says. He always does things his way. Our worship is really the way we do it. For example we removed all male refrences to God from the mass. Our bishop hasn’t done anything because he is scared that the parish will break away.
 
elizabeth211 has a thread called “Praise and Worship Songs about Mercy”. Maybe your parish can do something patterned after what hers does - they separate the praise and worship band music from the actual Mass by having special gatherings for that type of thing.

Young people primarily enjoy getting together, I don’t think it is necessary to have a Mass per se. Lots of evangelization and catechesis can take place in some kind of “contemporary music” gathering.
 
BenCatholic said:
As a “catholic community” our pastor does not care what the church says. He always does things his way. Our worship is really the way we do it. For example we removed all male refrences to God from the mass.
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Is this something that you support? It is hard to give suggestions without knowing where you are coming from.
 
We though about this but we really want to have a mass to help bring the sacrements to people that might not otherwise get it. We already have a teen Taize prayer service on Wednesdays that has been a great sucess. Thanks for the good info.
Ben
 
In response to Opus101 I do support my pastor and tend to lean to a more contemporary liturgy. My parish is the most liberal in our diocese so really we tend to do what we want. I feel that there have been wrongs that have been done in our parish with our priest openly telling the congregation that we are eating “only bread and wine”
 
BenCatholic said:
We though about this but we really want to have a mass to help bring the sacrements to people that might not otherwise get it. We already have a teen Taize prayer service on Wednesdays that has been a great sucess. Thanks for the good info.
Ben
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Who would you be bringing the sacraments to that might not otherwise get them?

If they might not otherwise get them, would they be properly disposed to receiving the sacraments?

Maybe a catechetical P&W band night might be instrumental (no pun intended) in disposing them toward the sacraments.
 
BenCatholic said:
In response to Opus101 I do support my pastor and tend to lean to a more contemporary liturgy. My parish is the most liberal in our diocese so really we tend to do what we want. I feel that there have been wrongs that have been done in our parish with our priest openly telling the congregation that we are eating “only bread and wine”
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This is starting to sound far-fetched! No disrespect intended, Ben, but are you being straight with us?
 
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