Caught not Taught

Can you remember back to last summer, where if you’re like me, you spent countless hours planning out your year?  You know, scheduling topics for particular nights, looking through your curriculum, or deciding which curriculum you are going to use.  We all do this kind of planning, and we should be deliberate and intentional about how we determine what our year of youth ministry will look like.  I can’t stress how important it is to make sure that we are forming the youth according to the teachings of the Church; it’s practically our whole job!
However, in our desire to educate, I think we youth leaders trip ourselves up sometimes.  We all want so badly for our youth to have good faith formation.   We don’t want our youth to miss out on any part of catechesis, or to have gaps in their formation.  So it only makes since that we would follow a strict curriculum guideline.   This of course is the only way that we can make sure that the youth are receiving all of that head knowledge about the faith. 
The only problem is, this will never be enough.  This doesn’t make disciples.  There is no way the youth can become followers of Christ without them encountering Jesus within their hearts.  After all, the first goal in the USCCB’s document, Renewing the Vision, is “To empower young people to live as disciples of Jesus Christ in our world today.”  After all these are also that last words that Jesus gave us “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations” in Matthew 28:19. The Bishops continue to say, “Growth in discipleship is not about offering a particular program.”   The answer is not more head knowledge.  The answer is an encounter with the living Jesus Christ.  There needs to be a conversion, and this can only happen through evangelization and relational ministry.  This means there has to be an adult disciple walking alongside the youth, to show them how to live out a relationship with Jesus.  If we want to form disciples among our youth, then it has to be relational.  That’s how we meet them where there at.  That’s how we catch them. That’s how we become fishers of men among our youth.
For some, this might be a foreign concept.  Most of us grew up in the 80 % of parishes that did not have a discipleship based youth ministry.  So we are unfamiliar with the concept of discipleship, much less evangelization.  Our focus needs to be on sharing God’s love and how He has given Himself for them in Christ Jesus.  We need to be treating youth ministry as a mission field.  It’s important as youth ministers, catechists, volunteers, teachers, and core team members that we know our faith and that we have guidelines for teaching it.  But if we are really and truly concerned about passing on the faith, then it has to be through discipleship, to meeting a person individually where they are.  This would mean putting in time, effort, investment, one on one attention, and holding fast to the mentality that a disciple is not taught but caught.  Are you going to spread the need for discipleship in your faith formation program?