Essential Components: Family

As I was writing this entry, actually when I was trying to find a title, it occurred to me that this could be the beginning of a series of posts on essential components to youth formation. No matter what you call it, the ministry of Catechising The Church has essential components that you cannot (or should not) do without. Yes, the USCCB has done this already, but it might be fun to see how the ideas are borne out in real ministries. As a side note, I believe that it is no coincidence that this series begins with a focus the family. It is fun how God uses little accidents to express truths.
Almost a year ago we instituted what I hope will be a decent attempt to solve a problem that I've encountered year after year in ministry. The problem is the lack of solid faith formation at home within the family, our attempt at a solution has been to help start the conversations at regular family dinners.
I'd like to first state that I DO NOT want any parent to see this and feel guilty or feel like they are a failure. I strongly believe that most parents are under-catechized through no fault of their own and thus unable to effectively pass on the faith. The whole “you can’t give what you don’t have” cliché comes to mind. I see a connection to those in this age group that have left The Church, I truly believe that if they had been presented accurate Church teaching in an accessible way it would be rare indeed for a Catholic to leave home. I pray that all those for whom this is true take another look and come home.
This is not to say that parents don't still have an obligation to attempt to learn on their own, but there was a period of time after Vatican II that The Church, for multiple reasons, did not do a good job of sharing the faith with its youth. Those youth have grown up now and have kids of their own. When it comes time to teach their kids about the faith, what do they do? It seems, without placing blame, that they feel that, without tools or knowledge, they need to ship their kids off to ministries like ours and hope that we can do the job for them.
This sounds like a good solution, right? At least someone will teach them. I agreed with that for years, saying to myself: "maybe if we can catechize this generation then everything will change". This may be a partial solution but there is a problem with it that most who understand the influence of the family can see. Almost no matter how good the religious education program or youth ministry, they are rendered near ineffective if the faith isn't lived out and taught at home. Every teacher/minister has seen it over and over again, those youth that study or have the material reinforced at home excel compared to those that do not.
So what do we do? Is Youth Ministry a big failure? I believe that the answer is no, I just believe that we have to take very seriously the call to strengthen “ family life by assisting families to improve family skills” within the component of pastoral care in the USCCB’s document “Renewing the Vision”. We need to do so to the point of "sacrificing" some of our youth nights or R.E. sessions in order to focus on the family on a regular basis.
I feel we must find a balance between catechizing the youth AND the parents. What we have done is taken one of our youth nights per month and invited the entire family for a meal. We’ve made it as easy as possible to attend. We have child care for the young ones, feed the entire family with good food, and we don’t ask them to come at a different time. Most important is that we don’t make it class. We learn for sure, but we have an entertaining and educational evening with dedicated "family discussion" time set aside.
With this schedule we have an average of three youth nights between each family session. This means that we have to be very intentional with what we cover but it also gives us an opportunity to reinforce certain topics with the parents present. What I’ve seen as the greatest fruit, and what parents have been thanking us the most for, is that the parents get the opportunity and encouragement to have a faith based conversation with their family.
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