Timely Courage

Ever since I began work in youth ministry, God has been forming an idea in me which has finally become reality in CCFM. When the idea first manifested I saw it as a sort of Catholic youth church, yeah I know how theologically wrong that thought is, but the man I was 12 years ago didn’t.
I am glad that God waited for the idea to develop and form before he gave me the courage to go through with it. It’s fun to look back and see just how smart this God guy is! For the past ten years God has worked to form me and this idea of youth formation into something that he could launch.
Throughout this formation process several problems in youth ministry kept re-occurring.
Youth minsters that I knew and admired had, after years in the field, either taken diocesan positions or up and left professional ministry for better paying jobs. At some level it angered me either to see youth ministry used as a stepping stone to a ‘real job’, or to see ministers forced out due to salary limitations. All of this with the youth and parishes left to suffer in the wake of inconsistent leadership.
That last statement ties into this one, only the largest parishes can afford quality full time ministry. Having worked with parishes in Chicago and Texas, it is evident that the lower income parishes have the fewest opportunities for their youth. There is no way with the current model for youth ministry that a smaller parish would be able to hire a full time minister.
Not that the ministries that I’m a part of are perfect, but often I dreaded attending larger events where multiple parishes came together. What often makes this painful is the lack of quality and leadership across the various ministries. I don’t want all ministries to look or be the same, but there has to be some base level of quality that we can achieve.
After working here in Bryan for the past 5 years God placed before us a fairly obvious path. The idea finally had some real meat to it; there was a team of people that were interested in making it happen, and a vibrant Catholic community around us to support it.
At this point He needed me to man up and get past my fear of failure. He needed me to commit to making this model real, to making it work, he needed me to quit talking about it, quit ‘perfecting’ it and go for it. I joke in that He needed me to be willing and ready to fail gloriously, to not take the safe route, but to take a risk for His glory.
In the next few posts I’ll talk about the different steps involved in forming CCFM and just how we became who we are.
Though Lenders Offering