News - May 2013 RSS Feed

There is no greater grace than finishing your first year of ministry. When I was a NET (National Evangelization Team) missionary in Canada a year ago, I distinctly remember this time of the year. My team was leaving the parishes that we had been stationed at for the past year, having started and built youth groups, events, and fantastic relationships. I remember hating that we would leave without finishing our work, because surely it wasn’t finished. It is so very clear to most ministers that ministry is not possible in a single year.

This entire past semester at St. Joseph’s, the middle school group focused on the sacred scripture. We started out with basics, how the Church formed the Bible and what books make it up. Then we zeroed in on the gospels, learned what parables were and looked at a number of Jesus’s teachings and miracles.

The more and more I get involved with ministry the more appreciative I become of all the people involved in making a ministry effective. The youth minister of course has a big job but without the volunteers, parish priest, and meal teams it would definitely not run as efficiently! In rereading that last sentence you may notice that I left out one important group, this group is left out a lot in ministry not because they are not wanted, but because they remove themselves from the sentence. I left out the parents.