Parishes want to reach out and welcome people in their twenties and thirties but how can they do it? What works to bring college students and other young adults into active participation in the life of the Church? What ideas are out there to enable these present and future leaders to share their gifts and talents?

Though I work as a campus minister at UW-Milwaukee, many of the things I observe in the Newman Center setting can be applied to parish life as well. Insights from a 2001 national study of effective (arch)diocesan ministry with young adults can help focus our efforts at building a community which welcomes and affirms young adults as integralmembers of the Church.

In the national study*, three predictors were established as indicators of effective ministry with young adults. They were: empowering young adults, staff development, and linking parish leaders. “Precisely because they are adults, people in their twenties and thirties expect to determine their own lives. They want to connect their developing sense of independence to their public commitments, whether those are in their work [or student] lives, their social lives, or their spiritual lives.” Effective programs of ministry with these people, whether on a campus or in a parish setting, empower young adults to affirm and develop their potential as full, active members of the Church and society. This is especially true since the events of September 11, 2001.

Staff development and linking parish leaders were moderate predictors of effective ministry with young adults. As bishops suggested in Sons and Daughters of the Light: A Pastoral Plan for Young Adult Ministry (1997), it is important for people who work in campus ministry centers and local parishes to understand young adults and their needs, talents and gifts. It is also critical for staffs to realize the diversity of young adulthood, and to be able to address the specific needs and gifts of each of the particular sub-groups within the young adult population. This means in-servicing for staff and joining with others interested in leading the community of faith to be young adult-responsive. These actions can also assure successful ministry with young adults on a local level.

Young adults seek meaning in and for their lives. They want their lives to matter, and they want to make sense of the complexities they meet in their everyday experience. Staff members of campus centers and parishes need to develop ways to share contemporary theological and ethical insights with students and other young adults. Traditional concepts and language need to be translated into the post-modern metaphors which currently describe and shape the lives of these people in their twenties and thirties.

The personnel who are hired or who volunteer to work with young adults must be willing to learn how to accommodate their presence in the church community. Staff people must listen to the stories and convictions, as well as to the joys and sorrows, of those young adults who come to them. They must also learn skills to reach out and welcome those who are at the threshold of parish life, waiting for an invitation to enter it fully. Further, they need to learn how to search for those who are far away from the institutional life of the Church, yet possess a deeply spiritual life centered in a personal relationship with God. If a local community demonstrates these aspects of staff development, it will probably be effective over time.

Ministry is an invitation, a call to be with and for others. Effective ministry is ministry that is shared, ministry that enables. Young adults are capable, often professional people, whose lives are becoming full with the process of living. Many of them are in relationships and careers. Many others are evaluating those same things as changes occur which alter the initial choices they have made. Young adults have much to share, and they have needs that are real. So do campus ministry centers and parishes. It is a wonderful challenge to bring young adults together with and in the Church. May your efforts be rewarded.

*Lotz, R. (2001). Elements of effective Roman Catholic (arch)diocesan young adult ministry in the United States of America: A predictive analysis. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Co.