Coming Together through Mission

by Craig Gould, Director of Youth & Young Adult Ministries in the Archdiocese of Baltimore

Before he worked for the Catholic Church, Craig Gould spent five years on staff for Young Life, and three of those years he served Young Life in Alaska.

At 7 pm on a cold February night in Anchorage, Alaska, two women and I are walking around a middle school, praying for the young people at that school to know Jesus Christ. I am white. The women are African American. I am 23 years old. The women are middle-aged. I’m a Roman Catholic praying quietly. They are Pentecostal, praying in tongues.

It was at that moment that I realized the unifying power of mission. Culturally, denominationally and even prayerfully, we were very different. I’ve never spoken in tongues, but I can say the Our Father fast enough where it almost sounds like I can. Despite our differences, we ventured out on a dark winter night to walk around an empty school because we shared this passion for young people to walk with Jesus as friend and Lord of their lives.

In the relationship between Protestants and Catholics, the focus has often been on what we have in common through belief—articles of faith and dogmas. This is an exceptionally important area for conversation and reconciliation. We only need to look at the Joint Declaration between Catholics and Lutherans to recognize how critical these agreements can be to the Body of Christ.

However, there is another way to look at our relationship and that is through the shared lens of mission. When you are working across denominational lines through the shared lens of mission, differences in church doctrine really take a backseat to the task at hand: spreading the Good News. And I’ve noticed marks of shared mission that echo the four marks of the Catholic Church. These create the unity we seek. In mission together, we can find agreement through:

Presence
Whether we are Young Life leaders in the halls of schools, Catholic priests serving remote parts of Asia, or missionaries in US cities, we have all left the comfortable places of our past and have journeyed into unknown territory to love others on behalf of Jesus. In an increasingly digital world, the power of being physically in front of another person is central to our mission.

Sacrifice
Some people sacrifice a Friday night to build relationships with middle school students by taking them bowling. Some sacrifice their personal space to live in community with others as part of a post-college volunteer program. Others give up celebrating holidays with their families because of vows they took to a religious community. In all these cases, missionaries give up something to answer the call God has placed on their hearts.

Students of Culture
If our mission is to engage the culture with the Gospel, then learning to speak another language, learning what clothes are appropriate for which setting, and learning to celebrate the strengths and address the weaknesses of a society, are the hallmarks of a missionary. This desire to become like the “other” in order to share Jesus Christ is central to mission work.

Dependence
Each missionary learns quickly that all resources belong to God and that they are simply stewards of what God decides they should have. Sometimes, as Saint Paul said, they are blessed with much. Other times, the blessings are slim. Missionaries in any capacity rely on the grace of God, which is often enacted through others. And missionaries know themselves to be constantly in need.

While this list is certainly not comprehensive, I believe it’s a good place to begin to stack hands. We can unite around our desire to be present, to make sacrifices, to be students of culture, and to depend on one another as we lean into God’s grace. This certainly seems to be what unified the early disciples who were at least as different as a Catholic New Englander and two Pentecostal Alaskans.

May we be one, in mission.

We Are on the Same Team

This guest post was written by Wynn Brown, a University of Notre Dame graduate and Young Life staff associate in South Bend, Ind.

Staff Associate Wynn Brown, left, and one of the high school students Wynn has befriended working for Young Life Michiana.

In the fall of 2015, I began college at the University of Notre Dame with some apprehension about Catholicism. Eighty percent of Notre Dame students identify as Catholic, but I was raised in an evangelical Protestant church. I knew little about the Catholic faith, and, I admit, what I had heard made me wonder if Catholics were “real” Christians. At a Young Life camp the summer before college, I found I thrived when I was surrounded by friends who shared my love of Jesus. So when I moved in at Notre Dame, I looked to Young Life for a Christian community of friends. Little did I know that I would befriend Catholic students who would change my definition of what constitutes “real” Christian faith. Little did I know that my Catholic theology courses would stretch and enrich my beliefs and lead me to earn a second degree in theology. I encountered many nominal Catholics at Notre Dame—people who identified as Catholic but who seemed to have nothing in their lives that set them apart as followers of Christ. I attended Catholic Mass and saw students who knew the routine but didn’t appear to enjoy it. Then I met Madi. Madi sang the same worship songs I did. She read the Bible. And when she offered to pray over our lunch one day, she started with “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” and I expected to hear “Bless us, O Lord.” Instead, Madi thanked God for the food, the friends around us, and for the greatest gift of all, Jesus. She spoke as someone who clearly had a relationship with Christ. Faith for her was not a weekly religious requirement but something that connected with her soul. I started off seeking a business degree at Notre Dame, but along the way I took a C.S. Lewis class to fulfill a theology requirement. I was blown away that I could study things—things that I actually enjoyed—as part of my education. I just kept taking more and more theology classes until I had met the requirements for a second major. In addition to classes on Scripture, I read the works of Augustine, Therese of Lisieux, G.K. Chesterton, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Erasmus, and many others. These were mostly Catholic writers, and I found that I agreed with 99 percent of everything I read and was growing deeper in my faith in the process. Perhaps even more influential than the Catholic materials were the professors who taught me. These men and women cared deeply about the subjects they were teaching, and, more importantly, they cared about us and our faith. None of my business professors ever cried in front of the class because he or she so passionately connected with us or the material being discussed. One of my favorite classes was called “The Catholic Faith,” and in it we walked through Book One of the Catechism. After nearly every class, a friend and I would linger to ask the professor a few questions about little discrepancies between what we had been taught growing up and what he had mentioned in class. He would always welcome us with, “Hello, my Protestant friends!” I took other classes with him because I loved his teaching so much, and we developed a friendship. Toward the end of my senior year we sat down to lunch together, and I asked him for some advice on my future. He gave me some practical advice, and we chatted back and forth, but then he paused and started tearing up. He said, “Wynn, whatever you do, never lose your kind spirit. God has given you a unique gift. Don’t throw that away.” I received a lot of advice over this time, but that was the only career advice that really stuck with me. During my four years at Notre Dame, I volunteered with Young Life Michiana. And after graduation, I decided to stay in South Bend and work full-time for Young Life. I love Young Life’s mission to introduce adolescents to the person of Jesus and help them grow in their faith. And I love that Young Life is ecumenical: We are on the same team. My faith as a Protestant has grown through my exposure to the Catholic faith. And I hope that through the collaboration between Young Life and the Catholic Church, more Protestant Young Life leaders will come to appreciate the Catholic faith. I also hope more Catholics will come to know Young Life and want to join this effort to reach every kid with the love of Christ. In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis describes the purpose of his book this way:

It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals.

I think Young Life has a similar goal, and it’s a goal Protestants and Catholics can tackle together. Young Life seeks to bring adolescents into the great hall of Christian faith. But no one is meant to live their life dwelling in the hall of Young Life. They must enter a room—a practicing church—to find deeper communion. Young Life is a funnel to churches: Protestant and Catholic churches. We encourage students to connect with the person of Jesus Christ. We desire a connection that lasts a lifetime. And we know a lifetime of faith can only be sustained within a church.

Young Life Grew My Vision for Catholic Ministry

This guest post was written by Amanda Jewett, youth and young adult minister at St. Cecelia Church in Beaverton, Ore. She serves on the Diocesan Committee on Young Life for the Archdiocese of Portland.

Catholic Youth Minister Amanda Jewett, far right, visited a Young Life camp in 2017.

Two summers ago I attended a Young Life camp in Eastern Oregon as an adult guest. I agreed to visit Washington Family Ranch not knowing much about Young Life. I was curious but did not anticipate that the experience would change the way I view youth ministry.

Similar to any summer camp, there were ropes courses, a zip line, and a swimming pool. But when it came to the program, I noticed right away that Young Life didn’t assume that the 400 campers had faith in God. Young Life expected that most students didn’t yet believe or were still questioning. And this assumption dictated the initial language, music, and message. God wasn’t mentioned a lot the first day, and all the songs were popular secular music. But over the course of a few days, God became the focus of everything. And as I looked around, I saw disconnected teens slowly become more comfortable talking about Jesus. By the end, teens were singing praise and worship songs as loudly and as passionately as they had sung the songs of Taylor Swift and One Direction. Teens were acknowledging their need for God and surrendering to Jesus.

What led to this transformation?

I watched as Young Life made it all about a relationship with Jesus first and foremost. All catechesis and faith formation follows naturally from this relationship or encounter with Christ. Without this foundation, catechesis can be lost or considered irrelevant.

Our Catholic youth need what Young Life prompts teens to develop: a relationship—not just head knowledge, not just the idea of faith—an actual relationship with the actual person of Jesus Christ, who loves us more infinitely and unconditionally than anyone else ever can. I saw Young Life reaching kids in a way I never experienced as a cradle Catholic and one who attended Catholic school from preschool to college, got a degree in theology, and now works for a Catholic parish. At camp, I saw an immense opportunity—an opportunity for these teens, whose lives were being intimately touched by God’s divine presence, but also an opportunity for the Catholic Church to improve its outreach to teens, especially in this day and age.

My exposure to Young Life taught me, as a Catholic, that I am called to go out, especially to the peripheries, so I can encounter teens and spread the Gospel, rather than wait for teens to come to me and my youth group. Like our pontiff Pope Francis has said, we are called to smell like the sheep, and I saw Young Life leaders doing this.

When watching the interactions at camp, I recognized that the Young Life leaders had real and authentic relationships with each one of their kids. Prior to camp, these leaders had gone out to football games, school plays, and robotics tournaments to find these teens, rather than wait for them to come meet the leaders at a Young Life club. Camp was a culmination of months of contact work and relationship building.

This is missionary discipleship. By the very nature of our baptism, we are called to “take on the smell of the sheep” and accompany people on their journeys to Christ. We are a missionary church, and Christ’s Great Commission (Matthew 28) is at the center of that. Should our parish ministries not reflect this as well, going (not staying!) and making disciples of all nations?

Our Catholic faith holds such beauty, depth, and richness, and my identity as a member of the Catholic Church is a source of personal pride and delight. For this reason, I want to learn from Young Life and become more effective in sharing my faith in Christ with teens.

At the time I was visiting the Young Life camp two years ago, my primary concerns at St. Cecilia circled around the number of kids who were attending our church youth group, how well they knew the Catechism, and how heavily involved they became in the life of the parish. All of those are important and play their own roles. Yet I had lost sight of the primary goal, the “why” of Catholic ministry: Do our parish teens have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and are they on the path to sainthood? I had to ask myself a difficult question: Does our youth ministry lead our teens to information, events, and programs, or to a PERSON?

In the two years since my visit to camp, I have engaged with the Young Life ministry in my area. I have befriended my Young Life counterpart who serves at a local high school, and we have done contact work together at the school. I have also joined a committee of Catholics and Protestants who are shepherding a collaborative effort between Young Life and the Catholic Church to reach more kids. As a part of this committee, I helped organize three joint worship nights where Catholic youth ministers and Protestant Young Life leaders met to get to know each other. Even though we are coming from different Christian denominations, we know many of the same kids, and we need to work together if we are going to reach every kid.

I lead youth ministry in Portland, where few claim to be Christian. Most teenagers here are disconnected from a church, and I desire nothing more than to help them find Christ. My exposure to Young Life has inspired me to help build bridges between different Christian denominations and, more importantly, between teenagers and God. I thank God for allowing his Spirit to move in this way, and I ask that He continues to bless and guide us in this work, as we go and make disciples of all nations.

Top 10 Reasons to Evangelize Catholics

1. Approximately one-third of those who say they were raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholic.

~Pew Research Center, Religious Landscape Survey

2. Sometimes even Catholics have lost or never had the chance to experience Christ personally.

~Pope John Paul II, 1993 address to Catholic Bishops

3. Today there is a very large number of baptized people who for the most part have not formally renounced their Baptism but who are entirely indifferent to it and not living in accordance with it.

~Pope Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi (On Evangelization in the Modern World), 56

4. The New Evangelization calls all Catholics first to be evangelized and then in turn to evangelize.

~USCCB, Disciples Called to Witness, Preface

5. The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you.

~Pope Francis, 2013 interview with Antonio Spadaro, S.J.

6. [There are] those who ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past. A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying. In neither case is one really concerned about Jesus Christ or others. . . It is impossible to think that a genuine evangelizing thrust could emerge from these adulterated forms of Christianity.

~Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), 94

7. Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father.

~Jesus Christ, Mt. 7:21

8. There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter.

~Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), 6

9. The best of evangelizers allow themselves to be converted and evangelized again and again and in that way grow in holiness.

~Cardinal Francis George, Archdiocese of Chicago, Spreading the Holy Fire, 11

10. The love of Christ compels us.

~The Apostle Paul, 2 Cor 5:14

OK, there are 11 reasons. . .

11. Saint Paul, after his encounter with Jesus Christ, “immediately proclaimed Jesus.” So what are we waiting for?

~Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 120; Acts 9:20, 22:6-21