Young Life staff are expressing a growing interest in engaging with Catholics in their communities. And their questions at recent trainings are evidence that there’s been a shift from curiosity about collaboration to a more urgent desire to learn how to minister well to Catholic kids and how to better engage with Catholic adults.
Two recent annual Young Life trainings speak to this hunger for more information: the January New Staff Training (photo above) and the February continuing education course called Catholics & Protestants Ministering Together.
“New Staff Training was a firehose of information, but what stood out was the Catholic Relations piece,” said Cody Fedor, who serves on mission staff in Selma, Calif. “My area is predominantly Hispanic and Catholic, and we need to know how to change our vocabulary if we are going to reach more kids for Jesus.”
Fedor, a former Baptist youth pastor, set up a Zoom call with the Catholic Relations office after New Staff Training so he could learn more. “Like everything else in Young Life, it’s about building relationships, and words matter. Instead of saying believers are Christian or Catholic, I now say Protestant or Catholic. Instead of saying kids got saved at camp, I say kids had a personal encounter with Jesus at camp.”
Earlier this month in the Catholics & Protestants Ministering Together course, more experienced staff members came to learn the biblical, historical and theological framework for Christian unity. They also came wanting to learn how to communicate the ecumenical nature of Young Life with their peers.
“This class gave me a deeper appreciation of the Catholic traditions and faith. It allowed me to ask questions without judgement so that I could gain a better understanding of a large portion of my cultural context,” said Heather Blaylock, an area director in Baton Rouge, La. She said she was eager to return home and start training new volunteers on how to be ecumenical, how to minister in ways that embrace similarities rather than focus on differences, and how to be intentional about bringing Catholic volunteers on to staff.
