Everett Fritz - Art of Forming Young Disciples, The: Why Youth Ministries Arent Working and What to Do About It

Everett Fritz

The

Art of Forming

Young Disciple s

Why Youth Ministries Arent Working
and What to Do about It

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2018 by Everett Fritz

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved

Cover design by LUCAS Art & Design, Jenison, MI

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fritz, Everett, author.

Title: The art of forming young disciples : why youth ministries aren't

working and what to do about it / by Everett Fritz.

Description: Manchester, New Hampshire : Sophia Institute Press, 2018. |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017061604 | ISBN 9781622824823 (pbk. : alk. paper) ePub ISBN 9781622824830

Subjects: LCSH: Discipling (Christianity) | Church work with youth Catholic

Church.

Classification: LCC BV4520 .F75 2018 | DDC 259/.23 dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017061604

To my wife, Katrina: thank you
for all your love and support

Contents

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Introduction

One afternoon, I was sitting at my desk, planning and preparing for an upcoming series of Sunday-night youth-group meetings. I had been working in parish youth ministry for nearly six years. I had a good number of teens participating in my group; I was doing consulting for several national youth-ministry organizations; and I was working at a large parish with a lot of resources at my disposal. I had everything that I believed I needed for a large, successful youth ministry.

Great worship band? Check.

Dynamic young adults trained as a core team? Check.

Dedicated youth space in the parish? Check.

Best youth-ministry resources and parish strategy that money can buy? Check.

Multiple full-time youth ministers on staff? Check.

Large budget? Check.

The youth ministry had grown exponentially since I had taken over as the director of the program. I was proud of what I had been blessed to accomplish in the Church. From the outside, youth ministry at the parish looked very successful.

That afternoon, however, my ideas about youth ministry began to change. I looked at a picture on my desk of a group of seventy-five teens I had taken to a big Catholic youth conference three years earlier. The conference had been a powerful experience for all the teens: they had had an encounter with Jesus Christ. I had stayed in contact with most of them because most of them had remained involved in my parishs youth group.

As I looked at that picture, it occurred to me that, out of the seventy-five teens, only ten were still practicing their Faith in college.

There was a story to go along with each fallen-away teen. Several of them had left the Faith due to their beliefs in liberal agendas (beliefs that their parents had raised them with); a few others had fallen victim to drugs and alcohol; others fell away due to promiscuity and bad relationships in which they had gotten into a habit of sin; and a few teens had never seemed to stand on a solid ground in their understanding of their Faith, making them easy prey for the secular agendas prevalent on college campuses.

I was deeply bothered by what I saw in that picture so much so that I stopped planning my youth-group series and went to the chapel and prayed. That night, I couldnt sleep. There were too many questions running through my head.

What happened to all the teens who were in my youth ministry?

What am I doing wrong?

How can so many teens encounter Christ yet fail to become His followers?

What factors make the difference between a teen who becomes a lifelong disciple and a teen who falls away from the Church?

The Measure of Success

Two days later, I had lunch with a colleague in youth ministry. I told him how much our youth-group participation had grown in the last year and described the events that I had planned for the upcoming year. He asked me a question that caught me off guard because it echoed the questions I had been asking myself for a couple of days: How many teens do you think will become lifelong disciples coming out of your youth ministry?

I wasnt ready to admit that I had been wrestling with that question, so I started making excuses.

Its not about the numbers.

The parents are the real problem.

All teens are at different levels of development. Some are rich soil, while others are rocky or full of weeds.

In some cases, were planting seeds that will take root later in a teens life.

I was trying to provide context for my failure, because I knew the reality. After all, I had a lot of teens participating in my youth group. Most people in the Church would have said that my youth ministry was extremely successful.

But the teens were not becoming lifelong disciples and that should be the only measure of success.

My friend pushed me harder: Come on, quit making excuses. You know the teens in your program. How many do you think will be lifelong disciples?

I swallowed hard and replied, I know only about ten who Im sure will become lifelong disciples. Please dont tell my pastor.

As if this embarrassment werent enough, my friend pushed me harder: What did you do differently with those ten that you didnt do with the other teens in your youth ministry?

When I thought about it, those ten teens were the ones I had spent the most time with.

I did Bible study with them.

I mentored them in their prayer life.

I had a type of relationship with them in which I could challenge them to live virtuously.

I answered the difficult questions these teens had about the Faith.

I knew and mentored their parents.

I spent most of my relational ministry time with these teens.

When I described these criteria to my friend, he said, Thats it ! Thats the difference between success and failure with a teen. What youre describing to me is called discipleship the process of mentoring someone through relationship and living example.

Then he asked me, If that is the recipe for success, why dont you do that with every teen in your parish?

And thats when it occurred to me what the problem in my ministry was. Why didnt I take the time to disciple every teen in the parish?

Because it would be impossible.

There is no way I could mentor every teen in the parish the way that I mentored those ten. It would take too much of my time, and I would be stretched too thin.

This is why youth ministry was failing in my parish: I had to think about the teens in my parish as one big group. In an effort to form all the teens in the Faith, I put on formation nights and activities for all the teens.

But teens need more than that.

In parishes, we try to program our teens instead of mentoring them. Teens need adult guidance and deep, meaningful relationships with other teens. And there is no possible way for one youth minister to meet the pastoral needs of every teen in the parish. Instead of thinking about the youth in the parish as one large group, I needed to think smaller. I needed to find a way to get on a mentoring level with every teen in the parish.

The 10,000-Hour Rule

I attended Catholic schools and Catholic youth groups, but I wouldnt credit either of those things with making me a disciple of Jesus Christ today.