Odds and ends

The puddle will be coming next...but for now, a few more little things about this parish...

First, my Core. Or, rather, lack thereof. When I arrived, there were 4 Core members, plus my "partner in crime" - the college and jr. high YM that started a few weeks before me. I lovingly described us as a two-headed youth ministry monster. Completely different personalities, but we complimented each other remarkably well. I was truly blessed to be able to work with her for the short time we did.

For the rest of my Core - well, apparently they didn't like me much. Within a month of my arrival, 3 had left. Only one of them had told me they weren't going to do it anymore, and that one was for very good reasons (he lived an hour and a half away at college at it was tough for him to do all he needed to and still try and be on Core - perfectly understandable). The other two, however, literally just "left" - stopped showing up without any warning, dropped committments they had made, just outright disappeared. It was rather disappointing. One that left was one that I was giving a chance given that everything that I had been told when I arrived raised a few red flags (particularly in the area of maturity for ministering to the kids). But I needed to see that for myself...I'm not someone that's going to pick a fight over heresy. Obviously by this behavior, this person quickly demonstrated the concerns to be correct. I remained saddened by the other departure. That individual had the right heart and right desire...but something just didn't click with me I guess.

So that left myself and my partner-in-crime, and one other Core member. ALl I can say about her is that if anyone ever wanted to develop a design for "The Ultimate Core Member/Youth Ministry Volunteer" I would nominate her in a heartbeat. She was an absolute God-send. I was incredibly blessed to work with her (she has since left for a "normal" parish after much discernment through the surrounding mess).

So there were three of us. Not easy to manage a youth group with three adults...but it was something we could handle if the numbers were consistent with what they had seen in the past (around 20 kids). We could manage that, and grow the Core as we grew the group. Unfortunately, the pastor's implementation of Confirmation prep clobbered that hope.

Around the time I arrived, the new Confirmation program started. Frankly, it was horrendous. For starters, it completely went against the Diosocean guidelines and basically ignored the Diocesean published program. Second, it divided the kids in Confirmation prep into three groups:
1) Those attending the Catholic high school in the county - no additional prep was necessary (which was a disastrous read - there was already a mindset of the kids that went to the school were "superior" to everyone else and didn't need to go the "basic" youth ministry program...which given the formation I gathered in discussions I'd had with a few of them, they weren't getting great teaching at the school).
2) Those that wanted to attend LIFE TEEN - they had to attend 3/4 LIFE Nights a month. This is the option that hurt us, as no additional adults volunteered to help out, so the group went from 20 to around 50 for 3 adults. Not a good scenario.
3) Those that didn't want to attend LT - they had to attend a weekly more "academic" style class once a week. These were generally the kids that didn't want to set a foot in church, their parents were making them do it, and they were just jumping through hoops to get it done.

In addition, everyone, regardless which group they fell into, were required to attend the Spring LT Retreat...a requirement that also didn't thrill me. While I was used to putting on a retreat just for the program at a parish, this parish plugged into a retreat with 4 or 5 other programs. And I'm assuming due to some politics, we were completely shut out of the planning process no matter how much we said we wanted to do something. So going on this retreat, I had a group of kids that never attended any youth group events ever, a group that never wanted to go anything church related ever, a group that was humoring their parents, and a group of kids that were looking forward to this retreat like no else. It was a difficult scenario to say the least - and this will come back to cause some problems later.

The entire setup of the Confirmation program was just ill-advised, and the complete lack of support in implementing it assured that it would be problematic at best. Combine an over-worked and rather under-supervised group...you can understand why I said yesterday that the program I inherited was "broken."

This program needed A LOT of work. It needed someone to make an unwavering committment to the kids. It needed someone that was going to fight for them to provide something that was authentically Catholic and not feel good. And every time I came to this, I realized in prayer that I needed to make that committment. I was on board - it was going to be an uphill battle, but it was one that I wanted to help fight.

And then came Christmas.

I've described the Christmas Eve mess previously. But there were some other things that went into Christmas as well, and a really awesome one was a Christmas Party that the teens put on for some of the lesser fortunate children in our community. I was told the previous year's wasn't the most organized, and we really wanted this one to go off without a hitch.

Well, one big problem presented itself. Previous years, we'd had only 100 kids signed up for the party. This year, by Thanksgiving we had 170 signed up. We tried to cap it (simply out of a matter of room and the amount of gifts we had). The pastor would not let us cap it. Finally, when we hit 250, I had to make a call to close off registration, because we just couldn't manage an event that size.

Here's how it works...you have 250 kids from about 100 families...and the kids are 1-10 years old. Well, normally the entire family comes out, so you've got to plan for the kids, the parents, the older brothers and sisters, etc. Now, the largest area we have (outside of the church) has a fire code limit of 275. So there was no way we were going to easily be able to accomodate all the families inside at one time, with the crafts, the gifts, and of course, Santa.

We busted our collective rears for that party. We figured out a plan to use some area outside (one of the upsides of being in Florida). We had enough stuff for the kids to do. And the parish came through in spades with their gift donations - we were able to give each of the kids that came to the party somewhere between 3-5 gifts each. But this took a lot of doing to get accomplished. Literally, from December 2 until I left for Atlanta on the 23rd, there was not one day I didn't put in at least a full day, most of the time 11-12+ hours. We were haulin it (the party management + wrapping and organizing all the presents + our normal youth group events). And the party went off fantastically - particularly with the unforunate arrival of a big downpour for the whole day. We were all extremely happy at how well it went off. Everyone said - God provided big time for us that day.

Well, everyone except the pastor. Apparently we didn't do enough work, it was poorly organized, and it shouldn't have taken that long to coordinate the entire thing. We were, in a word, floored. And everyone else pretty much told me to ignore him, that it was one of the best parties they'd ever had.

Well, on my way up to Atlanta, I noticed I'd had a voicemail. I listen to it, and it was from my pastor. He basically left what can only be described as the most blistering, viscious message I have ever received from anyone, let alone hearing from a priest. Apparently I'm not doing enough work, that I'm failing miserably at being a youth minister, and that I need to use these days off to determine if I really want this job.

I was absolutley floor...and very, very, very angry. If I missed a detail here or there, that's fine to raise with me. But to accuse me of not doing any work when I hadn't had so much as any hint of a Sabbath off for nearly a month, when I was looking forward to my break so I didn't hit burnout...that has no basis anywhere in reality. Especially when all of this work with the youth group his happening in an environment that is not remotely condusive to a successful youth ministry program. And I sent him a pretty solid email that said as much.

We had a meeting when I returned that could be described as ugly to say the least. There was a good deal of raised voices. At one point, he's just ranting on about how the kids need this and they need that and such and such...everything that he's listing out is the complete antethesis of everything I've been trained and taught makes a successful youth ministry program. And I called him on it. I point blanked asked him "Do you know what our kids want?" He stopped and had a completely blank look on his face and asked "What?" "Do you know what our kids want?" He sat there completely puzzled, like it had never occurred to him to ask that question. He was clearly in a mode of "the kids are going to show up for what we give them and they're going to like it!!!" No concept of what actually goes into a successful program. And I told him that. At which point he screamed at me that I was never to challenge him on anything. All of my objections and everything was to be ignored. There was nothing wrong with the liturgy. There were no problems with the way he ran anything (particularly with all of the kids' complaints about his over-the-top "charismatic" antics during Adoration**). And that the kids didn't need anyone to fight for them. I tried to steer the conversation to a productive conclusion, but the obvious unspoken result was that we wanted to stay out of each other's way...a terrible way to have a successful, well, ANYTHING. When you can't trust a priest to be authentically Catholic and want to call the kids to it, and as such have the thought that you want to shelter them from him...that can only be described as a serious problem.

Looking back...this was the beginning of the end. And it only got worse when I let the charge against a program that was basically designed to completely Protestantize a Catholic parish - "The Puddle."


**To be clear - I have no problem with the authentic Charismatic movement in the Church. I tend to lean in that direction myself. But I've seen what it's supposed to look like when it's authentic, and I've seen it be a self-serving "look at me" show. Nothing that I saw him do registered to me as anything remotely resembling authentic Charismatic worship.