I was just flipping through the channels and caught a snippet of one of those entertainment shows and saw a woman who said "I think Donald Trump owes an apology to the plus-size community!"
I didn't even know there WAS a plus size community! What's involved here? How do you join? When are the meetings? Do I have to move?
I think it's interesting how people use the word "community" in today's world. It's thrown around often and easily, and it seems like every category is somehow a community now.
It's not what we older folks know as community, this loose definition- to us, community is more like family; tight-knit, bonded, static and interdependent. But I don't think the youth we work with think of community in that way. Our kids are in a bazillion different communities- most are short lived, temporary, acute. The kids I know speak fondly of their teams and clubs and activities, and the communities they have been and are involved in. But they don't seem to see them as "forever friends". They often keep in touch with some of the kids in their communities, and devote myspace and facebook pages to the memories of them, but there doesn't seem to be the emotional hanging-on to these groups for them, that I experienced as a kid.
Confirmation programs could, I think, benefit from taking a look at young people's ideas of community. We still try to "create community" in our programs, still push the idea that at the end of our retreats kids will be bonded forever to each other- we have visions of young people staying on after Confirmation for the purpose of maintaining the relationships and community our programs have made for them. How's that working?
Maybe a better model would be to offer lots of opportunities for young people to try lots of communities- short term, long term, large and small. Expose them to as many groups, activities, and mentors as the Church has to offer. Let them know that there are places for them within the parish community.
Times are changing, kids are changing- are our programs changing?
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About Me
- margmor
- I'm a career Youth Ministry Coordinator, now serving as a Pastoral Ministry Managers in the largest Collaborative in the Boston area...married to the Best YM in the Archdiocese. On my office bulletin board, an illustration from St. Joseph's Baltimore Catechism shows two boys wearing baseball mitts looking out a window. One says "Too bad it's raining." The other replies, "When we accept things like this from God without complaining, it helps to clean the selfishness out of our souls." That just cracks me up.
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3 comments:
man, this is a tough one.
I grew up in the community of Hanson, with sub-communities or activity groups such as cousins, school, church, and little league. Communities are more than simply a group of people that you get to do stuff with - they are self-sustaining entities that possess both geography and distinct identity. Depending on the size of the population, there can be a hierarchy of lesser communities operating within a larger one but at some point become too small to be self-sustaining (in some small towns like Hanson, there is little difference in the overall populations of the town, the school, and the church and therefore each are not separate communities - in larger towns they may be). Lesser communities within a larger community recognize and work towards the betterment of the larger community. All have benefits and drawbacks, things that help you grow up stronger and things that will hold you back, people you like and people you dislike, and most of the time you have (at least as a child) little control over which communities you shall be a member of. Mostly, you are stuck with it and must find how to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives - and this learning experience will stick with you for life. Then as you go through life and you use these skills that you learned as a community member, you are reminded of that community and the time you spent there - making the community itself something you remember always. Life in South Hanson wasn't all rosy, but it is an inseparable part of me and I draw on experiences from that time and place constantly (not always successfully by the way, but that is not a criteria). So a community is something that you are actively and intimately involved with (willingly or not) to a point where it has an effect on you and you on it. People who move from town to town seldom become part of that community. People who whimsically bounce from club to team to organization, choosing to quit if it is not satisfactory and rewarding enough, never become true members of that group. When you move too fast looking for better, you will never find it because the better you find will always be someone elses better and is always inter-twined with worse. One needs to be rooted, requiring slowing down and working to create your own version of better. That is what creates a community - not running.
So regarding the question of what kind of community to offer - as a community member who is responible for developing progams for your youth to participate in, offer the best community activities you can for them but don't make the mistake of thinking that activity groups are actually separate communities. They are merely pieces of a unique community that tend to be of more interest to some community members than others. If the youth group and the bible study group and the bingo group and the eucharistic ministers group and the decorating committee all become separate communities, there is hardly anyone left to be the parish community and all become equal (but lesser) in the hierarchy. People who participate in specific interest groups need to be aware of the larger community that makes these activity groups possible and that their involvement (good or bad) has an effect on the larger community. Retreats cannot create a community - but they can inspire somebody to try to improve their community. YOW's entire mission is to give individual parishes an opportunity to strengthen their own communities (we sometimes overlook that truth). Interestingly, YOW Team comes close to being (or may actually be) a community, but YOW itself does not. Confirmation, CCD, Youth Group, 4-H, Little League, school clubs - none should attempt to be but should simply be proud of the important roles they play within the community they are part of and that they try to make better. If you can get your teens to enjoy your programs and recognize and have pride in being a member of your parish community (I believe that your parish is large enough, distinctive enough, self-reliant enough to qualify as a separate community within the larger town community) they will work to make that community better and carry those lessons learned with them forever, wherever they travel.
thanks for making my point Harly! My post isn't to question the true meaning of community, but to point out that what WE elder people see as community (my definition, from my experience, sounds much like yours) is NOT what young people today see as community. Our definition isn't wrong, and neither is theirs, but the youth I serve don't slide neatly into my model of community- they've got their own model, and the question is: if we're serving youth based on their needs and culture, then does it work anymore to try to program within our vision?
This is an interesting post! As a youth minister and Confirmaton coordinator, I can say that today's youth have much more fluid experiences of community (just look at places like MySpace of FaceBook).
In the programs that I have coordinated, I have always looked (at first unintentionally and then as I grew older, intenionally) at community not as an end in itself, but as a byproduct of an encounter with Christ. As I begin to experience Christ in my own life, I begin to see the ways in which I am connected to others. In a sense, in Christ, 'I' becomes 'We,' not simply because once I am of Christ, I am never alone, but also because union with Him necessarily means union with all of those who are also in Him--the whole Body of Christ.
To be sure, most teens won't articulate this, but as they encounter Christ and begin to live out their faith, I constantly see them drawn to each other--it is a natural (or better yet, supernatural) sharing of the journey. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't things that we can do as youth ministers) to help strengthen that movement toward community. Mostly, I think that it boils down to actually valuing their gifts and participation throughout the larger community (making a space for them in an integrated way, not just having 'youth' things to do), and consantly inviting them.
I like your idea of offering a wide range of opportunities to experirence different kinds of community!
Just my $0.02.
By the way, I like your blog!
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