For The Dialog
Thompson’s first year directing the diocese’s youth ministry includes listening and building on the good
Brides traditionally seek “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” to wear when they walk to the altar.
Kyle Thompson is following a similar strategy — using the old, the new and the borrowed — in his first year at Office for Youth and Young Adult Ministry, which he directs.
After traveling the diocese, listening to youth ministers, volunteers and young people, Thompson is restoring a Pitcher and Basin work camp with a new name; planning a revised annual diocesan rally for middle school students previously called Kommotion; and studying an idea of diocesan youth leaders to solve a common problem facing parishes today: finances, or more specifically, how to provide an effective youth ministry given limited resources.
Those parish visits also reassured Thompson as to how youth ministry is viewed within the diocese.
“Not only did they make the youth a priority, they desired to do more with them (young people) and increase the level of involvement they had with the youth, and that the youth had with the parishes. … Youth are not only the future of our church, but also the church present and we need to treat them as such.”
He also was impressed by the youth he’s met, especially at the annual Youth Pilgrimage through Wilmington held the Saturday before Palm Sunday. “The event is such a wonderful testament to our faith, just to see the number of kids filling our church.”
He said the march, in which hundreds of young people carried a cross through city neighborhoods into parish churches, provided a good witness of the young people’s faith.
“Greeting all they passed, and lovingly expressing their faith to those watching, showed how proud the participants were of their faith. This was the highlight of my first year.”
“Helping Hands, Washing Feet” is the new name for the weeklong summer workcamp previously known as Pitcher and Basin. Thompson said the new name, offered by a student at St. Mark’s High School, still refers to Jesus washing the feet of the Apostles at the Last Supper, and carries the idea of servant leadership. The camp will be July 30-Aug. 5 in Easton, Md., where participants will again work with Habitat for Humanity Choptank. (Spaces are still available for Helping Hands, Washing Feet. For information visit the youth ministry website, www.cdowcym.org, and click on the link to the program.)
Some changes have been made to the format, Thompson said, such as the addition of music ministry, which will be available each night. A team-building program may also be included.
The middle school rally is less definite this year, but again there would be changes. Thompson said he wants the program to include confirmation students as part of their preparation. He hopes to have two events each year, one for the northern part of the diocese and one for the southern.
One of his primary goals is to study ways of ensuring effective youth ministry. One area he is studying, which he learned about at conferences and meetings with youth ministry officials from other dioceses, is a clustering of parishes near each other with one paid, full-time youth minister.
It is not an ideal proposal, he said. “I would like to have a full-time, paid youth minister in every parish.” But current finances, here and in other dioceses across the country, do not make that feasible.
Less than a handful of parishes in Delaware and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, which comprise the Diocese of Wilmington, have full-time, paid youth ministers, he said. Others use part-time, paid staff member ministers or volunteers to coordinate youth ministry.
The issue is similar to the challenge the diocese faces in staffing its parishes, though for different reasons. The lower number of priests available to be pastors stems from a decline in vocations, resulting in too few to staff every parish.
Bishop Malooly addressed the situation last year in a letter titled, “Together in the Spirit: A Pastoral Vision.” He noted that one option, besides the resident pastor model, is a “linkage” of two or more parishes, with one pastor and administrative team serving all the churches included. Yet each parish would retain its own identity. That form of parish leadership already is in place in several areas.
“Even in parishes with a resident pastor, it is essential that there be a spirit of cooperation and a sharing of resources with neighboring parishes,” Bishop Malooly wrote.
Thompson believes the clustering youth ministry idea fits with the bishop’s vision of neighboring parishes sharing resources.
Even with the financial concerns, Thompson is confident parishes will find a way to provide youth ministry.
“The priority is there — they just have to do it with the limited resources they have.”
