Our parish has a middle school youth group called EDGE. It is a LifeTeen program that eight other adults join me in running. We meet every Monday evening to share the faith with about 70 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders.
It’s a big group and, honestly, we could use some more help but we do our best. One evening, we were all pretty discouraged by the time the last person left.
That night I went home and picked up The Joy of the Gospel by Pope Francis. In section 24, entitled “Taking the first step, being involved and supportive, bearing fruit and rejoicing” I read this:
“Evangelization consists mostly of patience and disregard for constraints of time. Faithful to the Lord’s gift, it also bears fruit. An evangelizing community is always concerned with fruit, because the Lord wants her to be fruitful. It cares for the grain and does not grow impatient at the weeds. The sower, when he sees weeds sprouting among the grain does not grumble or overreact. He or she finds a way to let the word take flesh in a particular situation and bear fruits of new life, however imperfect or incomplete these may appear.”
The EDGE team is the sower and as such we must have patience and not overreact to the weeds. The weeds can be very distracting, not only to the adults, but also to youth who want to participate and enjoy being in the group.
I took such comfort in the Pope’s words and sent them along to the rest of the group. I remind myself often that we are there to serve the youth and hopefully our example will speak to the beauty of our faith even if the words we use to teach are not well-received.
How do you keep moving forward in ministry when it is difficult?
Copyright © 2014, Deanna Bartalini
Deanna Bartalini
Deanna G. Bartalini, is a Catholic writer, speaker, and educator. She serves on the retreat team at Our Lady of Florida Spiritual Center. Deanna loves teaching about Catholicism and how it fits into our daily lives. She writes at DeannaBartalini.com, serves as the editor of the NewEvangelizers.com blog, and is a contributor there as well as at AmazingCatechists.com. Deanna contributed to A Catholic Mom's Prayer Companion published by Ave Maris Press. She is the author of “Invite the Holy Spirit into Your Life: Growing in Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control” published by Our Sunday Visitor. Deanna is available to lead retreats and speak at catechist and ministry events.
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