How Does Your Parish Bring Generations Together? Learning from US Catholic Communities

General
1

Hello everyone!

I’m a lay Catholic from South Korea working in youth ministry research. I’d love to hear about your parish experiences!

Recently, I’ve been studying youth evangelization and discovered how important “family-friendly parishes” are - communities where different generations come together to praise God. Unfortunately, in Korea, our liturgies tend to be quite segregated by age groups, making it challenging for families to share their faith together.

I’ve been reading American Catholic documents and noticed there’s such a beautiful emphasis on family life. This got me really curious about what parish life looks like in your communities!

I’d love to hear about:

  1. What does family participation in liturgy look like at your parish?
  2. What kinds of family-oriented activities does your parish offer?
  3. What opportunities does your parish create for teens and adults (parents, grandparents) to naturally connect and build relationships across generations?
  4. Have you seen any concrete positive changes in young people’s faith lives through family-centered or intergenerational activities? What kind of impact have you witnessed?

Please share your stories freely! Your experiences could really help us here in the Korean Catholic Church as we work on youth ministry. I’m excited to learn from you all!

Thanks in advance for sharing! :folded_hands:

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Welcome to the Forum! What a great topic! Thank you for your thoughtful questions.

I come from a very large Family (the oldest of 31 grandkids : ) I have three adopted cousins from South Korea.

Here are my answers to your four questions:

  1. What does family participation in liturgy look like at your parish?

At our Parish, we do what is called the “Children’s Liturgy,” which is where the children are invited to come up for a blessing right before the Sacred Readings and then are dismissed to go hear the readings read to them in a simplified telling, so that they can understand. They may also have other quick activities like coloring pages or a small craft to remember what they have just heard. And then they return back to the Liturgy before Holy Communion.

  1. What kinds of family-oriented activities does your parish offer?

We have a yearly Parish Picnic. We have a Family Board Game Night. Family Rosary. My home-town Parish used to have Generations of Faith, which was where people of all ages would come and have a meal in fellowship, then someone would present on a topic of our Faith (I gave a talk on Catholics & The Bible, where I shared how we Got the Bible, The different ways we interpret Sacred Scripture, and gave examples of each. I still get complements nearly two decades later on this talk and how it encouraged their Families to read their Bibles). This year I participated in a 7-Church Pilgrimage and it was neat to see how many Families participated and how Reverent they were.

  1. What opportunities does your parish create for teens and adults (parents, grandparents) to naturally connect and build relationships across generations?
    Our Parish does a pen-pal exchange each year. This is where children and the older generation are randomly paired together and write each other letters. This is a fun way for the older and wiser generation to share their wisdom with the younger generation and for the younger generation to connect with the older generation.
  2. Have you seen any concrete positive changes in young people’s faith lives through family-centered or intergenerational activities?

I once heard a Pastor say that we look at our phones more than we look at our Family. We touch our phones more than we touch our spouses. And he is not wrong. We have a disordered relationship with our phones than we do with those we hold most dear to us. Any time we make a point to put down the technology and form real relationships and moments with our Family & Friends, the more that we are Blessed.

I’ve been toying around with an idea of making a pilgrimage to our local Shrine. We would start at one Parish and walk, while Praying the Rosary and other Prayers, chanting and singing hymns, and in moments of silence, taking in the beauty of God’s creation around us. We would stop at other Churches along the journey where we would partake in Adoration and maybe a meal before we journey onward. I have also thought about maybe camping half-way in tents and sit around camp-fires, before waking up the next morning and journeying on. Once we arrive at the Shrine, there will be Priests there to hear Confession and then we could celebrate Mass together. Then maybe we could camp again and then journey Home a different way (like how the Magi left by a different way after encountering Christ in the manger). What gave me this idea was a documentary I watched about a Pilgrimage in Scotland/Ireland where Catholic Christians who are struggling with addictions participate as step towards sobriety. These are individuals who are addicted to some serous drugs, but many of us are addicted in small ways to social media, the news, YouTube, Video Games, etc.

My daughter wants to go to Japan, and I would love to visit South Korea some day!

If you ever come to the United States and find yourself in Ohio, I would love to show you around : ) If you are into baseball, we have two Major League Baseball Stadiums within driving distance of us and a Minor League Stadium also very close. You can attend Mass with my Family.

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Hi! I just happened to be serving in the youth group at my church parish. Maybe I’ll share some thoughts with you later, but I need to think about it first.

4

My parish separates the young people away into their own fellowship. I feel it’s a bad division. The young people can be exclusive but they probably also receive special funding.

My parish is very big and they tend to set single adult men aside. They’ll just ignore people for years and years. It’s not uncommon to hear guys complain that they’ve been parishioners for over a decade and never met people in the parish.

So it’s a cold hard place for some people, even when they speak up about an obvious problem they’ll be ignored.

Families probably have it best. Then the young people who get married early. Kids can meet people at Catholic schools. Single young women will always have the easiest path to being included with social groups, but I can imagine some cliques in Catholic Church are brutally exclusionary. And the church often lets older women be volunteers.

But there’s definitely some segments that are deliberately overlooked. That’s just my experience.

My grandfather was a lifelong Catholic and put several kids through Catholic school and they wouldn’t even allow him to do the collection basket.

5

Single young women probably do have the easiest time getting their foot in the door, but many women’s groups inevitably either become match-making enterprises or mommy groups. That’s great if that’s what someone is looking for, but there seems to be little space for any other topics or activities, thus leading to the practical exclusion of anyone discerning religious life or seeking to live a consecrated celibate life in the world.

This is especially true for that latter category; there still is a tendency to give an undue amount of praise to those pursuing religious life, whereas those called neither to marriage nor to religious life often get pushed aside—or worse, lectured about “God’s will” for them by strangers who somehow think it’s their place to give extremely condescending advice about “discernment,” despite the fact that these celibate women are usually fully grown adults with degrees and jobs who have long finished discerning.

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Our priest arranges events in the giant church lawn so that everyone can socialize! He built us a giant stone grill so we can bbq after mass and all get together. He invites young, local artists to come sing while we eat and puts together games for the kids. This winter, he and others built a church out of snow. It was amazing! And then they got permission to celebrate mass in it.

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Your Priest sounds awesome!

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One of the coolest men I’ve ever met

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10

Guys that hand out free BBQ ribs every weekend generally have a lot of great friends that keep coming around time after time

That smoky bbq scent and the barbecue sauce does it every time

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11

I did Exodos 90 and a lot of us would talk about the meats that we smoked recently and one of the men (not the vegan guy, but our Hispanic friend) joked, “You white people and your smoking” : )

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I think it’s not about how a church brings people together - it’s more about how they prevent people from connecting.

Some churches (if not all) have some level of nutcases running the show - and plenty of obedient people follow those nutcases.

There’s social climbers and status seekers. There’s cliques and gossip of all kinds. There’s steering committees. There’s celebrity clergy.

Yeah there’s toxicity.

But there’s also barbecues. Baby back ribs, cheeseburgers on the grill, coleslaw, hot dogs on the grill and sodas. That’s why I go to church!