The Five Lies of Youth Ministry: Part Three - "Keep Them Entertained"

Young people love loud music, concerts, and entertainment. So let’s use this as our tool for evangelization. Let us entertain them and, in doing so, lead them to Christ. Make sure there is loud music when they arrive to youth group, and loud music when they leave. Make sure there are plenty of skits and silly songs and coloring and crafts and activities. Oh, and avoid silence in adoration—they are not ready for that yet. They need some music to stir their souls and emotions before the Blessed Sacrament...

Youth groups tend to be loud. Very loud. When there isn’t loud music, there are loud games, loud skits, and loud leaders. Occasionally I feel like the Grinch holding my ears due to all the “Noise, noise, noise” down in the Whoville of youth ministry. Yet they need this, they’re not ready for monastic silence… right?

Last year, I led a high school retreat down in Grand Island, Nebraska. In the afternoon, before our closing Mass, I sent all of the young people outside to find a spot and just be alone in silence.  And thirty minutes later, when rounded up, they begged for more time. “I’ve never sat for that long in silence. It was so refreshing!” was the standard response. As it should have been. They were embarking on the first steps of conversation with God.

Christian music has its place, as does “praise and worship” and games and skits. But youth ministry has become so addicted to these side performances that they now struggle to bring young people to the main event. Young people are afraid of silence because their youth ministers are afraid of silence, and as a result no one is hearing the voice of the Lord. Remember the story of Elijah on the mountain? How God was not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire? But rather how God called Elijah through a “still small voice”? God calls in silence. And we wonder why we have no vocations.

 Silence should be the heart of youth ministry, because silence is the heart of prayer, and what are we doing in youth ministry if not teaching young people how to pray. Pope Benedict called prayer “being in silent inward communion with God.” Each week, students should be taught the art of being still, the art of being. We cannot presume to send young people on mission if they cannot be still and silent—if they cannot pray. As the soon-to-be-saint John Paul wrote, “In order to do, we must first learn to be, that is, in the sweet presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.”

And it is there, before the Eucharist in adoration, that our young people need the most silence. Yes, music can be nice, for a bit. But the heart of their prayer must be silence. In silence men hear the call to go up to the altar of God, and women hear the call to put aside the jewels of this world for the pearl of great price. In silence the saints contemplated the great mysteries. In silence were their souls stretched, and in silence were their ecstasies. We must teach young people the art of silence. For only in silence do young people realize that they are beloved children of the father. Only in stillness do we know that God is God. As St. Augustine writes, “Men could be master of this world if only they were willing to be sons of God, for God has given them the power to become his sons. But the unhappy friends of this world so fear to be separated from its embrace that nothing is more toilsome to them than to be at rest.” May we teach young people that toil comes in the noise of this world, which distracts us from the sanctuary of silence where vocation and peace are found—where God is found.