 Thank you for coming to this workshop. I know that it's kind of difficult to get up here. Perhaps some people are going to come in a little late. At my last workshop, we were right by the coffee stand. So I started a bit early to let people out early, so they go get coffee and be the first in line. I'll still try to let you out early. I got booked a little tight today and I have to go do another workshop on lower campus. So this is how we're going to operate this one. We're going to kind of go through discipleship. We're going to talk around how we really reach out to teens and take them deeper in the faith. Then we're going to have a time for just Q&A. Because again, I feel like it's funny. They give you these amazing topics, like talk about making teens disciples for Jesus. That's like one of my favorite things to talk about. Then they say you only have an hour and 15 minutes. Then on top of that, this is maybe like the fourth talk you've heard today, and you have another one tonight, and you have like four more days or something like that. I understand that there's just so much that we can take. And so just as all the talks I'll be doing this week, I am not trying to get you everything you need to know about discipleship, but try to get you a few foundational things that you can bring back to your parish. So as you see a teenager, you know that they're not hopeless or helpless, and that there is a way that they can come deeper into relationship with Jesus Christ. And so we're going to talk around how we do that in some practical ways that are deeper and a little bit more substantial than just have them pray. And then we're going to have some time for Q and A, to where we can just talk through some of this stuff together, troubleshoot some of these challenges, because the reality is, is that what we're about to talk about, though it's one of my favorite things to talk about, the thing that's tough about it is that there's no silver bullet. I wish I could say go home, find a teen, pray three Hail Marys, let them read the gospel mark, have them come back, talk about it, and they'll be a disciple. But that just won't work, right? And plus if that was it, this would be a really short talk. And so I want to make sure we have some time to just discuss this and to really digest it together. And so we'll talk for maybe 40 minutes, take 20 to 25 minutes to kind of break this open together and then try and get you out of here a little bit early so that you have some time to decompress before tonight's session. Does that make sense? We're all on the same page. All right, let's go ahead and pray and then we'll dive right in. Nay, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. God, we just thank you for today. We thank you for the breath in our lungs. We ask that you just bless us. You lead us and you guide us. Lord, we believe you've called us into this mission. You've called us for a purpose. So Lord, we pray for your anointing and your grace to be with us. As we take some time to just learn a bit more about you and your call to serve the church. So Lord, be with us and guide us. We ask all of this in Jesus' name, amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. For those of you all that I haven't met yet, my name is Chris. I know some of you. You've been at a talk or two with me so far. But for those that I haven't met, I live here in town now. So I'm officially a townie, which is still strange for me to say, even though it's been six years. I grew up in Northwest Ohio. Did youth ministry in a very small parish in Florida? Then did youth ministry in a very big parish in Houston? Came back to Steubenville to serve with an inner city ministry and did that for six years. And now over the past six months, I've been serving the bishops with the Eucharistic revival and the National Eucharistic Congress. And so collectively about 15 years of youth ministry experience. And even though I'm technically out of the parish and not technically serving teens on a weekly basis, the way that I used to when I was in the church, I still am privileged to get to disciple and to walk with a group of a few young men to kind of help them grow in their faith. And so last talk, I kind of started this whole kind of conversation with a group of youth ministers about doing outreach. This is somewhat of the second category where we talk about what do you do once you actually reach somebody? How do you take them a bit deeper? And I think anybody who's ever presenting, it's just kind of tongue in cheek. It's the thing you're supposed to say, like, I love talking about this, you know? When you're talking to teens, you're like, I love talking about virtues restrictions. You know, like you just have to kind of say it so that people think it's exciting. I actually genuinely love talking about discipleship. It's one of the things that gets me excited. It's one of the things that helps me get out of bed in the morning. And so for us to be able to talk about this is really thrilling for me. But I don't wanna kind of oversimplify this because like I said, what we're gonna do here today is just the tip of the iceberg. We're just going to take a look at what this means and what this looks like and how we can start to move towards this with our youth programs and in our churches, because if there's ever a generation that needs discipled, it's today's teenagers, amen? And I think discipleship is fairly easy to kind of get behind. I mean, one, the church has called us to disciple, right? That's Jesus' last words in the Gospel of Matthew. If you haven't heard this verse yet, you're gonna hear it time and time again. The Great Commission, where Jesus turns to as apostles or at least the 11 good ones that were still standing. And he says, y'all, you need to go and make disciples. That's what he said. It was his last thing that he said, go do this. It wasn't a great suggestion, right? It wasn't a great recommendation. It was the great commissioning. It was the call and he called them forth. But then even to double down, the church decades ago came back with renewing the vision and echoed that simple truth for what youth ministry is supposed to be in our church today. And they gave three kind of overarching goals. And the first one is right there to empower young people to live as disciples of Jesus Christ in our world. Now again, to draw people back, of course, to be a part of that community, that makes sense. And to foster a total growth, a spiritual growth in each young person, that sounds great. But discipleship is the first goal of youth ministry. I remember once, I worked in this parish in Houston, again, big parish, we had a parish administrator who was an enigma. I couldn't tell if he was a good guy or a bad guy. You know, it was kind of like some days I showed up and I was like, oh, I think he really likes me. And other days I showed up and I knew I was on his bad list. And I just could never tell where I stood with him. And then one day, I don't remember what it was, but the diocese called some churches together, just selected a few of us, some of the bigger churches. And they just wanted to have this pow wow of what we can do as a diocese. And so every church sent their parish administrator and a youth minister. So now I'm teamed up with this guy. And I don't know if you've seen Mad Men, but this parish administrator was like straight from Mad Men. Just a business guy, he's gonna come and he's gonna sell you something and he's gonna just get the deal done. And I remember being in this meeting and being so nervous because I knew I was gonna be asked some questions. I was gonna have to give input. And I was gonna have my boss right there listening to any dumb thing that came out of my mouth. And so I wasn't quite sure what was going to happen. And then something amazing happened. The other youth ministers spoke first. And I could tell not only did they not impress the guy that I was with, but their vision for youth ministry was very different from mine. That as the diocese kind of leaned in to say like, what's working? These different youth ministers said, we love to get kids around and play video games and to jump up and down and get them really excited about Jesus. And that's fantastic, don't get me wrong. If you were there at my last talk where we talked about outreach, youth ministry is supposed to be fun. You're not gonna get kids to stay if they're not enjoying themselves. And again, I'll say this time and time again. If you invite teens to a program and the program stinks and they don't meet Jesus, they're not gonna come back. If you invite teens to a program and because of where they're at spiritually or mentally or emotionally, they don't meet Jesus, but they have a good time and they feel safe, you'll get another crack at it. And so what these youth ministers were saying was not bad. It was just incomplete. They just wanted to create a safe place. And I remember hearing that and kind of looking at my parish administrator and seeing that he wasn't totally satisfied. Now granted, again, he had a disposition where I wasn't even totally sure if he loved Jesus, but I could tell that he did not love these answers. That's just how hard he was for me to read. I'm sure he loved Jesus, he's gonna get to heaven way before me. But in that moment, I just said, at my church, we want to create a safe place for the teens to hear a dangerous message, that they're going to hear something that's going to challenge them and change them and ultimately develop them into disciples. And I remember I said that and I was really nervous because it sounds impressive, but I wasn't totally sure what it meant because I was like 26. And I looked over and my coworker was like, Mm-hmm. And I realized then that I kind of had him and I had everyone else and I started talking about how we need to push into discipleship. That sometimes we get afraid of really challenging young people because they're young and we don't want to rock the boat too much and don't get me wrong, we need to be pastoral. But I cast this vision from renewing the vision about empowering young people to live as disciples for Jesus Christ. So that's the end goal and anything short of that is a failure of our church, that if we aren't creating disciples, there's not much that separates us from the local YMCA. And so as I cast that vision, not only did I feel like I was able to hopefully bring about some good and new initiatives in the diocese, but I also got my church a little bit more on board with what we were trying to do in the youth program. And I think it's easy for people to get behind discipleship. So I'm not trying to put myself on this pedestal, like look what I did, right? Like there's a reason that everybody loves Gandalf. It's because he took Frodo under his wing and made him more than he ever would have been if he stayed in the shire, right? Or there's a reason I still think about Mr. Miyagi from time to time and wish that he would just call me Daniel's son, right? Because we want to naturally be taken under someone's wing, we want to be led, we want to be taken care of in a way so that we can go from getting beat up from the bad ninjas to beating them up because we've learned karate by painting fences and waxing cars, right? Now granted, that's not talking about the church or Jesus, but you bring that into the church and then all of a sudden you see people like Paul and Timothy. And Timothy was a young guy who was lucky enough to be ministered to and reached out to and mentored by Paul. And then you have Ambrose and Augustine or Francis and Claire, Ignatius and Francis Xavier, right? Time and time again, you can look at the church's history and it's not just that you see Jesus saying, go make disciples, you seeing the saints making disciples because disciples become disciple makers. And so we need to acknowledge this, talk about this and look at this. Now, when we talk about ministry and we talk about discipleship, I want us to see what we're talking about, but also what we're not talking about. If you came to my other talk, again, we didn't have screens so I didn't make a PowerPoint. There's something called pre-evangelization, then there's discipleship. And there's all these things that coexist in the midst of this process. And if you just think about your own experience, how you got here, most likely, the majority of you weren't walking down the street with Jesus and the Holy Spirit kind of knocking you on your butts. Most likely there was kind of this progression where you asked a question or you grew up in a house where you kind of heard about Jesus and you were forced to go to Mass, but something happened, you're invited to a Bible study, you started going to Mass, you heard homilies, God took hold of you and you started going deeper and deeper and deeper. And so when we talk about the process of conversion, there's this pre-evangelization and initial evangelization and initial conversion that often happens before we get to discipleship. So this past weekend, I was in Rochester speaking at the Stoneville Youth Conference. So it was like this, but with teenagers. And it's fun and it's engaging and it's also a little frustrating. Only because I know that for so many of those teens that were there, it's going to be a highlight of their summer. And no matter what I say from stage or what the other speakers say, it's so challenging to communicate the truth that what they experienced there that weekend is still waiting for them at their home parish, that there's no Jesus of a Stoneville Youth Conference. There's just Jesus. And to make that jump is challenging. Now again, I speak for the conferences, I love the conferences, I'm at Franciscan speaking at another conference right now. I'm not saying that's bad, but what I'm saying is that those youth conferences offer initial conversion to teens who have never heard the gospel before. But if that's all they ever do, we're taking something that's supposed to be a springboard into deeper relationship and essentially making it not to be crude, but a one night stand to where they just kind of come and they meet Jesus for a bit and they won't see him again for another year. And that's not the purpose. We got to make sure that we're pushing them deeper and further. And so as a youth minister, and even as a parent now, where my kids are just two years away from being able to go to a youth conference, I want them to go to those things that are going to give them that initial conversion, those things that get them excited, those spiritual highs that we talk about so much, those are not bad things. But what those things do is it gives us a chance to go deeper with the teens and to allow them to go deeper in a relationship with Jesus Christ. And so when we talk about discipleship, we're talking about these initial things already taking place so that we can get to better catechesis, them actually believing what they're talking about and having changed their life, continued growth, and then actually becoming disciple makers themselves. So this is what we're focusing on. If you're thinking like, well, what does initial evangelization look like? We can talk about that later. We're gonna focus on some of these things and how to best do this, right? Does that make sense? So I wanna make sure we're on the same page as we look at this because what we wanna do is get to a place where God is not just attractive, but he's intimate, right? That they're not just kind of infatuated, that they don't just like God or the idea of God, but they're actually open to a relationship with God and allowing that relationship to change them. Because the reality is, is that we can't come into an encounter with God and stay the same. We never see that. Even away from God, we don't see that. When I first met my wife, when she wasn't Grace Frank, she was Grace McKnight and I saw her from across, actually outside this building, across that little construction area, I thought she was really cute. But if you would have said like, hey, you see that girl over there? Like that's the only girl you're ever gonna be able to talk to again. I've been like, what? And then if you said like, oh wait, it gets better, you're gonna have to spend all your money on her. And I've been like, what? That doesn't make sense. And then she's gonna like move in and she's gonna like enjoy the color pink and not that you really need much shampoo in the future, but the bathroom's gonna be filled with all of her stuff and it's just like, I'd be like, what are you talking about? Like that makes no sense. But once I got to know her, understand her pretty soon, like she was the only girl I wanted to talk to, right? I wanna spend money on her. Like I'm so privileged that she actually was willing to take my last name and spend a life with me. In a similar way, something needs to happen with Jesus. And the question is, how do we do that with teenagers? But we know it can happen. We see it in scripture all the time. My favorite story in all of scripture, and again, it's one of those things like, you're supposed to say it's your favorite. This is actually my favorite, the woman at the well. It was actually the gospel at my wedding. And the reason I love it is because it's such an amazing unpacking of discipleship. And I'm not gonna read the whole story and we're not gonna go through it all, but if you can recall this story, this woman shows up at this well and again, she's kind of outcast. She's on her own. We don't have time to get into all of it. But when she sees Jesus, and he's kind of breaking the rules. And again, I just, I wanna talk about this story and I just can't. But there's a lot going on here. She's kind of salty, right? She's not very warm and welcoming to the Messiah. But of course she doesn't recognize that it's the Messiah. She actually calls him a Jew, right? She's kind of like, you're a Jew. I'm a Samaritan. We don't hang out, get away. And then they start talking. And then she calls him a man. And then she calls him sir. And you start to see these walls come down and she calls him a prophet. And then at the end, she proclaims to her city that had once cast her out that he is the Messiah of the entire world. And she actually becomes the first evangelist in the Gospel of John. Jesus does that on the context of one conversation. It helps that he's God, right? For us, it's going to be a little bit more of a process. But the hope is, is that we can have young people kind of go through that same progression that Jesus goes from the stranger, which again is this pre-vangelization into a more deeper and substantial relationship. And so when we talk around some of this stuff, let's just define disciple. Because again, this is one of those words that's just so easily used, but sometimes misunderstood. And I'm not going to define it so specifically that we just kind of put ourselves in the corner. But I do want to make sure that we understand what we're talking about, right? Because again, if we look at the Gospel, Jesus kind of gives a couple of parameters, right? A disciple goes and he baptizes in the name of the Father, so in the Holy Spirit, and he teaches others to observe all that he has commanded, right? That's again, coming from the great commission that I alluded to before. But I really love this quick little translation or definition of what discipleship is and looks like. The word disciple means a learner who accepts the teaching of Christ, not only in belief, but also in lifestyle. Learning with the purpose to obey what is learned, it involves a deliberate choice, a definitive denial, and a determined obedience. So again, I love that, that last line, deliberate choice, definite denial, and then determined obedience, right? So no one looks at the cross and goes, eh. You might say like gross, or ooh, or no, or you might say you did that for me, but you don't really look at that when you understand what he did for us and go, I'll think about it later. When that truth really lands on you, there comes a point where you have to make a choice. That's why Jesus says in the book of Revelation, be hot or cold, but don't be lukewarm. And so how do we help teens make a choice? And then how do we help them know that that choice, that yes to Jesus, means that we're now saying no to other things? Again, going back to that silly analogy about my wife, when I started that altar, and I said yes to her through wealth, I work for the church, so more poverty, right? But health and sickness, that whole deal, I was simultaneously saying no to anyone else. And when we say yes to Jesus, how do we help teens know that that means that they're gonna have to live a little bit differently? That means that they can't just come to church on Sunday, but do whatever they want on Saturday. And then how do we help them stay focused on that narrow path so they can keep going? Because don't we know that Jesus is not all rainbows and unicorns and cookies baked with sunshine, that there's still gonna be storms, there's still gonna be bumps in the road, but he's gonna be there in the midst of the storm, and he's gonna pick us up when we fall. And so, as we look at this and we come to the discipleship approach, we need to understand that we have to be a little specific. And again, just kinda looking at this, that the ministry is to be carried out or carried on by people and not programs, by someone, not by doing, or by someone, not by something. Disciples cannot be mass produced, we cannot drop people into a program and see disciples emerge at the end of the production line. It takes time to make disciples. It takes individual, personal attention. It takes hours of prayer, patience and understanding to teach them how to feed and nourish their souls. When I think about discipleship and I wonder what that looks like, this is a quote I come back to often because I feel like so much is packed into these few sentences. When I was, again, in Houston, I don't know if I said this here, it was a large parish. We had about 600 teens coming on a Sunday night when I left. And my pastor loved it. It looked good, there was a lot of energy and excitement. The parents felt pretty good about dropping their kids off to a place that seemed so accepting and there was so much energy and so much life, the teachings were fine, the core team was well trained. And yet it was challenging because it was hard to tell what the fruit was. But that was only one of the challenges, but it was a big one. What's happening here? Because even Jesus talks about the challenges of people hearing the word of God, but in not bearing much fruit, right? Remember the parable, the sow or the seed? Again, it's one of my favorites. But as far as a teaching goes, not one in Jesus is best, right? If you don't, and I'm just, I'm not saying that like it was bad. Jesus, he was a great teacher, but just practically, can you imagine like if I came up here and I was like, so there's this farmer, he's kind of lazy. So he's just kind of like throwing seeds, some seed went out, fell on the ground, bird got it. Some other seed fell over here, the sun came out, scorched it, some other seed fell and then the weeds came out and choked it and some grew. There's fruit, did y'all hear that? And if I just walked away, you'd be like worst talk ever. You know, like you can't believe he came to Bosco for that. And then at the same point, the apostles, they hear that and they kind of have a similar reaction. They're like, hey Jesus, great homily. Listen, can you maybe break that down just for us because I don't quite understand what's happening? And this is interesting because it's one of the only parables where he actually gives you what he's talking about. Jesus all the time gave these parables that people were like, wait, what? And they had to think about it. But this one, he breaks it down. And again, to just kind of look at it, he says the bird is like the devil and so some people, the word's thrown out to them but it just never really takes hold. It's just, it was never gonna happen. But then he starts to break down these other things. He says the sun comes out and it scorches the seed. There was root, but it just, when things get tough and there's tribulation, there's persecution, there's suffering, it just gets too hot and then they can't withstand it and so they just, they'd go away. Remember the weeds? It says concerns of the world and love of lesser things. Isn't that boring? Isn't that scary? It wasn't like illicit sex. You know, it wasn't like some crazy party. It was just the concerns of the world just come and choke it. And then of course the seed that falls on good soil it grows 30, 60, 100 fold. But it's interesting, 75% of the people are intrigued by the word of God. They grab on to it. But it's only a fourth that actually bears fruit. And I remember thinking about that when I was looking out at this army of teens at my youth group just thinking like, what's happening here? Like how do we gauge this? And then we had discipleship programs. We had other things to kind of offset some of the large crowd problems. But that wasn't the only issue. The problem was that when you're in a crowd of 600 people it's so easy to get lost. And when you're lost it's really hard to be a disciple. I remember when I was first getting there we had this tragic accident in the parish a young father passed away unexpectedly and I didn't know the kid. I'd only been there for like a year or so. But again, as the youth minister it was my job to be there to support the family and this teen anywhere I could. And so I went to this funeral. It was very sad and very tragic. And I remember seeing the teenager throughout the whole mass. I was just watching him and looking at him. And as the funeral mass ended and we were gonna head to the grave I saw him standing by himself and I thought this was my chance to go introduce myself and see how I can assist him. I walked up to this teen in mourning and I go, hey, I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm Chris. And he looks at me and he goes, yeah I know. Because he had been in my youth group for a year. But when you have hundreds of kids in front of you every week, how are you supposed to have this intentional specific connection? And that's what I love about discipleship is that it's not about a program it's about the person. But this is also the danger. Is that as a church we're so often conditioned to just start a new program and don't get me wrong, I'm not talking that programs are bad, they're good. But when it comes to discipleship we have to think differently. That we can't just assume that there's a one size fits all magic bullet that's going to bring everybody into a relationship with Jesus. That there has to be an intentionality something specific that we work towards with the person or people in front of us. And I remember again being in this large parish and struggling that moment with that teen probably changed the course of my ministry because I was shook so bad by it. And I was friends with various youth ministers but I really clicked with some Protestant youth ministers. And I remember sitting with this one guy who was actually leaving his very large non-denominational youth group to go serve on a college campus and continue to do college ministry. And I remember sharing the story I just shared with you and talking around that and kind of understanding the challenge of what leading a large youth group was gonna be because at first I was just excited about how many teens were showing up to listen to me speak. And I didn't know how to bring it down and how I could just work with a few if I had so many. And this guy Chip was his name. He looked at me and just said, hey, like you gotta do for a few what you wish you could do for many. And I thought about that and I was like, why does that sound right? And then I realized like, cause that's what Jesus did. Right, like he died for everybody but he poured into 12 people. In fact, I thought about this. Jesus lived and walked with the apostles for three years. So if we just break that down seven days a week let's just say eight hours a day there's times where Jesus won't have to pray, sometimes the apostles won't have to get food but let's just say on average eight hours a day for three years, that's 8,000 hours. And those apostles still had major, major gaps in their lives when Jesus ascended back up into heaven, right? So if that's what happened with the apostles who led the church after three years living with Jesus we need to be patient and understanding which is here in this quote. When we look at the fact that we're gonna have teens for a handful of years for just a small amount of hours. And yet, we can still push in in a few key ways so that we can lead them towards discipleship. Y'all still tracking with me? So what are those ways? So here are some earmarks of discipleship. And we won't go through these in great detail but once we do, we'll make our way through these four that's gonna be where we land the plane and then we're gonna kinda move into some time of Q and A, okay, so we're almost through the content. What time does this end? Five, okay, so we got plenty of time but I like to talk so we'll see how this goes. So when it comes to discipleship, and again, I know that this is a 10,000 foot view so you might be saying like, well, what does this mean practically? What does this look like? I'll give examples, but this is where we're gonna probably lean into Q and A, okay, so if you're wondering like this this needs to be more practical specific, I know. I know we're going quickly through this but I wanna get there with you guys, all right? So first, there needs to be an intimacy. There needs to be a real relationship and a dynamic that is vulnerable and honest. And this can be challenging, maybe one of the more challenging elements specifically with today's young person because intimacy does not come naturally but if you've ever had a friend who is inconsistent or wears a facade or a personality around you that's different from somebody else or when they're around somebody else rather, you know how hard it is to actually have a meaningful relationship with that person. Right, we've all been there, you're hanging out with your friend and then somebody else shows up and they start to act differently, they talk differently. We need to make sure that we've, again, and this is going back to that chart that the pre-work has been done so that there's a trust and a willingness to be vulnerable with one another. And I shared this quote again with the group that was with me last session so if you heard this just bear with me and humor me but I was talking to a veteran youth minister the other day and he was talking about the challenges of youth ministry today versus when he got into youth ministry like 30 years ago. And when he said just kind of stopped me my tracks because he was so pointed and he was so specific and what he said was so scary. He said teens when I first started and I would ask the basic question, do you want a relationship with Jesus Christ? They would ask, who's Jesus? Today you ask, do you want a relationship with Jesus Christ? And they say, what's the relationship? And so this idea of intimacy is foreign because oftentimes the way teens can be real is behind the screen because there's a safety net here, right? That's why you see online bullying going through the roof because I can say something mean to you, I would never would. You look really cool and nice but if I said something really mean to you I might see it on your face and that would make me feel bad but now I can say something through a phone and I don't see the reaction and it gives you this false security. That's why when I was in high school a girl broke up with me over AIM and if you know what AIM is it means that you're my age and she broke up with me twice via AIM. I know, I mean shame on me for the second time but it's because she didn't have to see me crying into my keyboard, you know, right? And for teens today they are not used to having a relationship specifically with someone who's not their parents where they can be open and honest and vulnerable because they're afraid they may not be accepted. And for us as ministers and mentors and leaders of the church and young people we need to let them know that this is a safe place that we are a safe presence and that we're gonna be a consistent presence and that's how we get to intimacy. It's not by bearing our souls, again as adults that doesn't necessarily mean that like we need to be sharing everything with our teens. There should be boundaries. And there are even things that the teen shouldn't tell you, of course. However, if you're consistent and you're honest eventually that leads to some sort of intimacy. And for us when we see a teen who is ready to go a bit deeper if we can continue to be a present in their life continue to draw them closer to Jesus by sharing what Jesus has done in our lives by giving witness to that, by being vulnerable in that and being again there time in and time out it will lead to a place where there can be an open dialogue and you're gonna need that as they start to get a little bit deeper in their relationship with Jesus Christ because they're gonna want to ask questions and they're gonna have to kind of talk about the ups and downs. Like if they start praying they might come to you when all of a sudden they don't feel those warm fuzzies or they might come to you when they open up the book of Deuteronomy and don't understand anything that's going on. There needs to be a level of trust there and ability to have a conversation that's different from a monologue or a talk but a willingness to actually engage. And then there needs to be a mutual responsibility. Again, we're driving towards something specific our relationship with Jesus Christ. That this isn't just a mutual friendship. That this isn't just camaraderie. That there's something that we're trying to accomplish here. We're trying to experience the love of God more deeply every day and allow that love to change the way that we live our lives. And so for you as the leader your responsibility is to help guide that person. To be there for them, to be presence. That you're not gonna leave them high and dry. Now of course there's boundaries but that you'll be there for them. There's a young youth minister that I'm actually discipling now. He's never been discipled. I taught a class this year in Catechetics talking to Gen Z students who wanna go be a youth minister they have no idea what they're signing up for but they're gonna be amazing. And we were talking about discipleship and I just asked, I was like who's been discipled and one kid raised his hand. And this youth minister I'm discipling now is kind of in the same boat. He's supposed to now do all the discipleship stuff but he's realizing he's never been discipled. And talking to him's kind of infuriating because he's just so used to doing whatever he wants and not really having any responsibility and I have to keep kind of pushing him forward because my responsibility is to keep him going forward and keep him on the straight path and not that he's going off on some crazy bender but he's just sometimes a little lax or places he should probably not be so laxed and I have a responsibility to help him because he asked me. We wanna have a discipleship-disciple relationship. And for the young person, their responsibility is to take this moment seriously. That again, there has to be a deliberate choice that they are trying to live for Jesus. That doesn't mean they're going to be perfect saints. It doesn't mean they're gonna go and change the world tomorrow. Teens can barely change their own underwear. There has to be realistic expectations but they have to have an understanding that they're actually trying to do the faith in a real way. And again, I just love to take this and just simplify it by saying one beggar is showing another beggar where the bread is. That's what this means. We're all trying to get fed. We're all trying to get to Jesus and we're just doing it together. Now the other one has to be customizable. And again, this is where we have to be careful not to go into program mode. When I was in this really big parish, we had something called discipleship groups. And we would give a curriculum and we'd have something that we were trying to really accomplish. And it was so difficult for me to work with my court team because they would get something that I would give them so they could be prepped and they would think what I gave them was law. And really what it was was supposed to be a starting point to allow the conversation to go for the teens to start to flourish and then water where there seemed to be fruit that we're not trying to do a program. We're trying to really serve the people in front of us. For me, I remember when I was again in Houston, we had it all mapped out. We had a handful of youth ministers. We had a secretary who kind of had things structured in a way that just made sense on paper. And then life just happens. And so the way that we kind of had it was that I did high school and I oversaw everything and then I would take discipling young men. We had a female youth minister who did high school with me. She would take a lot of the young women. We had a middle school guy who would step up in my place if I couldn't be there because I had to do managerial stuff. We just had it laid out. And then the female youth minister had a baby and she was gone for a while. And while she was gone, this teen showed up as the church in a panic. She was in high school and she was crying. And I remember someone just kind of like brought her into my office and just sat her down. And I was like, I don't know what's going on. And I didn't, I was like, do I call the youth minister who's on like maternity? Like I'm way outside my depth. And I try my best to talk to her and work with her and I don't know. I don't think it was my best work. It was fine. Gave her some Kleenex, she talked. And maybe 30 minutes later, she was gone. And then like a week or two later, she came back and she wanted to follow up. Which again, I was kind of like, okay, like, I usually don't, you're a girl, I'm a guy, you know, like we have my secretary around the corner, she's listening, everything's safe, but okay, I guess I'm the only high school youth minister here, sit down. So we start talking again. And she starts to open up a little bit more. And I do my best to kind of just be present to her and love on her. And then the next week, as if God was giving me a grace from heaven, the youth minister from maternity came back and I thought like, I need to give this girl to our youth minister. They're gonna be a match made in heaven. And so I set up a meeting. I was like, hey, I'm gonna hand you off to the other youth minister. She's gonna just keep working with you. This is really good. I think everything's gonna be great. So we set up a meeting. The youth minister is ready for that meeting, but then she gets appendicitis. And so she has to cancel last minute. And so I have to go fill in. And now I'm meeting for a third time and I go and meet this girl. And at this point, I start realizing like, you know what, some of her wounds are father wounds and are from men and maybe this is okay. And then she started to kind of open up in some ways that I've realized like, this is still okay, but we need to put some parameters on this. And then she just started to really ask like why I'm talking to her. And I didn't wanna say like, well, it's because the scheduling is so messed up here right now. But she just said like, why are you doing this? And I said, well, because I want you to know Jesus. And then she said like, well, I have some questions. And I said, great. And so she started asking me questions. And I started answering the best that I couldn't. If I didn't know the answer, I'd look up the catechism verse that or paragraph that I needed to find and I would give it to her. And then a couple weeks went by and she was like, hey, I have more questions. And I said, okay. And so there was a coffee shop not too far. I was like, I'll meet you at the coffee shop or bring the other youth minister and she's like, great. So we start this all of a sudden kind of dynamic where she has questions. I'm kind of like her go to Google account. And she just looks at me for everything Catholic. And even though I never would have really shaped it that way, before I knew it, we had kind of entered into this like pre-evangelization, pre-catechesis relationship outside of programming. And then she offered to babysit. And then all of a sudden, my wife got her claws into Morgan, this teen. And she would be over more. And we had a good relationship with the parents. And before I knew it, and again, in a way I never would have scripted, we were in a relationship that was essentially me discipling her where she had enough trust in me. I was able to speak into things that the other female youth minister was not able to speak into just because she was a woman and she needed to hear some truth from a man. I kept bringing the female youth minister along. I kept setting up parameters so that we were always safe. But in a unique way, I had to take what I had done so many times for young men and totally shift it to be with this young woman. And let me tell you, as I look back at all the people I've worked with and all the stories in which God has chosen to use a schmuck like me, the way that I got to walk with Morgan through her high school years is one of my favorites because it was something I never would have planned and it was such a blessing, not just I hope for her, but even for me and my family, she became our prime babysitter and my kids still talk about Miss Morgan who now lives in Houston. But we need to be flexible and being able to work with the teens and young people that God brings forth. And then there has to be accountability. There has to be a way in which we were checking in. Jesus lived with the apostles every single day. We're not gonna be able to do that, nor should we want to. But there has to be some sort of accountability in which we are making sure that we're actually moving forward together. We all ping pong back and forth. Oftentimes we think faith is like a balance beam and if we fall, we're done. Or it's like a conveyor belt that just pushes us forward, but oftentimes you've been walking this walk long enough. You know it's about two steps forward, one step back. With a teen, sometimes it's one step forward, one step back, and then you just wanna cry. But there's an accountability and a pushing them forward together so that we are moving and working towards that end goal which is getting them to be empowered with the love of Jesus Christ. And this can be tough because sometimes someone comes from, again, a really powerful experience like a sumo conference or a retreat at your parish, and they're like, I love Jesus, I wanna give my life to him. And they mean it, right? Again, if you've ever chaperoned one of those big things, you get in the bus afterwards and maybe you give the teens the mic afterwards and they stand up there and they're like, I'm never gonna sin again. They mean it, but it's not true. And that's okay, but when the highs kind of fade and life gets tough, there still has to be a way in which we can hold each other accountable. And that can be challenging. I remember when I was doing inner city ministry, one of my favorite things I got to do specifically early on when I had a little bit more time in my responsibilities was to work with young men and to push them towards a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. And granted, these guys I was working with from the inner city were probably not as formed as you would think that many people would be who were considered disciples. But for the demographic we were serving, they were prime. And I remember that there's this kid, Deshaun. He was a white kid. His name isn't typically one that you'll see with a white kid. And so he was really kind of ostracized from both communities. And he just didn't really fit in and he was kind of socially awkward. And he was a good, good young man, but he just did not care about Jesus. But he said at first that he wanted to know more about him. And I would take him to McDonald's, we'd go bowling, we'd do all these different things. But there was never like this growth. He just kind of wanted a place where he'd come and complain. And anytime I try to talk about Jesus, in light of those complaints or those hardships, he didn't want to hear it. And after a few months, I had to kind of call him on it and say, hey man, this is really gearing up for something else and I'm not sure if you really want that. And he looked at me and again, maybe this was just because he was 15 and he didn't quite know what he was saying, but he said, yeah, I don't. I was like, okay, I really appreciate that. I can't wait to keep hanging out, but I gotta tell you, like some of this stuff needs to kind of stop. We need to kind of alter our relationship because these other guys here, they do. And so we had to kind of actually have this tough moment. Now the reason that worked was because I was still committed to hanging out with them, doing all those fun things. And I wasn't just kind of saying like, you don't love Jesus, see you later kid. I got in and do that. But there was an accountability. And he realized he wasn't quite ready for that relationship with Jesus. And he was probably more back in that pre-evangelization stage. And so we just had to kind of switch gears with him. But if we can be in a state where we have some real vulnerability and intimacy with young people, if we can hold each other responsible towards our faith, it can be specific to the individual or customizable. And we can be accountable. We have the basic foundation or earmarks for discipleship. Cool, does that make sense? Now again, I talked a little bit longer than that. Again, I wanna get you out of here a little bit early, but I wanna make sure we talk around the practical components and the specifics. And again, this is where I could talk around things that I think work because of my experience and because of my paradigm and because of my vantage point. But I know every parish is different. Every person is different. And knowing that it has to be customizable, I don't wanna just assume anything for you. So what I'd like to do is again, going to this time of Q and A, we can talk, we can have a dialogue and we can just share a little bit about what we see as working, what's not working and what questions we might have when it comes to discipling young people.