According to Renewing the Vision, there are three essential goals of youth ministry: (1) forming young disciples; (2) engaging teens in the ongoing life of the faith community; and (3) maximizing the potential for both physical and spiritual growth of young people. One way to address all three of these goals is through service programming.

Pamela J. Reidy, in her book To Build a Civilization of Love: Catholic Education and Service Learning, explains how younger teens learn about service.

• Younger teens are growing in their ability to think abstractly.
• Young adolescents are searching for their identity and a sense of belonging.

Young teens will take service lessons to heart if they are:

• offered the chance to learn.
• engaged in quality, concrete opportunities to see the realities of the poor, oppressed, and marginalized.
• provided opportunities to experience joy and hope in working toward a solution.

In my experience, younger teens do not always know the “church terms” for what they are doing, they participate because it is good to help others by doing what Jesus did.

An important part of this learning should be the naming of the service component. For example, our parish offers a program called LETS—Living the Experience of Those we Serve—for our 8th grade confirmation candidates. It is a 12-hour fast designed to show teens a little bit of how it feels to be poor. They must wait in line for “food” (bread and water for two meals, rice and water for a third); they must wait in line for the bathroom. This year they built their own shelters out of boxes and garbage bags and learned how life might be for those in disaster shelters. Speakers from the parish social service agencies come to share their experiences of serving those less fortunate, from neighbors in the community to our Uganda mission.

 Throughout the day we emphasize that the church teaches that all human beings deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. This may seem like basic knowledge, but most teens do not realize the church has a specific teaching on this issue. They know it i’s the right thing to do, but it takes on more meaning when they learn the church’s stand.

Teens learn that participating in caring for others is a basic human right. We show them it is not only their right to care for others, but it is their responsibility. They begin to see what they have that others do not.

This awareness led last year’s confirmation class to get more involved in our parish and help bring God to others through liturgical ministries, serving the current confirmation class through witness talks, and serving as team leaders at LETS and the retreat. They treat each other with more respect. Serving others is a theme that continues to shape them.

Linking the experience with the church’s social justice teaching offers youth a more balanced view of the church and the world it serves. Teens begin to develop a deeper appreciation of their faith. The choices teens make take on new meaning and offer them an opportunity to change the world for the better.