The Best Youth Ministry Bridges Parish and Secondary School
Don’t choose between parish and school. Unite them.
As a teenager, I attended the local Catholic secondary school. And like 95% of my classmates, I wasn’t practicing my Catholic faith.
Then Daniel showed up.
Daniel was our school chaplain. He was a young guy from the UK who had felt called to do youth ministry halfway across the world. One day, he walked into one of my classes and gave a talk on the Gospel that changed my life.
Daniel was also the youth minister at our local parish. He had taken the school chaplain gig because he needed something to supplement his parish hours. So it was no surprise when, after talking to Daniel, he invited me to the parish youth group.
I went along, and encountered a love and joy that was radically different to what my school friends were offering. I kept showing up.
Twelve years later, I’m still a practicing Catholic, and I now lead a diocesan youth ministry team. It all started with Daniel: a youth minister who saw our Catholic secondary school as his mission field, and our parish as home base.
For a long time, I assumed this model of secondary school and parish youth ministry was standard. It wasn’t until I started working for a Diocese that I realised how rare it actually is.
The Separation of Parish and Secondary School
In most dioceses, parishes and Catholic secondary schools have separate support structures. Separate teams spend separate budgets trying to achieve separate goals. Collaboration is rare, and it often depends on staff who are willing to go the extra mile.
At a local level, the relationship between a parish and it’s nearby Catholic secondary school can be hit or miss. I’ve seen instances of enthusiastic collaboration and instances where the parish priest and principal won’t even speak to each other.
Most commonly, the relationship is one of well-meaning mediocrity. An over-worked parish priest celebrates occasional school masses, and a small portion of the school community (<10%) are involved in parish life.
This separation of parish and secondary school is a major limiting factor on the success of local youth ministry. A youth ministry that is limited to the parish or secondary school will never be as successful as a ministry that incorporates both.
The Problem with Parish-Only Youth Ministry
In many of our parishes, there are fewer than 15 teenagers attending mass each Sunday. You can promote the youth group after every mass, but if there are only a dozen young people (or their parents) in the pews, you’re going to have a hard time growing the youth ministry.
“But what about outreach?” I hear you ask. Sure, outreach can help. But where are you going to focus your outreach?
You could do it online: making YouTube videos or building a social media presence. But your success will be proportional to (1) your ability to use these platforms effectively, (2) your willingness to invest a lot of hours, and (3) how high you score on the Fr-Mike-Schmitz-Scale of personal charisma.
You could take to the streets. My parish youth group leaders used to go to the local skatepark to hand out chocolate bars and invitations to youth group. But it’s not easy. You’re a stranger trying to connect with young people who don’t particularly want to talk to you.
If only there was a place where hundreds of Catholic teens already gathered each week. A place where relationships with young people could be built organically amidst the day-to-day rhythm of the institution. A place where youth leaders weren’t seen as random strangers, but were potentially the coolest adults in the room.
O wait…
The Problem with Secondary School-Only Youth Ministry
So, why not just do youth ministry at the local Catholic secondary school?
In many ways, it’s easier than parish youth ministry. You’ve got a captive audience of hundreds of young people. If you can make your programme slightly less boring than whatever else is going on at that time, attendance often takes care of itself.
There’s just one problem: most students who engage with youth ministry solely through school stop practicing their faith after graduation.
I’d hypothesise that there are two main reason for this:
It becomes part of the school routine. Students will (subconsciously) file youth ministry alongside wearing a uniform, school assemblies, and being part of the debating club. It’s “something that you do at school.” When the student graduates and the school routine ends, so does their practice of the faith.
It doesn’t bridge to parish life. If a student’s entire experience of the Catholic faith is within the four walls of a school, stepping into parish life can feel daunting and unfamiliar. Most students never make the jump.
The Solution
The solution is a model of youth ministry that bridges school and parish.
The secondary school is the mission field. It’s where outreach should happen. That might look like a parish youth minister spending a few hours each week at the school, school retreats led by parish leaders, or the presence of parish youth leaders at school events.
The parish is home base. It’s where young people are invited to participate in ongoing discipleship, receive the sacraments, and be part of a Catholic community.
Crucially, the bridge between school and parish has to be personal. When a student is invited into parish life by someone they trust, someone they already know from school, the parish becomes a lot more accessible.
What We’re Doing in Our Diocese
In our diocese, we’ve taken a bold step toward bridging the parish-school divide by launching the Local Youth Minister (LYM) Project.
The idea is simple: create youth ministry roles that explicitly serve both a parish and its neighbouring Catholic secondary school. The parish pays one-third of the salary, the school another third, and the diocese covers the final third. The youth ministers are diocesan employees, trained and supported by our diocesan team, but ministering in a local context.
We’ve gotten some push-back about the requirement for parish-and-school collaboration. Some parishes want a parish-only option. Some schools prefer to fund internal programmes. But for us, this commitment of collaboration is non-negotiable.
Not every diocese can fund a project like this, but for those who can, building attractive structures that support parish-and-school collaboration is one of the best ways to achieve it.
The Best Youth Ministry
Parish-only youth ministry often struggles to grow beyond the small number of teens who show up on Sundays. School-only youth ministry often sees students fall away the moment they graduate
But when schools become places of outreach, and parishes become homes for discipleship, the result is powerful. More young people hear the gospel and become part of Catholic communities that can nurture their growing faith.
Fostering this collaboration between parishes and secondary schools isn’t easy. It requires creativity and long-term commitment. But it’s one of the best things that a diocese can do to create lifelong Catholic disciples.