A new youth ministry initiative in Derry is showing young people how to enjoy their faith, writes Mary O’Donnell
An exciting youth initiative, which has enabled young people to evangelise young people in Derry, is coming to the end of its first year and is now offering the opportunity for others to get involved.
Bringing the vibrancy of young people’s faith to the fore through parish missions and school retreats, and its lively youth event, ‘Revival’, the Derry Youth Community (DYC) has certainly been making an impact since its launch last September in Templemore parish.
During Lent, DYC facilitated debate nights for young people, during which they engaged with each other and Bishop Donal McKeown, in discussing faith and social issues, such as Jesus, the Church, justice, women, sex and contraception.
The series of debates came to a close at one of the monthly Revival nights in St Eugene’s Cathedral, during which young people in Year 10 and above enjoy music from a live band and listen to a guest speaker, before getting together for a chat and some tasty finger food.
Having encountered the DYC members in their schools and parishes, more and more young people are embracing the opportunities offered by the community to explore and develop their faith, particularly at these Revival events on the last Wednesday night of each month, which runs from 8.30-9.30pm.
Passionate about their faith and sharing it with others, DYC leaders Charlotte Gormley and Seanan Cregan have been heartened at the response to the initiative and are looking forward to building on the success of the first year.
Charlotte (20), from Newcastle in England, got involved in youth ministry after spending a gap year with a youth ministry team that had visited her school and made an impression on her with their vibrancy.
“This experience really deepened my faith and helped me realise how important God is in young people’s lives.
“I didn’t have a personal relationship with God, which I got when I joined the youth ministry team, and I realised that I wanted to help other young people find God in their life,” she says.
After spending two years living in community with other young people, Charlotte was thinking about how to broaden her experience in youth ministry, when her “boss”, Fr Dermot Donnelly, brother of TV personality Dec Donnelly, told her about the new youth community starting up in Derry.
Explaining that Fr Donnelly was a friend of Fr Paul Farren, director of the Derry Diocesan Catechetical Centre through which the youth community was being established, Charlotte adds: “I thought this would be a really good opportunity and challenge.
“It has been great to continue in youth ministry and working for God, and the young people have been so open to us. It is such a rewarding experience.”
Opportunity
Seanan (20), whose family live in Muff, Co. Donegal, is also enjoying the opportunity to bring all her experience in youth ministry to the DYC.
She had spent six years with Net Ministries, which she discovered through Youth 2000, and was looking for a new opportunity when she got chatting to Fr Brendan Collins, while on Lough Derg with a group of young people led by Bishop Donal McKeown, and heard about the plans for a youth community in Derry.
The team has been working in both primary and post primary schools in and around the city, as well as venturing to other parts of the diocese.
“We know how much we have benefitted from deepening our faith and we hope that other young people can have this experience. Young people can relate better when they see other young people enjoying their faith, and this is what peer ministry does. That’s how it happened for us,” Seanan says.
And, according to the feedback from some of the schools where the team has led school assemblies and retreats, the young people are responding enthusiastically to the lively role-plays and stimulating debates, and to the quiet times for prayer and reflection.
Head of Religious Education in St Patrick’s College, Maghera, Mrs Francine Walls hails the DYC retreat for the boys and girls in Year 14 as “outstanding” and “very worthwhile”, saying that the young people had “loved it”.
Ms Marguerite Hamilton, principal of Thornhill College, Culmore, Derry, said that they felt “very blessed” with the outcome of the DYC retreat in the school for Years 8, 9, 10 and 11.
“The girls found it a very fulfilling experience. There were a range of activities from quiet meditation to active discussion, and a celebration of the Eucharist at the end,” Ms Hamilton says, commending the youth team for its tremendous input.
Bishop Donal McKeown is also delighted with the work of, and response to, the youth team, and is confident that, if it can be grown, the DYC will become “a powerhouse of evangelising activity and evangelical witness”.
“It is clear that the first members of the DYC have done excellent work in reaching out to young people through retreats in schools and other events.
“But their commitment to live together in community is itself a vital witness to the Gospel. Actions speak louder than words,” he says.
“It is not easy to hand on the Christian Faith in a culture where many words have been hollowed out. Good/bad, marriage, truth, have now come to mean what the individual or the group wants them to mean. And it can be very hard to find a language where people can have a shared understanding of key concepts,” Bishop McKeown says.
“All the evidence points to the fact that shared language, beliefs and values are normally passed on to individuals in the context of community. And that is also good Christian theology. St Paul talks about the Church as the Body of Christ or the People of God, where none of us is as smart as all of us. Belonging is part of believing.”
As the Derry Youth Community comes towards the end of its first year, Bishop McKeown explains how it was born of that “profound Christian conviction about mission, namely that community is not just an excellent context for evangelisation but part of the content of that evangelisation”.
“People in relationship are a much better witness to the effects of the Gospel than individuals alone. And the grace of evangelisation is it builds people into committed relationships with God and with others,” he says.
Acknowledging, in this Year of Consecrated Life, the “huge work done by those who dedicated their life to live celibately in religious communities in order to bear witness to the Gospel”, Bishop McKeown says: “Their witness was and is part of their ministry.”
“It is in building the human capacity to go beyond a superficial culture and to relate to God, others and self, that people can be helped to find what they are looking for – belonging, identity, value, love, support, trust and hope.”
Any young person, aged between 18 and 25 years, interested in spending a year living in community with other youths and helping to deepen young people’s relationship and friendship with Jesus, is encouraged to find out more by contacting the team by telephone, on (028/048) 7126 2894, email: dyc@derrydiocese.org or visiting their website, www.derryyouthcommunity.com.
As well as creating lasting friendships and gaining a qualification in youth ministry, which can lead to a degree in youth work, participants have accommodation in the heart of the historic Derry City, with living expenses taken care of and a monthly stipend provided.