by Amy Reisen,
Coordinator of Youth Evangelization and Discipleship
What a whirlwind the last four months have been. The warm and sunny summer days seem to just fly by each year. In my time as a teacher, I remember always thinking summer would be the time to rest, relax, and refresh. Instead, those months came with seeing everyone I hadn’t seen, resetting all the areas of my classroom I had neglected during the school year, and ultimately trying to fit a whole year’s worth of catching up into two and a half months.
Most people seem to know this feeling: Summer becomes filled with trying to fit everything in, and make it the best it can be, but in the end, it wraps up just as it feels it is getting started. For me, this summer looked different. There wasn’t this stark start and end to the summer as there’s been in the past. Now, it’s still been a whirlwind, but something wholly different.
At the start of this summer, I left teaching for a new adventure. That adventure is what has led me to write this article—for the last four months, I have been working as the Coordinator of Youth Evangelization and Discipleship for the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln. I say, without hesitation, that these four months have been an absolute dream come true.
I grew up in Ashland, a smaller town here in the Diocese of Lincoln, where my family was a part of St. Mary Parish, and I attended Ashland-Greenwood Public Schools. After graduation, I went on to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and studied education, which led me to a teaching job at St. Wenceslaus School in Wahoo for four years. I also coached (and still coach) the speech team at Bishop Neumann High School in Wahoo.
While teaching, I studied at the Augustine Institute to pursue, and ultimately complete, a master’s degree in theology. During this time, I could feel my heart growing and changing. I loved teaching, but I also knew something was missing. I wanted to share in a different way, and I was waiting for that way to be shown to me. This past winter, when a job at the diocese opened up, I knew it was time to move.
While new in the position of Coordinator of Youth Evangelization and Discipleship, I am not so new to the programs run out of this office. My life was forever changed through the Totus Tuus program when I was a part of the high school program in the years 2012-2014, and even more so when I started as a missionary in the summers of 2015-2017.
As time went on, I stepped into new roles—chaperoning on the March for Life and a diocesan trip to Rome, as well as helping to lead Teens Encounter Christ (TEC) retreats, and training the missionaries for Totus Tuus each summer. Each opportunity to help at these events caused a part of me to light up—a part that I didn’t even know was there. It renewed in me the joy of encounter and even more the joy of discipleship.
Each of these events reopened the opportunity to walk with someone—a mentor for myself or to be a mentor to another. This, along with the youth group I attended in high school, formed my vision and philosophy for Youth Evangelization and Discipleship.
As a launching point, it is important to understand what youth evangelization and discipleship is. While it’s easiest to say that this is just a rebranding of what we’ve previously titled youth ministry, this description does not encompass all, or even much, of what evangelization and discipleship really is. Instead, this position aims to help bring youth and young adults (those in junior high, all the way to our young adult community for people 21-40 years old) to know the person of Christ, have him enter into their lives and hearts, and then continue with them on a walk of following him. To evangelize—share the gospel of Christ with others, and disciple—walk with them, following him.
For this reason, the focus is not so much on events, but rather on helping to coach, form, and accompany those who will accompany our young people. My mission, as well, is to help provide opportunities for encounter to happen and to give the opportunity for young people to WANT to walk with others walking with Christ.
My high school youth group made an impact on me that I will never be able to fully explain, or repay. Each week when we arrived, we said a prayer with the line, “May you use the gifts you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.” This was modeled to us, by our leaders each and every week. There was not one Sunday that they told us they had all the answers, but they did have a heart for the work they were doing. This couple invited us in—both physically into their home and spiritually—to accept and own our faith. They called us to more but did not rush us. And each year, we were told over and over again that the door was always open—graduation did not mean our relationship with them had ended.
These incredible people were given the gifts of faith, trust, and hospitality. They were filled with fire and love. And they shared that with each person who walked into their home. In full honesty, this couple continues to walk with me, and several others who attended youth group over the years. We know that we are not to use the front door when we show up, but come to the side door off the porch, where friends and family enter the house. We know that the side door will always be open to us—no matter the problem, no matter the mistake, no matter the crisis of faith. They have truly modeled in a beautiful way the love they have received from God, and passed it on to those of us he entrusted to their care over the years.
This is my vision for Youth Evangelization and Discipleship. It is to help leaders feel formed, seen, known, and loved, so that they might pass it on to the youth around them. To allow those on the ground to feel as though they are prepared to accompany our young people as they walk toward Christ. Experiences on retreats and pilgrimages are important parts of a young person’s faith life and getting that initial fire! They cannot, however, be the focus of the spiritual life. That must be a relationship with Christ.
As adults, we must provide young people with companions to help them with that relationship with Christ, and stay beside them as they gain their footing on this walk of faith. We must share effectively and invitingly the gospel, and then continue to walk with our young people— to ensure they know they are not called to self-sufficiency in the spiritual life, but instead are part of a beautiful community walking toward the shared goal of sainthood.
