In January, my college-aged daughter Elizabeth attended SEEK.  She spent several days in an environment where faith was assumed to matter. When she came home, I asked her to write down what she noticed. Not as a critique or a debrief, but as an opportunity for discernment.

Parishes pour time, energy, money, and heart into young people. I’ve watched pastors and youth leaders carry that responsibility with real sacrifice. This is not written to diminish that.

Leaders need generational mirrors. We cannot see what we are standing inside. I'm sharing her reflection not because she is right about everything, but because formation requires the humility to listen across generations.

I know how much time, care, and love parishes pour into young people. I don’t write this as a critique, but out of an honest tension I’ve been trying to name. Being immersed in an environment where faith was assumed to matter awakened something in me that often stays inactive in parish settings, and I’ve been asking myself why.

While part of it is because at SEEK the experience was bigger, louder, or more exciting that's not the only reason why. I think it’s because there was no pressure to perform, no feeling that I was being evaluated, and no expectations placed on me beforehand. No one was managing my time or telling me where to go, I could choose. Jesus was present, and He was trusted to do the work.

I was no longer asking, “Am I doing this right?” I was allowed to be there and to be me. SEEK showed to me how powerful it is when faith isn’t softened or made overly careful, but spoken about plainly and lived with confidence.

When I compared this to my experiences in parish life, I noticed something. Young people are often either assumed to already know everything – how prayer works, what adoration is, how to behave – because they’ve been in this for most of their life, or they were already taught it when very young. Yes. I wish that Jesus was as well known as the alphabet but unfortunately he's not.  When we approach youth and young adults with those assumptions, we make belonging conditional on understanding or compliance.

There’s also an important gap we don’t talk about enough: many parish efforts are unintentionally aimed at the young people who would attend something like SEEK on their own. But what about the ones who wouldn’t? The ones who are bored, disengaged, or only present because they’re required to be? Telling us to “bring a friend” or hosting low-energy activities isn’t enough to reach my age group. Community has to come first. Connection has to come before formation.

Most Religious Education classes and small groups for high school and young adults have felt like more school after seven hours of school. Sitting kids in a room and lecturing them about Jesus, even with good intentions, often doesn’t stick.

Now, a month after the event, I can barely remember any of the actual talks from SEEK. What I do remember vividly are moments of praise and worship, walking back to the hotel, adoration, and late-night ice cream runs. All of those had one thing in common: relationship, with God and with each other.

If those are the moments people carry with them, it raises a hard question: why do we keep teaching faith in ways that look nothing like what actually forms people?

At the same time, this environment also revealed a blind spot. Not everyone is on the same page, even when we think they are. Someone I attended with had never been to adoration before, and no one paused before it started to explain what it was. The assumption was that everyone there was “religious enough” to know. When we debriefed in our hotel room afterward that night, she felt comfortable enough to ask questions and we had fantastic discussion about what adoration was, what we did during that time, and how we recognize when God is speaking to us.  Before we said goodnight, she told us all that she wished we could have had that conversation before adoration.  "I think I could've gotten so much more out of it," she shared. 

It was a reminder that of the importance of not making assumptions – of taking the time to find out where someone is before leading them deeper. 

The questions I’m left with for parish leaders are simple, but challenging:

Where do we hesitate to speak plainly about Jesus, and why?
What are we protecting – reverence, comfort, control, or ourselves?
What would happen if young people were trusted before they were fully formed?

I don’t think parishes need more events for youth and young adults. I think we need even one space where faith is assumed to matter, expectations are lowered at the door, and young people are invited into the picture, not just treated as an audience. A space where belonging comes before explanation, and encounter is trusted to do real work.

Young people aren’t asking for perfection. We’re asking to be trusted, welcomed honestly, and allowed to belong before we understand everything.

What might happen if we risked that, even just once?  

This is not a reflection about one conference.  It is a reflection about culture – the atmosphere in which faith is formed.  And culture always precedes programming. 

When Performance Replaces Encounter

“I was no longer asking, ‘Am I doing this right?’ I was allowed to be there and to be me.”

That question – Am I doing this right? – reveals more than preference. It reveals atmosphere.   When a young adult is scanning a room for cues on whether she is kneeling correctly, responding correctly, speaking correctly, participating correctly, something has shifted from encounter to performance.

Where in our parishes are we unintentionally signaling evaluation?  Posture. Silence. Vocabulary. Insider languae.  Do they feel observed before they feel invited?  Do we elevate behavior and knowledge over encounter? 

The kerygma is a proclamation – the announcement of who Jesus Christ is, what He has done, and the invitation to respond.  Proclamation invites and creates space for response.  It does not require prior mastery and it doesn't test.  

If a young person’s first internal movement is self-assessment instead of receptivity, we have built an evaluative culture. We have inverted the order.

Performance culture asks, Are you doing this correctly?
Encounter asks, Will you let Jesus love you here?

The Holy Spirit does not require polish before He moves.  He requires openness.

When Familiarity is Assumed

Young people are often either assumed to already know everything – how prayer works, what adoration is, how to behave – because they’ve been in this for most of their life… Yes I wish that Jesus was as well known as the alphabet but unfortunately he's not.

Elizabeth's comment is not about intelligence, it's about sequencing.  When we assume familiarity, we fail to provide the explanations that foster openness and encounter.  When we catechize as if encounter has already occurred, we miss the opportunity for invitation into deeper relationship.  When we speak about prayer as if relationship has already begun, we reduce the living presence of Jesus in their lives to religious atmosphere.    

Sacramental exposure is not the same as personal proclamation.  If we have not clearly announced that God loves them, that sin breaks communion, that Jesus restores what they cannot, and that He invites them personally to respond, then we are catechizing without first proclaiming.

Then we are catechizing without first proclaiming.  If the core announcement has not been made — plainly, repeatedly, relationally — then everything built on top of it will feel like information without fire.  When we assume that they knowledge or relationship that is not yet there, we foster quiet insecurity.  A young person who does not know what is happening will not raise their hand.  They will comply or they will withdraw.  

Performance culture makes them ask,  Am I doing this right?
Assumed knowledge makes them think,  I must be the only one who doesn’t get this.

The Holy Spirit moves through proclamation and relationship, not presumption.

When Belonging Must Be Earned

Belonging becomes conditional on understanding or compliance. 

That is earned belonging.  If acceptance follows correct answers, correct posture, correct behavior, then belonging has become transactional.

In the Gospel, belonging precedes comprehension.  Jesus calls before the disciples understand.  He eats with sinners before they change.  He heals them before he calls them to repentance.   He names them before they mature.  He lives, eats, sleeps, laughs, and cries with them for three full years before he sends them on mission. 

Even the kerygma begins with belonging: God loves us and has created us for relationship and communion.  Everything else in our faith flows from the central truth that we belong not because we have done anything to earn it, but because we are His. 

Belonging is not the reward for formation.  
It is the soil in which formation takes root.  

The Holy Spirit forms disciples.   He does not require them to qualify for love before He begins.

When Fear Silences Proclamation

Where do we hesitate to speak plainly about Jesus, and why?  What are we protecting – reverence, comfort, control, or ourselves?

It would be easy to dismiss her questions as youthful inexperience or frustrated intensity.  But they can be a pastoral diagnosis.   If we hesitate to speak about Jesus – about what He has done, about how He has moved in our own lives – what exactly are we protecting? Are we afraid of sounding too direct?  Too evangelical?  Too simple?  Too emotional? Too exposed?

Sometimes we soften Jesus because clarity feels risky.  Sometimes we default to structured programs because management feels safer than surrender.  Sometimes we retreat into institutional vocabulary or hide behind catechesis so we do not have to witness personally. 

But discipleship is messy.  

To make disciples of these young people requires that we name Jesus as living and active in the midst of our own messy lives – not as a curriculum.  It requires us to accompany them as they discover His movement in their own lives – even when their lives are messy and uncomfortable.   If we do not model surrendered discipleship, they assume it's reserved for the super holy. 

When we refuse that vulnerability and avoid the messiness, young people notice.  Some sense our distance and conclude lives are just too messy for Jesus. Some decide faith is best performed under ideal conditions and become so scrupulous in their behavior and compliance that they lose the thread of love.  

The Holy Spirit is not embarrassed by mess.  He moves in it.  And He will give us the courage we need to model the vulnerability and surrender discipleship has called us to. 

If this surfaces tension in your context, resist the instinct to add something. Slow down. Name the culture you are creating.

Ask whether Jesus is being proclaimed as living, present, and trustworthy – or merely referenced. Discern whether belonging is offered freely or earned quietly.  Invite them to speak.  Then practice listening without correcting, explaining, or managing the conversation.  

The Holy Spirit is not waiting for better programming. He is already moving.

Come, Holy Spirit.
Teach us to trust You enough to speak Jesus plainly.
Teach us to create spaces where belonging is not a prize but a gift, and where encounter is allowed to do what only You can do.