Young Adult Community
UPCOMING EVENTS
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MISSION
We are a community of young adults embracing the Spirit of Renewal in the Catholic Church. Our mission is to gain a voice within our Church by honoring what has come before us while discovering the ways to contribute our own unique touch. We aren’t sure where our pilgrimage will take us, but we hope to innovate a path through the grace of the Holy Spirit as we delve into spiritual development, creative expression and parish community development.
SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT
The heart of our community is spiritual development. We are based in a Jesuit parish and so we have a particular focus on the power and freedom in Ignatian Spirituality. Our program weaves together faith formation, an exploration of the Eucharist, and participation in small faith sharing communities to unearth what most helps us connect with God and one another.
Faith Formation
We offer a monthly Faith Formation Program that gives young adults the opportunity to grapple with difficult questions. We invite key members of our parish to talk with us, share their expertise, and help us explore our questions. For a listing of dates, click here or look at our calendar above.
Exploration of the Eucharist
We find that many young adults feel challenged in connecting with God in the Sunday Mass. So, we paired the monthly Faith Formation Program with an intentional exploration of the Eucharist. We will bring the Mass into different settings, holding it in people’s homes, small chapels, even outside when weather permits. We’ll try out different kinds of music and prayer. Basically, we’ll spend the year as a community brainstorming, trying ideas, and reflecting on our experiences to discover what helps us most connect with God in the Eucharist.
A Mass precedes each Faith Formation talk. The typical schedule of the evening is:
- 6:30 pm Mass
- 7:00 – 8:00 pm Faith Formation talk
- 8:00 – 8:30 pm Social chitter-chat
Small Faith Sharing Communities
We find that many young adults are starving for deep, real community. So, we offer small faith sharing communities of 4-5 members that are built on the values of trust and sharing. We build deep bonds of companionship as we examen together how God is at work in each our lives.
Small faith sharing communities meet in one member’s home for ~90mins and take on their own dynamic and character. They are scheduled to meet every week during Advent and Lent, twice a month during Ordinary Time, and over the summer months (July – September) the groups can meet once a month or break. We also hope to bring all the groups together once or twice over the year for community-wide faith sharing.
Interested? Great! Please fill out our online application. If you have questions, please contact West Livaudais at 503-318-5401 or livaudais@gmail.com.
CREATIVE EXPRESSION
We find that as young adults we sometimes struggle because the Catholic Church does not often reflect who we are. It seems like our parents' church -- a nice place to visit for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but not someplace we want to hang out in all the time. Through creative expression, we hope to make the Catholic Church our home too.
Through music, writing, art, photography, graphic design, film, and more, we are eager to express who we are as God's unique creation in this place and time, what we struggle with, what we long for in the Church and world. We are going to let our creative projects arise organically out of our community's talents and interests. We have a mosaic planned for this year, and we are also thinking about a regular publication (online or print), featured young adult musicians in our Masses, and an online art gallery with our pieces available as prints for sale.
If you desire to channel your creativity into the exploration of your Faith, contact us with ideas or questions at get.ignatian@gmail.com.
PARISH COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
Catholic churches across the country are struggling. The older generation that keeps our Faith alive is beginning to ready for the next generation to take over the reigns. The only problem is, we won't be there to take them.
So, here at St. Ignatius, we are doing a grand experiment: our young adult community has decided to focus our service on feeding our own parish community -- bringing new energy, new vision, new dreams, a new future. As we carve out a place for ourselves in the Church, we do it intentionally by honoring the tradition that has come before us but also working to create a Church we want to inherit.
To begin we'll host an important inter-generational dialogue in March with some of our key elders in the parish. We’ll explore how we might work together to renew our parish and perhaps how this relates to the larger Church here in the US. We'll also focus some creative projects on nourishing the parish with a spirit of enthusiasm, spunk, and hope -- a spirit that can only come from young adults.
CONTACT INFORMATION
If you’d like to talk more, please email get.ignatian@gmail.com. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Please call or email us anytime. Remember to join our mailing list at the top of the page and we’ll keep you in the know!
