Where things stand
The honest version
In 2025 we sat down with parents, teens, pastors, and former leaders across our parishes and asked what had gone wrong and what had once worked. The answers came back consistent enough to be uncomfortable.
Antioch thrives when adults hold it. When the adults thin out, the teens feel it first: energy from a retreat fades within a month, nobody follows up, and the ministry starts to look like a social club that meets on Thursdays.
One line from those sessions has stayed with us. “It needs to be held by adults.” That is the whole reason this page exists.
What we are building. A standing adult core team for Antioch (high school) and Emmaus (middle school), drawn from St. Joseph, St. Monica, St. Bavo, and Queen of Peace — alongside a youth minister and the St. John Bosco Commission.
The role
What a core team member actually does
- Be there on Thursday. Most weeks, 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. at St. Monica. Arrive a little early, stay a little late. Most of the ministry happens in the parking lot afterward.
- Lead or sit in a small group. Four to eight teens, the same ones each week. You are asking questions and listening more than you are teaching.
- Know their names and their lives. Which ones play fall sports, which one just lost a grandparent, which one has stopped coming and why. This is the part that cannot be delegated.
- Give a retreat weekend. At least one of our two retreats a year. The teen team gives the talks; adults hold the frame around them.
- Back the teen leaders. Our juniors and seniors run a great deal of this. Your job is to make them capable of it, then get out of the way.
The ask
What we are asking of you
- Roughly three hours a week during the school year.
- One retreat weekend a year, minimum.
- A year’s commitment, so the teens are not meeting a new adult every few months.
- Diocesan safe environment training and a background check, completed before you are in the room with teens. The Commission walks you through the paperwork.
- Willingness to be formed yourself — prayer, a leadership retreat, and time with the rest of the team.
The relief
What you do not have to carry
- A theology degree. If a teenager asks something you cannot answer, “I don’t know, let’s find out” is a complete answer.
- The logistics. Setup, budgets, registrations, food orders, permission forms, and communications belong to the Commission.
- Being cool. Teens have friends. What they are short on is adults who are steady.
- Having a teenager of your own. Plenty of our best core members do not.
The Commission is the trellis; the ministry is the vine. Lay leaders from the four parishes carry the operational weight on purpose, so your evening goes to the teens.
Teens felt at home, seen and valued for who they were.From the 2025 Mishawaka youth ministry listening sessions
Who we are looking for
Probably more people than you think
Adults of any age from our four parishes. Parents of current teens, parents whose kids have graduated, grandparents, and people with no teenagers in the house at all.
Young adults are welcome once they are at least two years out of high school. That gap matters: it lets you be a mentor to these teens rather than a classmate.
Some of the strongest core members are Antioch alumni who went through this ministry themselves fifteen or twenty years ago and want the next set of sixteen-year-olds to get what they got.
If you are reading this because someone handed it to you, that is not an accident. Someone thought of you specifically.
Saying yes
Three ways to start
- Come watch a Thursday. Stand at the back, see the room, decide afterward. No commitment attached.
- Get coffee first. Email and we will find a half hour to talk about where you would actually fit.
- Say yes now. Email and we will start the safe environment paperwork this week.
Where and when. Antioch meets most Thursdays at 7 p.m. during the school year at St. Monica Catholic Church, 222 W. Mishawaka Ave., Mishawaka, in the parish basement. Come any week.
We are also hiring a youth minister for Antioch and Emmaus. If that is the conversation you actually want to have, the position is posted on the St. John Bosco Commission site.