Youth ministry doesn’t appear to be working. Catholics who attend youth group are much more likely to leave the faith as adults than to remain Catholic. Almost half of Catholics leave the faith by the time they reach 30, and half of those leave before the age of 18. According to a recent survey, less than a third of those raised Catholic still attend weekly Mass. 

This has left parents, pastors and teachers desperately trying to figure out, like Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver, “How do I reach these kids!?” While there are exceptions — many chaplains and ministers doing great work — often the answer seems to be more stylish marketing, more fun activities, more hip youth ministers, more youth conferences and retreats, and more technology. These things have their place. But this is what we’ve been trying for 40 years, and something it still isn’t working. What are we missing?  

I propose that what is needed is a method based in human nature and in the long experience of the Church. Something like Serva Fidem, a new model of encouraging high schoolers in the life of faith. 

Serva Fidem (“Keep the Faith”) is a community of young Catholics based in Des Moines, Iowa, (and now present in 4 other states as well) and we believe we’ve discovered something of that method — one that has already yielded results. But before I share what we’ve seen, I want to draw on the tradition that grounds our work. 

Contrary to popular perception, the faith did not spread in its earliest days by way of street preachers and traveling disciples. As the sociologist Rodney Stark has shown, it spread through organic social networks, by way of friends and families. Two of the greatest pastors of the last century, those who spoke so well to the hearts of young people — Pope St. John Paul II and Servant of God Luigi Giussani, the founder of the international Church movement Communion and Liberation — can help us to understand why.  

A chief emphasis for both priests was freedom. You cannot cajole, prod or market your way to genuine faith. Faith, John Paul II said in Redemptoris Missio, is always an invitation:  

“On her part the Church addresses people with full respect for their freedom.  Her mission does not restrict freedom but rather promotes it. The Church proposes; she imposes nothing.” 

The proposal of faith is to be offered as a gift, not as a grasping effort to shore up Church attendance. Those who work with youth should invite young people to adopt the faith as the fulfillment of their heart’s desires for love, purpose and acceptance.  

As Father Giussani wrote, a mentor helps the young person to make sense of his or her life and world through the eyes of friendship with God — “guiding him or her toward a personal and increasingly independent encounter with the entire surrounding reality.” 

The second major emphasis was on witness in community. John Paul II said, “People today put more trust in witnesses than in teachers, in experience than in teaching, and in life and action than in theories.” Father Giussani, likewise, constantly emphasized that faith was not an idea, a moralism, a theory, or a feeling, but “an encounter.”  

The goal of work with young people is to offer them friendship with Christ, and this is done by means of human friendship. 

In Serva Fidem, we work to combine these themes of freedom, friendship and witness. In so doing, we seek to integrate faith into life. In too many Catholic schools and parishes, religious life is cordoned off from the rest of reality. Those who attend ministry activities are a small social group among other social groups. You can be a football kid, a drama kid, a ministry kid, and so on. Faith and the rest of life are separate, and this creates the sense that living the faith is abnormal — something for certain people and certain times alone. 

We work within the organic relationships students already have. Rather than inviting young people to join a “ministry” or “youth group,” we simply invite them to make faith a part of their life as friends. To this end, students in the Serva Fidem community meet for an hour once a week throughout the whole of high school with their friends and are provided a space to talk about the way that God impacts their daily reality. God becomes part of their social life, part of their sports and activities, part of their life outside of school. They begin to see life as being lit by friendship with Christ. 

As one alumna put it, “Serva has shown me that living a Christ-centered life is not only possible, but necessary. The Serva Fidem community is a great support system to lean on.” 

Each of these groups is under the mentorship of an ordinary Catholic adult from the community. As students and their mentor build a friendship, they see firsthand what it means to be an ordinary, faithful Catholic striving to live a life shaped by the Gospel. This element of friendship and authentic witness is powerful. 

These groups come together in what we call a shared “investigation” with the mentor, and they are offered the proposal of faith as a response to the circumstances of their own life. This spirit of a shared search for truth calls the young person, as Father Giussani would say, to verify the claims of the faith against their lived experience. With the support of friends and mentors, we propose to students that, in faith, they will find the answers that will give their lives meaning. 

At Dowling Catholic High School in Des Moines, where our program first began, Serva Fidem has become the largest activity in the school, with more than 400 students involved. These young people wake up early before school to laugh, to learn, and to share their faith with their friends. In research surveys, we’ve found that young adults who were a part of a Serva Fidem group are more than twice as likely to live their faith in college than Catholic-school students on average.  

In all this, we must bear in mind that the motivation of this work is not the accrual of numbers. It is not about shoring up an ailing Church. It is about sharing what Pope Francis has called the “delightful and comforting joy” that offers young people a life of deep meaning, true adventure and rich relationship.  

Working within organic human sociality, treating young people like the adults they will become, and offering the full-proof Gospel does not need special window dressing. It naturally appeals. When accepted in freedom and supported by friends, it becomes rooted as a gift in the heart for the whole of life. Since starting in Des Moines, we have helped eight other Catholic schools around the country to bring this method to their community, and the response continues to grow. 

John Paul II opened his pontificate with words of invitation, “Open wide the doors for Christ. To his saving power open … the vast fields of culture, civilization and development. Do not be afraid. Christ knows ‘what is in man.’ He alone knows it. To propose the faith to young people is to take a risk. We must respect their freedom to say ‘No,” so that they can learn to give a lasting and meaningful ‘Yes.’”   

But, if the Gospel is witnessed as life-giving, if young people are supported by their friends, and if the friendship with Christ is seen as responding to the true longings of the heart, then we need not fear.