Poor junior high kids! They’re often too old to feel cool at Vacation Bible School and too young to go on big mission trips that older teens enjoy. They’re overlooked to serve as lectors, greeters and eucharistic ministers. They truly are in a “middle” place.
We as older members of church would be wise to see that we have a rich opportunity to form the “young” church in a unique way. Young people are still open to a fuller “Yes!” to God as members of the wider church. Because there are few opportunities to help form young disciples, the Timothy Retreat boasts the ability to provide a vibrant faith experience for sixth-, seventh- and eighthgrade members of our parish communities. So where did the Timothy Retreat come from?
For the past seven years, John Barrett, youth leader of St. John Vianney Parish in Sherman has helped to animate and energize what he calls the Timothy Retreat North.
In 2010, Barrett sensed God challenging him to do a youth retreat before his daughter Katie went to college. He discovered something happening for junior high kids in Edwardsville called the Timothy Retreat, a shorter version of the three-day Luke 19 Retreat in St. Jerome Parish in Troy.
The heart of this retreat flows from 1 Timothy 4:12. Presentation talks center on speech, conduct, love, faith and purity. In 2010, the first year, 30 junior high teens participated along with 14 high school and college students who had been part of Barrett’s youth ministry activities. With a heart filled with gratitude, he offered prayers of praise because he knew he was on to something rather special.
A successful teacher at Pleasant Plains Junior High, Barrett felt that young people who were slightly older and more mature in the faith than the junior high teens needed to take as much leadership of the experience as possible. He summoned five young men and five young women to lead the talks. Gradually, he reached out to other youth leaders and a parish event became a diocesan event. Some of the recent innovations that grew into Timothy themes were the nighttime sidewalk chalk rosaries in the parking lot and the late-night bonfires where the boys would go one way and the girls to another fire for some more intense conversations about boldly living the Christian life. The team was inspired by the level of receptivity and reverence at eucharistic adoration which closed out Friday night at the most recent retreat on April 22-23.
The teens managed to sleep before Saturday Morning Prayer and breakfast. Priests who assist with the sacrament of reconciliation before lunch report being amazed at the openness with which the youth engage the sacrament.
“As pastor of St. John Vianney, I found the Timothy Retreats for young people to be very effective and fruitful,” said Bishop Carl Kemme of the Diocese of Wichita who served the Sherman parish from 2005 to 2012. “I recall the retreats as particularly joyful and inspiring mostly because they brought together our youth for two days of talks, sacraments, fun, and spiritual union with God and with each other.”
Similar to the “hip” presentationstyle of the Catholic Heart Workcamp team, we find funny, spiritually poignant and heart-gripping videos that spark the imagination of what it means to be a young disciple in the third millennia of Christianity. Before the 24-hour retreat concludes, we gather together to commit to living out our faith in a bold new way before reaching the summit of the Timothy Retreat at the Saturday evening Mass.
One unique story about the Timothy Retreat North (TRN) is how it began “travelling” from parish to parish. After our kids from the Church of St. Jude joined in at TRN #2, Barrett pledged that if we helped him with this effort that he’d help bring it to Rochester. We located a blue aluminum baton (used in track relays) so that we could literally “pass the baton” to the next youth leader. From Rochester the baton was passed to St. Joseph the Worker Parish in Chatham and then back St. John Vianney this year. Just as the faith is everyone’s to hold, Barrett is willing to pass the baton to the next willing youth leader whose parish community wants to host it next.
Learn more about the Timothy Retreat North at timothyretreatnorth.weebly.com or contact John Barrett at (217) 496-2452.