Vocations

Take advantage of your seminary grounds and offer a sports camps filled with fun events for young men.

The benefits of this program are unmatched.  Hundreds of young men will experience your seminary and it will give an opportunity for the vocations director to meet them.

In addition you could institute programs in parishes where young men come o play basketball for two hours on a Saturday morning with the parish priest and seminarians.  The priest would start and end with a prayer.  As the months go by the program will shift to not just playing basketball for an hour, but slowly move towards adoration, too.

Boys Summer Camp

A one-week summer camp for young men.  It would generate opportunities to catechize youth, build relationships, and give young men an opportunity to grow in fellowship.

It could be staffed by seminarians and activities would include Mass, adoration, spiritual talks, games, sports, fun, canoeing, hiking, fishing, camping, and other events boys enjoy.

It would be similar to Boy Scout camp.

Indentify Key Lay Members in the Diocese

Throughout your diocese their are certain individuals who are probably effective in promoting the faith to the youth.  Support their work and others like them.

This means indentify their actions, encourage their example, promote their work, and reward them for success.

Catholics Tools by Jason Buck

Organize a summer internship program with Franciscan University, Ave Maria College, Christendom, and other orthodox Catholic colleges.  These students could work for the vocations office and help plan, organize, and coordinate every project talked about in this series.  In return you could offer them free room and board, access to the sacraments, access to theology classes, at your seminary.  Including a small stipend.

Summer One Day Youth Retreat

In order to bring the youth to the seminary to encourage a positive image of seminarian life, you could organize a Franciscan University of Steubenville style one day Catholic retreat filled with music, Catholic speakers, food, Mass, confessions, and Adoration

Franciscan University has had tremendous success with their summer conferences, so instead of reinventing the wheel you could model the conferences after their summer conference.

Fall and Spring Retreats

To follow up the summer retreats you could offer similar experiences at your seminary to compliment the summer retreat and offer more opportunities to catechize the youth.

Jesus

Vocations Promotional Video

A 4-8 minute promotional video should be professionally produced highlighting all the fun aspects of your seminary.  Many young people have no idea what the seminary process is like or what the role of a priest is in the Catholic Church

Plan and Execute Outstanding Presentations for High Schools, Youth Group, Knights of Columbus Organizations, Parents, and other Diocese Organizations

Many youth and adults are inundated with media advertising today and they are use to glamorous presentations.  The vocations office should have up-to-date presentations planned that are visually appealing, make use of technology, practiced and refined, and targeted to specific age groups.  These presentations should energize their audiences and set them on fire with excitement and love for vocations.

Presentations should take place all across the diocese in order to be effective.  The vocations office should have excellent graphics and acquire professional consulting on public speaking techniques.

Perpetual Adoration held at Your Seminary for Vocations

By instituting perpetual adoration in the seminary it will be a beacon of light for vocations.  This will be open to the public, which will encourage and enable the entire diocese to pray for vocations

A small chapel could be part of the vocations office and the vocations office could manage volunteers to come and pray.

If you have questions or suggestions please leave a comment.

Vocations

As we start the new year it places us right in the middle of the year of the priest. This series of articles are ideas and suggestions, but the real power in generating vocations to the priesthood comes from prayer.  Without prayer this series is useless.  Prayer is essential because in the search for candidates for the priesthood you are looking for holy young leaders who will answer the call.

Part 4 of Vocations Series

Support, Encourage, and Enable Youth Groups

As a diocese, increase youth groups and the vocation departments’ involvement with them.  The vocation department could regularly visit youth groups, host parties, help with retreats, and support youth groups in every way possible

Youth groups are fertile ground for cultivating vocations.

Brochures, Direct Mailing, and Email Campaigns

Before a successful 1-1 marketing campaign can begin the vocations office needs to create a database of potential candidates for the priesthood.  The vocations office should devise a plan and coordinate the plan with priest and lay throughout the diocese to find potential candidates to the seminary.  The first segment of that list would be any male between 9-12 grade.

Once this list is established, refined, and evaluated it will allow marketing pieces to be created that are geared specifically for the target market.

For example if you were sending mailings to a young man in a certain town and knew his contact with the priesthood was with a certain priest or seminarian, and the young man like soccer, you could print an on-demand brochure with a picture on the inside of the priest welcoming the young man to the seminary and have pictures geared towards soccer.

This project could even be extend for high schools.  The vocation office could print brochures with messages from the president of the school welcoming the students to the idea of the priesthood and if the school was filled with football players the brochure could contain pictures of seminarians playing football at the seminary.

The vocations’ office could even send our personal emails driven by a database.

Vocation Posters

Mary, the Mother of God

Hire a graphic designer, create multiple styles of posters, and put them in every school, parish, college, and anywhere young people are located.  There should be multiple copies hanging in every school.

It would beneficial on school visits to personally hang the posters to insure they get put up.

Posters will only work if they are visually appealing and students see them repeatedly.

Part 3 of Vocations Series

This third installment in the Vocation Series is a few days late.  Sorry, I am celebrating Christmas.

Eucharistic Adoration Chapels for Youth

In the past many vocations came from small Eucharistic Adoration chapels run in a style similar to Franciscan University.  Youth meet weekly for adoration, praise and worship, prayer, and confessions.  Create a model of this program and then institute it across the diocese in key locations.

Discernment Groups

Many vocations are lost because nobody makes friends with the young man with the vocation.  They forget to give him support on their journey to the seminary.  Organize monthly dinners with parish priest and young men who are serious about entering the seminary.  During these two-hour sessions the boys would enjoy dinner, conversation, prayer, and a friendship.

Retreat Program

Retreats should be filled with fun activities like sports, food, and making friends with current seminarians.  These retreats could be modeled about the Legionnaires of Christ retreats.  In addition you could run summer trips to the Franciscan University summer conferences.  This may be the easiest method.

Technology Communications Upgrade

By instituting the ability of key priest and vocations’ directors in the diocese to quickly relay information on vocations to the vocation office through Blackberrys, iPhones, Smart Phones the office will be able to build relationship wiht possible candidates to the priesthood and not allow young men with vocations to slip through the cracks or go off the radar.  This will also allow the vocations office and priest coordinating vocations to share calendars, notes, profiles on future candidates, and coordinate events through the diocese.

This upgrade will give key personnel through the diocese acces to vital information within the palm of their hand.

Web Site Upgrade

An interactive, content driven, website which is easy for candidates to gain information and the vocations office to update and manage.  I am going to skip over talking about technologies that should be implemented because they are always changing.  Just look to see what the airforce or amy is doing.  And please make sure you are on Facebook.

The target market for this implementation will be for potential candidates and parents.

Check out ICDGlobal.Net.  They did a big marketing push for the Amy.

Prayer Power

Just contact Peggy O’Neil and copy what she was done.  No need for an explanation.

http://www.prayerpowervigil.com/

At least I hope this get’s you thinking about possible ideas in your own diocese, Church, or organization.  (Maybe even family.) The following are ideas – not guarantees.

Vocation Offices

Instead of using old, run down offices use nice, clean, attractive spaces.  These spaces through give a good impression when someone steps in the door.  The young man entering should get the feeling he is in a holy, serious place.

In addition there should be space provided for pool tables, couches, posters, games, ping pong, etc to be used for vocation evenings or weekly meetings (like in a youth group).

When a parent comes to bring their son to talk about a vocation, the parent should have confidence in the professionalism of the vocations office.  It would also be useful to have some lawn space for soccer, football, and basketball.

Yea, I’m not messing around.

Coordinate Actions with other Diocese Offices and Organizations

In a campaign to foster vocations it is not just the job of the vocations office, but the entire diocese.  However, many organizations and departments do not know how to foster vocations.  The vocation office should create material, give presentations, meet when necessary, and coordinate resources and activities with these organizations.

Analysis Where Seminarians Come From

The vocations office could study data of which parishes’ foster vocations and which do not.  This data could provide answers to why certain parishes do not foster vocations due to a lack of relationship from pastors with you, existence of youth groups, liberal views from the parish, etc.  Kinda of Harsh. Upon analyzing data the office could help parishes without vocations foster a vocation.

Ok…enough for now