Three Things to Look for in Catholic Youth Ministry Content

“What curriculum should we use?”

I hear it from a lot of parishes starting a youth ministry. It’s a team of volunteers who are short on time and don’t know where to start. I know the struggle. Even as a full-time youth minister, finding the right content was hard. I liked video content, but working in a multicultural parish, none of the people in the videos looked like the teens I served.

When I did find good content, I had to then worry about curriculum fatigue. Teens got so accustomed to the prompts, the questions, and the activities that they started to check out.

Before you scramble to buy a subscription, here’s what I suggest.

Make Sure It Fits Your Mission Field

A good lesson plan for your youth ministry should be rooted in Scripture and Catholic teaching, but it also has to be relevant for your audience. Yes, your audience is teens, but what are the biggest challenges and questions they face on a daily basis? Does the content you are reviewing speak to their lives or just offer an interesting faith topic?

If your material never speaks to the reality of your teens, you will spend extra time adapting it, and that defeats the purpose of having something ready to go.

Fit also changes over time. If your teens can predict every question before you ask it, it’s time to rotate in something new.

We like what our friends at YDisciple put out there, and I’ve always been a fan of Alpha Youth. You can even throw together a few videos from YouTube and focus on developing questions. Above all else, have a prayer component and small group reflection. Those two elements turn a lesson into an encounter. Without them, you are just covering content.

Think About Who Is Leading

Most lesson plans online assume a confident, experienced leader. Even as a seasoned veteran, I feel like I need a “cheat sheet” to help me work through the questions. At many parishes, the person running the session is a volunteer who said yes two weeks ago and now has a room full of teenagers looking at them.

When reviewing material, consider your team’s time. If the content has preparation prompts built in, send your team reminders to review them. Encourage them to pray for the teens, journal through the questions themselves, or talk to their co-leaders about what makes sense and what does not.

Here’s my rule: look for material that requires no more than twenty minutes of leader preparation. If it requires two hours, most of your volunteers will not do it.

Ask What Happens After the Lesson

A lesson plan that ends when the session ends is only doing half the job. Look for plans that include a take-home challenge or a follow-up question the volunteer can message to their small group (or the parents) during the week. That simple connection between Sunday and Sunday is where real discipleship happens.

If you have a plan that ties into the liturgical season, even better. A Lenten lesson that connects to the readings your teens heard at Mass that weekend will land deeper than one pulled from a random list. The Fuller Youth Institute’s Sticky Faith research found that involvement in intergenerational worship was one of the strongest predictors of mature faith in high school and college.

Do not overthink this. A simple plan that your volunteer can pick up, pray through, and lead with confidence is better than a complex one that sits in a drawer.

You do not have to build all of this from scratch. Marathon Youth Ministry provides practical training tools and resources through Ministry To Go (M2GO) so you and your team can spend less time searching and more time accompanying the young people in your parish. Learn more at marathonyouthministry.com. You are doing good work. Keep going.