Catholic Youth Ministry Resources

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Christian youth ministry can be tough, what with having to organise that summer camp, that recruitment advertising and sort out that bible study guide!! And so, here is our little attempt to help those in Catholic youth ministry by throwing a few resources at them. Here, you will find advent prayers, youth group ideas, youth ministry resources and all sorts of other stuff to make that purpose driven youth ministry really fly...
General Youth Work Resources | PowerPoint Prayers | Legal & Procedural Stuff | Management Resources

General Resources

Three one - A huge, free programme for Catholic parish youth groups

This is something we are quite excited about and it has been a few years in the making. Three one is a 168-page document giving a complete syllabus for a senior youth group. It is divided into five sections with a total of forty sessions.

For each session, there is a page on the website giving YouTube videos and in some cases, links and other information too. There is also a discussion board for each session - linked from each web page - where you can suggest new ideas we can add into the sessions too.

The strength of three one is that it has been put together using ideas from a lot of different people and places. It is a real youth ministry team effort!

Have a look at the main three one site for downloads and other info

YOUTH GROUPS: Starting a Youth Group
Starting a youth group can be tricky and it can appear quite daunting. This resource guides you through the basic steps involved in setting up a youth group in your parish: how to discern a need, how to involve others, how to recruit a team, how to plan a programme and others...
[Download | Comment on this resource]

A Checklist for Organising Large Events
A handy checklist of things to remember when you are trying to put together large events. It's not an infallible resource. There may well be some things that we haven't thought of, but hopefully it will be useful nonetheless. If you think of anything that would be good to add, post a comment in the thread and let us know.
[Download | Comment on this resource]

GAMES & SESSIONS: How well do we know each other?
This is a great ice breaker game in which the young people have to write down things about themselves. The rest of the group then have to guess whose answers are who\'s. It\'s a great game to use, especially if you are doing a session about identity or appreciating those around us. It's a great start too affirmation sessions too.
[Download | Comment on this resource]

Useful approaches to behaviour
Having a grasp of how to predict, plan for and respond to difficult behaviour is a vital and much-underappreciated part of youth work. It can also be quite scary for the uninitiated. This resources shows you some effective techniques and approaches.
[Download | Comment on this resource]

Working with attention-deficit issues
Young people with conditions like ADHD can present real problems when you're trying to run a session or take a group on a trip. Indeed, any young people with behavioural difficulties can be problematic. This document introduces you to the issues and gives you some basic strategies for working effectively with the issues.
[Download | Comment on this resource]

GAMES & SESSIONS: Turnover questions
A set of questions in a format which can really help with small group discussion work.
[Download | Comment on this resource]

GAMES & SESSIONS: Affirmation sessions
This resource gives you a great deal of ways to approach one of the most popular and rich areas of youth work programmes.
[Download | Comment on this resource]

Using the web to support Youth Ministry
A quick tour through Facebook groups, Twitter Feeds, MySpace pages and some of the other cool things on the internet that you might be able to use to support or publicise a youth group or other project.
[Download | Comment on this resource]

Organising Large Masses - A Checklist
This is a simple checklist, which hopefully covers pretty much everything you need to remember when organising a large Mass. It is in a handy tick-list format so you can use it as a working document.
[Download | Comment on this resource]

PowerPoint Prayers
	Short Daily PowerPoint Prayers - There are 33 short PowerPoints, each containing a quote (normally scripture or the saints) and a simple prayer. Each one lasts less than a minute and can be clicked through at your own speed. Ideal for personal reflection or for use with young people. [view complete List]

Advent & Christmas Themes - A series of different reflections on the themes and characters of Advent & Christmas, including gifts, incarnation, Joseph, Mary, John the Baptist and others. Each lasts less than five minutes. Since some reflections are quite long, this resources comes as both an automatic version, in which each reflection runs with preset timings, and a manual click version, which the user can click through at his/ her own speed.
[Automatic version | Manual click version ]

Stations of the Cross
Five stations of the cross in a PowerPoint which is hopefully quite easy to use. This is not a complete set of stations, and it is not intended for devotion and prayer, but rather as a way of helping young people to think about the story of Holy Week/ Good Friday. Having said that though, it could probably be used to aid prayer. Each station comes with a few questions posed at the end. The first three pages are leaders' notes which give some ideas about how to facilitate these questions. Take a look and let us know what you think...
[Download]

Legal & Procedural Stuff

Guidelines on using Social Networking sites
This resources is built on the work done by Brentwood Catholic Youth Service and others. It is intended both for personal use, and also to be used by organisations in framing policies of their own.
[Download | Comment on this resource]

Legal Age Requirements (England & Wales)
A simple list telling you what people are allowed to do at different ages. It might help with a variety of legal issues.
[Download | Comment on this resource]

Showing videos & DVDs to young people
A comprehensive guide to legal issues and other issues surrounding young people watching movies, both at the cinema and in a youth group or school setting.
[Download | Comment on this resource]

Writing Risk Assessments
A guide to one of youth work's little trials!
[Download | Comment on this resource]

Management Resources

Employers' guide to references
A guide for those who often need to ask for references when recruiting.
[Download | Comment on this resource]

* These works by http://www.catholicyouthwork.com are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Other folks' stuff
GENERAL

CAFOD Resources - Lots of comprehensive resources in loads of different sections with PowerPoints, whole sessions, and other materials. Sections for worship, youth leaders, secondary schools and others.

Christchurch Catholic Youth Team Resource Library - A good collection of resources from New Zealand.

NFCYM Resources Page - A wealth of resources on numerous different aspects of Youth Ministry.

Busted Halo - A massive site with lots of (not downloadable) stuff. The 'googling god' section has lots of good catechesis stuff.

Practical Resources from NYMO - There is some good stuff on the wider site too, if you wanna explore.

rejesus.co.uk - A good site with prayers and other resources. Especially good for daily prayer.

NDCYS Resources Page - Lots of good youth group, prayer and general resources.

Westminster Chaplains' Page - Prayer and other resources.

assemblies.co.uk - Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Centre for Ministry Development - US site with good resources.

A-Z of Youth Ministry Ideas - From Portsmouth Diocese Youth Service.

Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church - A huge document, but a must for anyone who wants to get serious about justice issues.

The Journeys Project - Beautiful artwork photos animating bible stories by showing Jesus in modern contexts. Very good.

Liturgy Office (of England & Wales) - Lots of lectionary & liturgy resources, including guides to each season and notes on preparing liturgy.

EWTN - Lots (and I mean lots) or prayers, reflections, catechesis, liturgy stuff and other useful things.

Tearfund Youth Section - Tearfund is a sort of evangelical version of CAFOD. Their youth page has some good stuff

Free Resources from Youth Specialties - Some good stuff. Look especially at the 'postmodern activities.' There's also a good food planning chart and some great movie resources.

REFuel - RE Online. Aimed at teachers, but lots of good stuff for youth workers too, including a large image and audio bank.

ADVENT & CHRISTMAS

Daily Advent Prayers from A&B Youth Service - Good daily reflections for young people, which may be useful to teachers, chaplains and others.

NFCYM Advent Resources - A few articles and links.

CMD Page - Advent & Christmas stuff from the Centre for Ministry Development

USCCB Page - Some good explanations and links to daily prayers.

Vatican Page - Advent stuff from Head Office!

Praying Advent - Lots of prayers and links.

Advent Buddies - An Advent activity from St. Mary\'s Press.

Paperless Christnas - A series of short movies putting Advent in a modern context. Excellent!

Text Week Page - Hundreds of useful links

RC.net - Readings & Reflections.

Advent Conspiracy - Trying to recapture the meaning of Christmas. Good resources.

The Christian Season of Advent - An explanation of just about everything Advent related.

Life4seekers Christmas section - Good resources aimed at those who may be distant from the faith.

Christmas & Advent 2009 - Tons of stuff from Catholic.org.

Being Catholic: Advent Resources - Good stuff from Scotland.

Christmas stuff from schoolswork.co.uk - Ideas & resources.

History of the Advent Wreath - Useful for explaining it.

Advent stuff from Refuel - Some well thought-out reflections and resources.

rejesus Advent & Christmas page - Some good prayer stuff from this popular site.

Creighton Advent Site Index - A load more Advent links

What software will I need?
We've tried to keep this very simple indeed. The only software you'll need is stuff that you've probably got already.

I'm guessing you've all got MS Word, MS PowerPoint and something that can read pdf files, like Adobe Acrobat.

If so, then you're sitting pretty. If not, then you'll need 'em!

Please remember that most modern operating systems, Like Mac OSX and Windows XP/ Vista come with stuff that can read pdfs and Word files automatically.

It's probably worth saying too that the Word and PowerPoint files are all compatible with versions of MS Office from about 2003 onwards. So you won't need the very newest versions.