Pilgrims of Hope, Episode 11 Walking with Young People

Conversations about Finding and Sharing Hope: A video series for the Jubilee Year 2025

Hosted by Fr. Ron Will

Welcome to episode number 11 in this series, Traveling With Pilgrims of Hope. Pope Francis declared the year 2025 as a jubilee year, the Year of Hope. In this series, we are introduced to individuals who have experienced hope and who are striving to bring hope to others.

Pope Francis said, a Christian is a man or a woman of hope who knows that the Lord is present and who finds peace and joy through working for the good of others. Pope Francis stresses the importance of always including others in our hope, of treating one another as equal creations of the God who loves us, of overcoming conflict and animosity through the force of the hope that unites us. Some days this is easier than others, but it’s always important to keep on trying. We can inspire others with our hope and they can inspire us.

Today we talk with Teri Iverson, who works in the Vocation Ministry for the Sisters of the Precious Blood in Dayton, Ohio. I saw an article Teri wrote for the Sisters’ publication Sharing and Caring reflecting on how she experiences hope when she attends a conference of young people who are so on fire for their faith. Hope is found in their openness to have a conversation about faith, to ask questions, to pray, and to seek God’s will in their lives. Teri wrote that she sees freshness to them, a hopefulness in them, and their joy is evident.

I think a lot of us hear stories about young people leaving the church or who are not interested in the church and what it has to offer, so I was filled with hope myself about the future of our church when I read her article.

I invited Terry to have a conversation with us today about her experiences with young people.

Following are highlights from the conversation between Fr. Ron and Heidi Moore, edited for clarity. Watch the video for the full interview.

Fr. Ron Will: Welcome Teri. Thank you for taking time to share with us today. Please introduce yourself and tell us about your work with the Sisters of the Precious Blood.

Teri Iverson: My title is Vocation Ministry Coordinator. I walk with women who are trying to discern God’s call in their lives, whether that be as a religious sister, as a single person, as a married person. It’s a wonderful opportunity not to lead but to walk beside. I am not a sister. I am a married woman with two adult children. My husband, he’s in the corporate world, and when his colleagues ask “What does your wife do?”, he tells them I’m a nun recruiter. But that’s, that’s not really what I do.

I don’t ever go out and try to recruit women. It’s more about meeting women where they are and helping them, walking beside them, helping them discern, what God is calling them to.

My background is in youth ministry. I was a youth minister for 30 years. After than many years, I thought it’s time for me to hang up my hat and do some other things for a while. I had a job managing a store, but after a short time I realized that I’d never be happy doing anything but ministry. So, I started looking for jobs but nothing was really working out. Positions that I thought I’d be perfect for, I didn’t even get an interview. One night I finally realized that I had not sat down and offered it to God. I hadn’t really prayed, you know, for God to lead me where I was supposed to be. So, I did that and the very next morning I opened my LinkedIn account, and there at the top of the page was the position with the Sisters of the Precious Blood as the vocation ministry coordinator. I had this feeling that this was something that I needed to explore, and so I did. They hired me and here I am.

Fr. Ron Will: So, turning your life, your search, over to God had quick results! It worked a lot better than trying to do it on your own.

Teri Iverson: It really did.

Fr. Ron Will: Now you’re helping youth turn their life over to what is God calling them to do, as opposed to they’re searching [alone]. I guess you’re trying show them to include God in the search or the conversation?

Teri Iverson: Yes, absolutely. I think our young people are so hungry. They’re so hungry in a lot of ways. I think a lot of the distress, the mental anguish, the emotional struggles come from us or they don’t understand what God can do [for them]. It’s amazing when you’re able to work with a young person to help them see that, the peace that they find, the joy that they find, the hope that they find.

Here’s one example. In my 35 plus years of ministry I took students on a lot of mission trips. One summer, we were on a mission trip in Texas. We were going to work with The Ark, an organization that works with developmentally disabled adults. When I told them that, I could see fear and uncomfortableness come over the students’ faces. The night before the mission, we talked about this and prayed about it. The next morning, I didn’t go with them the first day, they left in great apprehension, but when they came back in the afternoon, they were excited and joyful. They couldn’t stop talking about their experience. By the end of the week, they were sobbing because they had to leave.

My favorite part of this story is that one of the girls on the trip was trying to figure out what she was going to do after high school. Because of her experience on that mission trip, she decided to get her educational degree in special education. She wanted to continue that work. Things like give me hope and joy to see someone transformed because of their experience with God.

Fr. Ron Will: You said that our youth are hungry, and I was wondering, do they know they’re hungry, or do they I don’t think, I’m pretty satisfied.

Teri Iverson: I don’t think they know they’re hungry. I think they think they’ve got it all together. That’s the way teenagers are. They think they know it all.

Fr. Ron Will: How do you help them realize they’re hungry for something more?

Teri Iverson: I meet them where they’re at. It’s important for us as adults to be open and understanding and to love them wherever they’re at. So often as adults, we have expectations that we put on young people based on our own experiences. My spiritual life is fairly mature; over the years, it’s, it’s grown and got stronger and matured. Sometimes adults expect a 16-year-old to have the same kind of maturity in their spirituality that we do.

But they haven’t lived as long, they haven’t experienced as much, and they probably haven’t had a conversion experience in their lives yet. So how can we as adults expect them to be on our level, and to appreciate the same kinds of prayers and things that we appreciate in our spiritual life? They’re still learning. They’re still growing. That’s really important to remember when we’re working with young people.

[Teri talks about the three essential components to a youth ministry program: age-appropriate prayer experiences, service projects and social activities. Then she recounts her time at the National Catholic Youth Conference that’s held every other year in Indianapolis. This year, Pope Leo address the conference via live video link.]

Teri Iverson: There were 16,000 young people at this conference, and anyone who says the church is dead, or the young church is leaving, the faith needs to step in that room and see the energy, the faith. The highlight of the weekend was a live telephone call with Pope Leo is, it was historical. It was the first time that this has ever been done. And it wasn’t just Pope Leo showing up on the screen and giving a speech or a greeting. It was a back and forth conversation with him.

Wow. When his face came on the screen, every single young person in that room was on their feet clapping and cheering as if they were at the Super Bowl. The joy that they expressed, not only in that moment, but in everything that they were doing. They have such enthusiasm, such zest for life, such, such joy in their faith that I don’t know how anyone could be around that and not be hopeful.

One of my pet peeves in ministry is when people will say, the young people are the future of our church. They are, but they are also the church of today. As we age, we become a little jaded. We might become a little tired, but the energy and joy that the youth experience gives me such hope. They are going to set the world on fire when they’re adults. I absolutely believe that with their faith.

Fr. Ron Will: That’s a very good reminder. Youth are the present church, not the future church.

Teri Iverson: Yep. They are the church, the young church of today.

Fr. Ron Will: In the parish, is there a way to invite youth to work side by side with the adults instead of waiting till they grow up?

Teri Iverson: Absolutely. One of the things I love to see is our young people doing the ministries at Mass. There’s no reason that a fifth grader or a seventh grader, if they are a good reader, can’t be lecturing. There’s no reason that they can’t be in the choir or be ushers. Anything that is happening at church, let’s invite our young people to participate.

Another pet peeve of mine would be when we’re having a parish festival and we say, let’s get the youth to clean up. Okay, what adult is wants to clean up? You want the kids to get excited about coming and taking out trash? What are the jobs that they could do at this parish festival? They can work the cotton candy booth or the bingo booth. Pair them up with adults and let them work side by side.

Invitation is huge. We all love to be invited. We love to be asked, so let’s ask them. What a boost for that young person. I could grow in my faith by sharing my gifts with the parish. Things like that are really important.

Fr. Ron Will: Is there anything else that you were hoping to share with us today?

Teri Iverson: It’s important to remember that working with young people isn’t always easy. A lot of my work in vocation ministry is about planting seeds and walking besides, and then getting out of the way and letting God do it. You want to see results. You want to see things happen. But we can’t see what’s going to happen in the future.

That’s the ministry that I do. I plant seeds. If along the way I get to see the fruit of that, great. But that’s not why I am doing it. I’m doing it because God has called me to plant seeds and God’s in control, and God’s going to take care of the rest.

All of the videos in this series can be found here: Traveling with Pilgrims of Hope

Never miss an article published on the Renewal Center website: Sign up to receive our newsletters.

[Fr. Ron Will, a Precious Blood priest and spiritual director, is a graduate of Catholic Theological Union and Creighton University’s School of Christian Spirituality. He has a special interest in helping form intentional disciples of Jesus, encouraging others to go spiritually deep-sea diving to explore a deeper relationship with God, and walking with people as they dive into the ocean of God’s mystery experiencing God rather than simply dipping one’s toe into the water.]

Photo Credit: ID 321463961 | Anchor © Yulia Ryabokon | Dreamstime.com

Music Credit: “We Are Marching” (Siyahamba). Performed by First Christian Church of Tacoma. Text: South African. Tune: South African. © 1984, Utryck, Walton Music Corporation, agent. Used with permission under onelicense.net, #A-725830

We’d Like to Hear from You!

We’d like to know what you think about this article. Send us a comment using the form below. Do you have a suggestion? Is there something you want to learn more about? Send us a note.