The Sept. 21st and 22nd weekend of 2024 will be a busy one for the Office of Catholic Youth (OCY). For 10 years now, the OCY has rolled out two days of training to help adults (on Saturday) and teens (on Sunday) not only get the fundamental training to execute youth ministry at their parishes, but continue to go deeper in keeping experienced leaders up to date with trends and topics relevant to working with high school youth and older elementary kids.

Each year the OCY brings in speakers and runs three rounds of workshops to help provide options and opportunities for the Catholic youth ministry community to grow and develop. Workshops on how to do effective relational ministry, provide talks to teens and tweens, praying with teens and running small group sessions are cornerstone offerings, but additional workshops like helping teens navigate healthy lifestyles with social media, running impromptu games, balancing life/ministry/family/school/work dynamics, handling difficult behavioral moments and hosting successful youth activities and nights are a sampling of some of the newer topics being covered.

The OCY has introduced a Young Adult Ministry track this year as well to compliment its ranks with workshops geared to helping young adult ministries flourish and grow throughout the Archdiocese.

The gathering typically draws 100–250 people from across the Archdiocese to help prepare them for the ministry year at their parish. With unprecedented high numbers of parishes offering youth ministry in the fall of 2024, the ELEVATE gathering looks to be more important for newer parishes as they join the ranks of the seventy five existing ministries in the Archdiocese of Toronto.

If you are interested to join us this weekend, please check out the events details in this link - https://www.archtoronto.org/en/outreach/calendar-of-events/event-listing/archdiocesan/elevate-training-weekend/.