YOUTH MINISTRY – Michael A. Barone

St. Joan of Arc is getting ready to launch our new website. In anticipation of the new site, Fr. LaRussa has asked us to begin practice postings from some of the departments on Staff. Parishioners will be able to come to this page to see blogs that change daily. Each day’s post will be a different staff member or clergy posting their additions to the parish blog. The blog will also give parishioners the ability to watch video links or listen to audio segments from the various Staff members and clergy. We hope you will enjoy the experience.

This posting is an example of what you might see on this Parish Staff Blog. As the Director of Youth Ministry here at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, I get to see a lot of behind the scenes things that are going on with our youth and young adults. One program I use is called “The Dead Theologians Society” or “DTS” as we are often called. Don’t let the name scare you! DTS is a very holy and Catholic organization, which teaches teens about the Saints. Each week we meet as the DTS chapter here in the parish ands we study a particular saint’s life story. We read quotes by those saints if there are any and we ask the intercession of that saint as we pray for our families, our parish, and ourselves. The neat thing about a blog is that I can share with the average parishioner about what we are doing and how the program works, by blogging about it.
For instance last week our DTS chapter studied the life of St. Florian who is known as the patron saint of Firefighters. We read a brief account of his life and his martyrdom. We then prayed for his intercession to help us and our families in matters of fire safety etc.

To demonstrate to you the effectiveness of this prayerful intercession I will now share the fact that my house almost caught fire two nights ago. I believe it was through the intercession of St. Florian that we were wakened by our smoke detectors and were able to get out of the house and call the fire department all with out major confusion or harm of any kind.

It seems the blower on our furnace stopped working causing the heating elements to over heat and spark off a small fire in our heating vents.

We were very fortunate in that it went out pretty fast and the small amount of smoke set the alarms off in time for us shut the system down and contain the problem.

Now you may ask yourself did it really matter that I had just asked for the intercession of St. Florian at our

DTS meeting or was this just coincidence?

I’ll leave you to answer your own question but through this blog I can at least share that experience with you and hopefully bring you to a deeper appreciation of the Church’s teaching on the “Communion of Saints” which we profess our belief in each week at Mass during the Creed.

With this blog I can also post a link so you can learn more about St. Florian simply by clicking on the link and reading posted information from another source. For instance please CLICK HERE and you will be taken to a posting about St. Florian on another Catholic website. But please come right back so I can show you something else.

Ok hopefully you are now back on this posting and I will show you how I can post a video about an event we are holding for the adult and married couples of the parish. Please CLICK HERE to see a 2-minute video about our St. Valentine’s Day Dance. But come right back!

Another example of how this can interactive for you as a parishioner is that you can directly communicate with the staff about our blogging because we can add an email link like this simply click on the following:

herringbone777@live.com

and you will be able to write and send an email directly to me! You can share your thoughts with me.
Ok, hopefully this example of our parish staff blog is exciting and informative to you. I hope you can see the benefit of being able to communicate in this manner. We will be able to share events, thoughts, prayers, videos, and all kinds of other things through this blog. We, as the parish staff and clergy, hope that you as a parishioner can see the many exciting opportunities this blog will present to you to make your experience as a St. Joan of Arc parishioner a very full and blessed one!

Our hope is that you will check in on this blog daily to see what new and wonderful things we have to share with you.

God bless us all in this new endeavor!

Yours in Christ,
Michael A. Barone ~ Director of Youth Ministry ~ SJOA