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By Renée St. Martin Wizeman
Kalispell native Kelly Ruby credits her
equanimity to prayer. This summer, awaiting
word of her employment fate, she
remained calm, to her parents’ dismay. Ruby
was hired as the multi-parish youth minister
for Bozeman, but as with all new ventures,
there were some “hiccups.” But going with
the flow seems to be among her skills.
“As a high school and college student,
there are always your ups and downs, being
involved in Church,” Ruby said. Several
high school retreats
drew her further into
youth ministry as a
teen. As a freshman
acting major at the
University of
Montana-Missoula,
Ruby found college
demands were moving
her away from
Church, until she volunteered
at the
Catholic Youth
Coalition convention.
“It hit me – why am I
not more involved in
this?” she said. And
her renewed involvement
in faith and ministry
began.
Ruby transferred to Carroll College
after her sophomore year, and graduated in
2009. After graduation, she said, she felt a
call to leave the diocese for ministry. “I
needed to see how things worked in other
dioceses.” During 2009-10, she traveled the
country as a member of Reach Youth
Ministries, which was then based in
Washington’s Diocese of Yakima. She said
the experience was a rich and challenging
one for which she is grateful.
As her 10 months with Reach ended,
Ruby heard of a possible youth ministry
opening in the Diocese of Helena. She is
now the youth minister for both Holy
Rosary and Resurrection parishes in
Bozeman. Together the parishes have about
80 junior high students, drawn from two
schools, and 20-40 high school students. In
a September interview, Ruby said her first
change was to move the high school program
from Sunday evening to Wednesday
evening. She wanted teens to experience
Sunday as the Sabbath, and to realize that
Church isn’t just one day a week.
Ruby likened the Eucharist to nourishment
received each week, and said she
hopes the Wednesday evening youth group
provides an additional form of nourishment.
Areas covered in the Wednesday sessions
include learning about the liturgy, the
meaning and importance of what happens at
Mass, prayer, sacramental preparation and
Catholic spirituality. Ruby said that she
intends to “constantly mix it up,” and that a
strong volunteer core is vital to keep youth
ministry fresh and relevant.
In October, a group from Chicago-based
Catholic Extension visited Bozeman to see
Ruby and the multi-parish youth ministry
model in action. Catholic Extension provides
funds for Ruby’s position, and the visit
happened on the year’s first youth ministry
evening. “It was really good for them to see
what we’re doing here
and made that
evening’s youth group
better, too,” said Ruby.
The multi-parish
approach is relatively
new in this diocese,
and different from the
Catholic Youth Rural
Outreach model that
Ruby experienced as a
teen. CYRO is a collaborative
ministry
among five parishes in
the Flathead Valley,
but Ruby said that
when she was a teen,
each parish still had its
own weekly, parishspecific
youth group,
and all five groups came together for bigger
events. Ruby said the Bozeman parishes’
high school youth program already was
combined, so the big change was the move
from Sunday to Wednesday.
To succeed in this multi-parish venture,
communication is critical. “I spend a lot of
time with Father Val (Zdilla) and Father
Leo (Proxell),” Ruby said. Early this fall
she met with the pastors, Resurrection
Parish’s administrator Diane Dwyer and
junior high youth ministry coordinator Ann
Buckner, and Holy Rosary office manager
Nadine Tribble. Dwyer said Ruby now
attends both parishes’ weekly staff meetings,
and meets with the faith formation
core team at Resurrection Parish.
Dwyer said the multi-parish model
brings the parishes together, making for a
larger Catholic community, but retaining
the individual parish identities and the
young people’s ease as members of their
respective churches.
Six high school youth are
on the diocesan Catholic
Youth Coalition board, two
more than in past years. Ruby
said the board is intended to feed the parishes,
and is part of a “good, healthy relationship”
between the parishes and diocese.
“We talk to the (board) kids about returning
to the parish and approaching their pastor
about speaking in front of the
whole parish,” she said. This is
part of the leadership model of the board: to
mobilize the youth to be advocates and
evangelists among their peers and fellow
parishioners.
Ruby said she remains grounded by
relying on daily personal prayer,
Eucharistic adoration and the Sabbath as a
day of rest. “I make sure I carve out time in
my day for my personal prayer time,” she
said. “I could go and go and go, but that’s
not good for me, my ministry or as a precedent
for the kids.”
Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 26, No. 12, December 17, 2010.
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