Assistant Editor
As an associate professor at Boston University, Dr. Phyllis Zagano supervised many students who were creating web pages. In doing so, she realized that the best way to encourage vocations in Generation Xers was through the internet.
Dr. Zagano will present her ideas at the April 28 regional meeting of the National Religious Vocation Conference, to be held at St. Joseph's Provincial House in Latham. The topic of her keynote will be "Recruiting Generation X: How to Find, Talk With and Accompany Them."
The speaker is a founding co-chair of the Roman Catholic Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion based at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She is also the author of nine books, including the recently released "20th-Century Apostles: Contemporary Christianity in Action."
Story of faith
Dr. Zagano actually prefers not to use the word "recruitment" when it comes to vocations.
"It's more about communicating with younger people," she explained. "What we're really talking about is getting the story out -- explaining the story of religious life."
In working with young adults on internet projects, she "realized how this medium attracts younger people and how younger people need to be communicated with through this medium." She noted that young people may be more likely to start a conversation about vocations through e-mail than face-to-face.
Three keys
Today, she touts the internet as a primary resource for young adults interested in religious life and sees three things as necessary for religious orders who hope to create web sites that attract Generation Xers: a lack of complication, directness of information and ease of downloading.
"Be clear in presenting your information," she advised. Young adults searching for vocations information may not know under which category to find the data they want: mission, ministry, prayer or community.
Still, she said, vocations ministry is not about a religious community's finding people, but allowing Generation X to find the community. "[Make] yourself available by having identifiable ministries," she stated.
Dr. Zagano believes some changes may be necessary in vocations ministry: For example, she said there is often "tremendous age differentiation" between those considering a vocation and those working in vocations ministry.
The speaker hopes that vocations directors first encourage young adults to have lives of prayer, because "out of that flows a life of service. So many opportunities for service are available that sometimes we lose the point that service grows from prayer."
(The regional meeting of the National Religious Vocation Conference will be held April 28, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Cost is $30 at the door and includes lunch. To register, call Sister Katherine Hanley, CSJ, at 783-3605.)