Missionaries at Damascus Catholic Mission Campus, located near Centerburg, are serving Jesus Christ and His Church through a gift of self.
“Our missionaries are young adults that recognize that a life given to Jesus is never a life wasted,” said Brad Pierron, the director of the Missionary Program at Damascus. “And so, they want to give large pockets of their time.
“Our summer missionaries give 12 weeks of their summer. Our full time-missionaries give two years of their lives, specifically to serve in a capacity where they are overseeing thousands of young people a year.”
Missionaries at Damascus serve youth through retreats, leading youth groups in the area and serving at Catholic Youth Summer Camp (CYSC), Damascus’ flagship program, and Winter Camp. Missionaries in the full-time missionary program serve for two years and receive formation through a curriculum that includes 112 one-hour sessions.
“The missionary program here is hard, it’s robust, it’s difficult,” Pierron said. “It’s something that requires you to show up every day and give yourself, and if we can teach all young adults the value of that, we’re going to have holier marriages. We’re going to have holier priests. We’re going to have holier religious sisters. We’re going to have people who realize the life they’ve been given is a gift to be given.
“And so, that’s what I think is probably the No. 1 thing that the missionary program teaches people, and specifically people called to the laity, how to maintain a full schedule while also maintaining a deep and impactful relationship with the Church and with Jesus Christ Who founded it.”
Damascus’ mission is to awaken, empower and equip a generation to live the adventure of the Catholic faith through world-class programs and an environment of encounter with Jesus Christ.
Damascus started a missionary program in summer 2016 with four missionaries. Today, there are almost 60 missionaries and 120 full-time ministers, which includes the missionaries who completed the two-year program and continue to do ministry full-time on Damascus’ staff.
“The mission statement of our missionary program is to form lifelong missionaries who lead the Church and influence the world because we want them to do both,” Pierron said. “Some are going to be called to work in the Church, maybe some are called to be priests, bishops, brothers, sisters. Some are called to be lay ministers, and then others are called to influence the world by being part of a Fortune 500 company.”
Having young men and women serve as missionaries, Pierron said, is a great example for the youth they serve.
“I think the missionaries in one sense are just incredibly relatable, and, in another sense, are well formed and great representatives of the Church for young people.”
Summer missionaries and full-time missionaries both start by serving at CYSC in the summer. After a break in August, full-time missionaries return for training and begin running retreats in September. They have a winter break and continue leading retreats and youth groups into the spring,. Full-time missionaries then begin their second year of formation the following summer.
“Our full-time missionaries start in the summer, have one full year, come back for a summer, have another full year and then deploy, and we use the word ‘deploy’ very strategically because we want them to go change the world,” Pierron said. “Go into medical school, law school; go and take a business job; go and take a ministry job.”
The missionary program at Damascus was founded on four pillars: formation, discipleship, community and mission.
“Formation is that which allows us to grow. Community is that which holds us accountable to the growth that we know we’re called for. Discipleship is having someone that’s down the road for me, helping give wisdom to me and having someone … who I can give wisdom to,” he said.
“Paul had Barnabas and Timothy. He had someone to look to and someone to bring along – that’s discipleship – and then mission. The majority of our lives at Damascus is spent on mission investing in youth and their families.”
The young men and women receive continued formation during the two-year missionary program. Missionaries also have a pastoral leader to guide them in discipleship and applying what they learn in formation. The curriculum is divided into eight quarters.
“You’re constantly being formed in the very practicals, so it’s identity, healing, prophecy and then leadership,” said Libbey Oberley, a third-year missionary with Damascus, who concluded the two-year formation program and now serves on staff. “It’s a quarter for each one, so we’re hearing talks and getting information from different staff members or our directors.”
Quarters the second year of the missionary program focus on leadership, theological groundings, ministry deployment and intimacy with God.
“It’s constantly being formed at the beginning of the week, and then how can you live that out? So, that’s oftentimes what I would take to my pastoral leader,” Oberley said. “Formation is part of what changed so much for me, just constantly being fed more and learning and gaining so much more knowledge and the practical tools.”
Oberley’s experience attending camp at Damascus led her to serve as a missionary after graduating from high school.
She was moved by “seeing the missionaries, seeing the people who know and love Jesus as a person, and it was so different because I’d never seen anything like it,” she said. “I was so attracted to the joy that they carried into the personal relationships that I saw these missionaries actually having.
“And so, then I ended up coming back to Winter Camp my senior year, and that’s just when I felt the Lord like so clearly calling me to do the two-year (missionary) program.”
Maddie Cronin, 24, was also captivated by the witness of the missionaries. She served as a summer missionary at Damascus while in college at Franciscan University of Steubenville. Her experience led her to apply and become a full-time missionary after earning her degree.
“What really attracted me to come into the missionary program was the way that they walked with their missionaries so intentionally to create leaders, and I just saw so much opportunity there to be like, ‘Wow, they actually really value everyone’s gifts so individually,’ and I just was like, ‘I want to live my life for Jesus, and I know that I’m called to a life of adventure, so what better time in my life than to give of myself right now?’” she said.
“And so, when I came here as a full-time missionary, it was just continued formation and continued growth, especially in leadership, where I realized for the first time that I didn’t need to grasp after what was in front of me; it was just a call that I got to step into.”
Anthony Schmelzer, 27, also began serving as a missionary after earning a degree in accounting from Ohio University. Living and growing in community with other young men in the program had similarities to his time in college, but at Damascus, he and the missionaries shared a common vision.
“The most fruitful thing from college, for me, looking back at it, was really the relationships and learning about people from different places, learning how life was different for them,” he said. “But then, applying it, another thing from college we missed is we didn’t have the same end vision or goal on many levels.
“But here, you have people coming from everywhere and all different walks of life. You’re learning new things, and things that have been planted inside you begin to grow because we’re all after the same thing, coming from different angles. I think it’s just one of the greatest learning experiences I’ve ever had.”
Schmelzer, who completed the two-year missionary program and now serves as a missionary on staff, said he was challenged by the missionary formation and believes it will serve him well in the future.
“For a man specifically, we’re doing a lot of hard things here that require you to be all in, and not just you all in, but you with other people,” he said. “So, it just forces you to give up things that you might not be ready for or that aren’t as important in that moment. And I think for me, and for many men, because we give up something like dating for a year or a year and a half, there’s a lot of marriages that I’ve seen here that I think are going to change the world.”
Schmelzer met his wife, Marybeth, through the missionary program. They are now expecting their first child.
Cronin agreed that serving as a missionary is a way for individuals to discern their vocation. She said serving and counseling youth are great preparations for those called to be biological or spiritual mothers and fathers.
“We counsel so many kids, especially during the full-time missionary program,” she said. “We could be counseling like two groups a week, one group on one retreat and then one group on the next, and so, all of the missionaries learn to counsel during the full-time program and … step into that in their gifts of being both a sister to people in the community or brother to people in the community and then almost like stepping into mothering and fathering six-nine kids a week.
“I’m like standing with these kids, and when I hear lies that they’re speaking, I’m not going to tolerate it, or even just in simple things, too, like when I hear gossip, I’m not going to tolerate that. I’m going to like show them what it looks like to live virtue and to live a heart that’s centered on the Lord.”
While the missionaries counsel new children each week during camp and retreats, Cronin said, spending a year with the same children in a parish youth group on Sundays is great for living out the discipleship pillar of the missionary program.
“We get new kids twice a week so there’s kids in and out constantly, but being able to actually walk with kids throughout the year at a youth group is really awesome,” she said. “You really step into discipleship of kids and learning how to give talks.”
Serving the children requires a complete gift of self, Oberley said, and it challenges young men and women to answer the call to love as Jesus Christ did.
“Knowing that our vocation is to love is so simple because we do get to meet and encounter so many different kids, so it’s learning to love and to be that self-gift and to give everything without holding back. … It’s learning how to love more fully and all with your heart.
“When I was a camper, I didn’t want anything to be held back from me; I wanted this powerful encounter. So then, to be on the opposite end of that, it’s like, ‘How can I give everything for every kid?’”