The Columbus Catholic Young Adult Conference was held Saturday, Oct. 15, at Sunbury St. John Neumann Church. The theme of the conference was “Presence,” and the Bible verse the theme was based on is from Galatians 2:20: “Yet I live, no longer, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me.”
A Pew Research survey conducted in 2008 found that 71% of Catholics would leave the faith for Protestantism, and 12% for unaffiliated/none by age 23. The Catholic Young Adult Conference aims to confront this issue of young adults leaving the Church by sharing the Gospel with them and empowering them to be evangelizers.
Pope St. Paul VI, in Evangelii Nuntiandi, writes, “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”
Conference keynote speakers were Kim Zember and Father Michael Fulton. Zember is the founder of Overcome Ministries, which helps people who struggle with same-sex attraction to live an authentic life as a child of God and a life of chastity in God’s grace.
She once lived a homosexual lifestyle, but after years of feeling unfulfilled, she realized she needed to change. By God’s grace and love, she now speaks nationwide about the love and mercy of God and how they can change lives. The theme for Zember’s talk was holiness.
Father Fulton is parochial vicar at Columbus Christ the King Church. Since his years attending St. John Neumann as a high schooler, Father Fulton had a love for the Holy Eucharist. While in seminary, he continued to dive deeper into the Mass and saw how important it is for all Catholics. The theme for his talk was mission.
Other speakers were Noah Gilchrist, a ministry leader at Damascus Catholic Mission Campus in Knox County; Father Jacob Stinnett, parochial vicar for a three-parish consortium in southern
Ohio; Sister John Paul, O.P., principal of Worthington St. Michael School; and Drew Snyder, director of evangelization at Christ the King Church.
Before the talks began, conference emcee Brad Pierron reminded everyone in attendance of their universal call to holiness and mission.
Then Zember shared a message about God’s love and how it changed her life. She focused on the call to holiness and being loved by God first. She said that sometimes people focus too much on what they do and then think this is how God loves them. People tend to think that they can love others out of their own love, and that they can fix themselves. Rather, she said, “we love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)
She said that God’s transformative love is what makes people holy, but they need to be loved by Him. A person’s identity is not in the things he or she does, but from being a child of God, she said. People need to have a relationship with God, which leads to their identity as a child of God, she said.
Father Fulton shared his message of a call to mission. He pointed out how important the presence of God was to the Israelites in the Old Testament. Not only did they worship God, but they also made sure that His presence was the center of their lives and cities, he said. If the Israelites focused on the importance of the presence of God in their lives, why aren’t we doing the same thing? he asked.
The trappings of the Mass aren’t for show but to remind the faithful that God is among His people, he said. Father Fulton reminded the audience that they need to focus on God’s presence in their lives because this is what propels them in their mission.
The conference’s final speaker was Father Dan Dury, pastor of St. John Neumann Church. His homily focused on the Gospel reading for Sunday, Oct. 16, and the need for prayer.
Jake Asuncion is a Diocese of Columbus seminarian at the Pontifical College Josephinum.