Catholic Vancouver July 15, 2024
Hawaiian crafts in, pickleball out: Bridging Ministry helps two groups in need of attention find each other
By Nicholas Elbers
Even before Pope Francis instituted the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly in 2021, one intergenerational ministry was forging connections between the young and old in the Archdiocese of Vancouver.
Bridging Generations is a bi-monthly social run by youth and parishioners from Delta’s Immaculate Conception Parish. They plan and organize activities for the seniors at Columbus Lodge, a retirement community that neighbours their parish.
Aidan Lim is a Bridging Generations regular and has been part of the ministry since 2018. He told The B.C. Catholic he appreciated how the ministry has helped him connect with others in the neighbourhood.
“It’s allowed us to empathize better with people in our lives,” he said. “That’s what I’ve found. It allowed me to look at life in a different perspective.”
Most of all, he appreciates the stories; the seniors “have lived their entire life before you were born,” he said. “There is a senior here: he’s a boxer. When he was younger, he only had 2-3 losses out of 90 fights. It was really cool. Another person designed drills or something for the military.”
“Just hearing those stories is really interesting.”
Bridging Generations was started by Brenna Maduro, Chi Medrano, and Jay Cruz as an academic project for a leadership workshop run by the Filipino Ministry at I.C. Delta in 2017.
Maduro said her groups had identified two separate groups in the Church who needed attention: the old and the young.
“We noticed there was a need to focus on seniors, and also to get young people back into church,” she told The B.C. Catholic. She and her team started to explore whether there was something they could do.
Rather than treat the two problems separately, they decided to try to “bridge” the two groups by making a ministry that catered to both.
“The elderly are often marginalized; not all retirement homes have programs,” she said. “What if the young people start visiting? They could foster relationships.”
They decided to start locally. Columbus Lodge, operated by the Knights of Columbus, neighbours the church, and after a brief pilot period the group brought the idea to the parish. After some back and forth, they organized a dinner dance to raise the funds they needed for supplies.
“There are some people in the church that were kind of skeptical,” Maduro recalls; there was concern that it would just muddy the youth ministry waters by adding another program.
It took some time, but eventually people at the parish realized, “Oh, this is more than a project: this is a ministry,” Maduro said.
One of the most interesting things about Bridging Generations is how it attracts young adults who weren’t active in any other youth ministry. They didn’t attend the existing youth programs, like Life Teen or Edge. Instead, they had just been waiting for something that felt like a better fit.
“We did notice that it brought everyone together,” Maduro said. “These were young kids who weren’t already involved in ministry. We noticed they had a heart for service … they want to contribute to the community in a different way than what’s already been done.”
“Everybody has different charisms and sometimes people don’t connect to what’s available,” Maduro said.
Six years in, they have a stable group of around 15 young people circulating through the bi-monthly events.
Organizing events and activities has been a bit of a challenge. Organizers wanted the events to be youth-led, not just an opportunity to play bridge. The June event was Hawaiian-themed, and participants could play games or make Hawaiian lei necklaces. Other ideas haven’t quite landed – pickleball was a controversial activity – but the seniors were always up to trying something new, and they appreciate the company and effort.
Maduro and her co-coordinators say they don’t run the ministry per se; instead, they offer mentorship and guidance, and she has learned much about working with young people by running Bridging Generations.
“There is so much more that they don’t know they are capable of,” she said. “They have so much potential, and they could be leaders now.”
Earlier this year Pope Francis announced that Psalm 71 “Do not cast me off in my old age” is the theme for this year’s World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, which will be held on Saturday, July 27, the day after the feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne, the grandparents of Jesus.
“By cherishing the charisms of grandparents and the elderly, and the contribution they make to the life of the Church, the World Day seeks to support the efforts of every ecclesial community to forge bonds between the generations and to combat loneliness,” the Pope said in a statement announcing the theme.