Focused on youth, couple fosters community-based faith opportunities

By: Laura Iunghuhn for The Catholic Moment

We build our Catholic faith around the Mass, the prayers of the Rosary, and the Sacraments.
These devotions serve as our foundation to centering our lives on Christ and the Gospel; how-
ever, faith should also be active, a seeking to grow personal understanding and to living the Gos-
pel daily in our busy lives. For some, an “active” faith means volunteering at food pantries or
homeless shelters, participating in bible studies or church choirs, or meditating on the Gospel or
an hour of prayer in Adoration. Bill and Sue Bayley, however, keep their faith active through in-
teraction with teens in the diocese.

Over a decade ago, when looking for new ways to be involved at church, Bill and Sue, parents of
seven and teachers by trade, found a natural calling in youth ministry. “I gravitate toward kids,”
Bill said. “Even when I coach now, parents are nice, but I’d rather talk to the kids.” The couple’s
ability and desire to connect with teens led them to the role with which many in the Lafayette
area identify them: the adult leaders of the Antioch retreat for high school students. Yet, Antioch
wasn’t the beginning of the Bayleys’ journey in youth ministry.

“When our oldest kids were in middle school, we started to see they didn’t have a lot for kids at
our church,” Sue remembered. Wanting to share a family oriented role, they did some research
on developing a high school youth group. “I found Life Teen,” Sue said, “and that really spoke to
me as just a very vibrant, ready-to-go youth program.” They introduced the program to Fr. Dan
Gartland, the current pastor of St. Lawrence and St. Mary Cathedral, hoping to implement it in
the parishes. Life Teen was approved, and a committee formed to develop the program. “We
both had full time jobs,” Sue said, “and I was pregnant with number seven, so we weren’t going
to be the youth ministers.”

Around the same time, Fr. Christopher Shocklee, the current associate pastor, with the help of
John Teegarden, then a Purdue student, had organized and hosted the first Antioch retreats. “The
retreat had probably happened two or three times before we got Life Teen going,” Sue recalled.
When Life Teen did begin, the group was directed by Kent and Kendra Leckrone while the Bay-
leys were members of the Core Team, working to support the needs of the youth group. It wasn’t
until their oldest kids were freshmen in high school that Bill and Sue first became involved in
Antioch, volunteering to be a host home. A couple years later, when Teegarden graduated from
Purdue, the Leckrones approached the Bayleys, asking them to be the adult liaisons for the re-
treat. “By then, the baby was two or three and things were changing,” Sue remembered, “so we
said yes.”

Taking over Antioch was a learning curve for the couple. “We stayed back, especially for the
first retreat,” Sue said. At that time, it was primarily led by college students, and the Bayleys
acted as chaperones. When they did take full responsibility, they planned to make significant
changes. “And the funny thing is,” Bill said, “this is the control freaks we are – we decided we
were going to streamline it and make it a well-oiled machine. But as we watched the first one, we
decided we’re not changing a thing.” Sue picked up the story, laughing, “Over our dead bodies,
we’re not changing a thing. Dead time at the church where kids are hanging out? Hallelujah!”
Now integrated in the retreat, the Bayleys better understood why the weekend was so successful,
and has continued to be successful, for over 10 years. “It’s not successful because of us,” Bill
emphasized. “It’s successful because of the kids.” From the retreat’s start to finish, the teens take
charge, writing and giving talks, practicing skits, playing music, and making sure everyone is
fulfilling the necessary roles for the weekend. “Do we make sure they stay in bounds? Yeah, but
within the bounds, they go,” Bill noted. Sue added, “It’s us saying here’s what you’ve got to do,
how’re you going to do it? And the kids step up.”

Putting Antioch almost one hundred percent in the teens’ hands has taught the couple much
about their faith. “I was a science teacher,” Bill said, “and you can learn all the stuff you’re sup-
posed to teach from going to college, but until you start to teach it, you don’t know it. So teach-
ing and talking about the faith to these kids brings it to life for us.” Each retreat, the kids remind
them faith is a struggle. As the high schoolers share how they sometimes struggle to recognize
the ways in which God moves through their own lives, the couple is reassured that despite this,
there is always a way to grow through it, to keep fighting the good fight. “As long as you’re in
that struggle and in that journey and moving and trying and not just saying I’m not going to do it,
what a great place to be!” Bill said, smiling.

The teens’ willingness to be open and share their struggles with each other builds a community
that both they and the Bayleys return to again and again. “Having a community is so important,”
Sue said. “We hunger for a place where you can live with Christ as part of a community.” It is
encouraging for both of them to see messages pop up on social media from kids asking when
planning meetings for the retreat will begin or from parents who celebrate the friendships their
children have made with students from various schools in the Lafayette area. “That community is
God working through this retreat,” Sue said.

Though the couple misses the Antioch community between retreats, they don’t stop seeking
community elsewhere. Their need for fellowship and faith sharing, which has been strengthened
by the retreat, also drives their faith life outside it. “I’ve been very involved with the diocesan
level of planning for events so I’m around many other youth ministers who are thriving,” Sue
said. “Those kinds of teams feed me and help me in my faith journey.” Bill is a member of the
men’s group at St. Lawrence, and when they both attended events like the National Catholic
Youth Conference or Destination Jesus, they focus on what the other adults are teaching as well.

The deep sense of community with which most leave Antioch is one that is constantly fostered
by the Bayleys. It is one they built first in their marriage and family and then sought to create
elsewhere, among the teens of the churches in the Lafayette area. “I don’t care what age you
are,” Bill said. “You need a group of people who are thinking and trying to learn more about the
faith.” For 10 years, the teens at Antioch have helped keep the Bayleys’ faith active, as they have
examined, learned, and grown their faith in a community-oriented way. “I often think about if we
didn’t do Antioch, what would we do,” Sue said, laughing. “I’m sure there’d be something else,
but right now this is where God has us to keep cultivating our faith.”