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St. Catherine Laboure campus minister engages students in faith and leadership inside and outside the classroom

Photos by Jacob Wiegand | jacobwiegand@archstl.org Seventh grader Harper Rolfe balanced on a wood plank for a game during a middle school youth ministry session on Jan. 16 at St. Catherine Laboure School in Sappington.

St. Catherine Laboure campus minister engages students in faith and leadership inside and outside the classroom

Harper Rolfe carefully placed one foot in front of the other, arms out at her sides for balance, as she made her way across a 4-inch-wide wobbly plank of wood.

First, Harper and three classmates crossed forward, then backward, then, with a stop in the middle to lean down, pick up a cup of water and drink. Finally, they did it blindfolded.

The balancing acts were a small taste of the daring feats of “the Great Blondin,” a famous tightrope walker who crossed Niagara Falls more than 300 times in the 1800s, St. Catherine Laboure School campus minister Steve Brinkmeyer explained. He told the seventh-grade class how Blondin crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope doing increasingly complicated stunts, including carrying his manager Harry Colcord on his back across the rope.

“If Harry hadn’t seen Blondin practice from the very beginning, and hadn’t built his trust in him in those little ways, it might have been a lot harder for him to trust him with this big Niagara Falls bit, right?” Brinkmeyer asked the class.

In the same way, it can be difficult to go from zero relationship with God to trusting Him in the big things in life, Brinkmeyer said.

“We start with small things. We start with these things called habits,” he said. “And one habit in particular that helps us build that trust is prayer.”

As the campus minister at St. Catherine Laboure, Brinkmeyer brings middle school youth ministry inside the classroom for sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, he was serving as the parish’s high school youth minister. When the pandemic disrupted typical youth group activities, then-pastor Father Jim Cormack invited him to consider working in the school setting.

Brinkmeyer meets with each class monthly for a session on a faith topic, incorporating games, prayer, open Q&A and discussion into the time. While the daily religion classes follow a curriculum, Brinkmeyer has more freedom to respond to the needs he sees within the classes and focus on helping the students form relationships.

“The first and foremost relationship that we work on is a relationship with God, but also recognizing that the relationship we have with God also impacts every other relationship we have, whether it’s with our friends, our family, our community — everything flows from that relationship,” he said.

The discussions and prayer opportunities have helped seventh grader Isabelle Holst experience daily prayer in a deeper way, she said.

St. Catherine Laboure school campus minister Steve Brinkmeyer talked to students during a middle school youth ministry session on Jan. 16.

“It makes me feel like we’re actually talking to God, not just saying words out loud,” Isabelle said, “and like it’s actually being heard.”

Brinkmeyer’s ministry extends to the middle school PSR classes, too. He hosts extra field trip “excursions” outside of school hours. Last year, he helped bring back the Luke 18 retreat for eighth graders, and he takes the fifth-grade students to YMCA Camp Lakewood for outdoor adventures during the day and youth group-type ministry in the evenings.

Through his “Lunch and Lead” program for seventh and eighth graders, Brinkmeyer offers students the chance to learn about servant leadership. Throughout the year, they discuss Pope Francis’ documents “Fratelli Tutti” (On Fraternity and Social Friendship) and “Laudato Si’” (On Care for Our Common Home) and work in the parish’s community garden in the spring to grow food and donate it to a local food pantry.

“We’re a Vincentian parish, so that informs that service we do everywhere,” he said. “And that lets us know that no matter what position we find ourselves in, we’re all called to serve in one way or another.”

“We start with small things. We start with these things called habits. And one habit in particular that helps us build that trust is prayer.” — Steve Brinkmeyer, St. Catherine Laboure School campus minister

While many parishes have middle school youth ministry offerings after school or in the evening, St. Catherine Laboure’s model allows all students to participate in the ministry without fitting something else into their extracurricular schedule, principal Stephanie Horan said. This also gives students a sense of what youth ministry is like, encouraging them to continue on in the parish’s high school youth group after graduation.

The in-school ministry model works especially well simply because of Brinkmeyer’s background and gifts, she said. In addition to his youth ministry experience, he has a background in school counseling; he meets with students one-on-one as needed, facilitates peer support groups and coordinates additional services with Saint Louis Counseling and CHADS Coalition for Mental Health.

“He’s in the building. The kids know Mr. Steve, and he makes a connection with them,” Horan said. “So by the time they get to (fifth-grade) camp, they’re already familiar with his leadership, and then when they get to middle school, he’s able to jump right in and he gets them involved.”

After his morning with the seventh graders, Brinkmeyer grabbed his whistle lanyard to head down to lunch and recess duty. It’s all part of being present to students, in whatever ways he can.

“The best things happen whenever we let God do the work, and we try our best to just do whatever it is He’s calling us to do,” he said. “Because never in a million years would I have asked or thought to ask to do what I’m doing, but I absolutely love it, and it’s all because I let God do what He wanted to do with where I was at a given point in time.”

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