by Moira Cullings
moira.cullings@theleaven.org
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — For every one person entering into the Catholic Church, six walk away from the faith.
“The median age for somebody to walk away from the church is 13 years old,” said Kyle Kuckelman.
“The reason why people are leaving at the age of 13 is because facts only get you so far,” he added. “It’s the person that people fall in love with and stick around for.
“We’ve really got to start evangelizing and not [just] catechizing.”
Those statistics, taken from the “Going, Going, Gone: The Dynamics of Disaffiliation in Young Catholics” report by Saint Mary’s Press of Minnesota, Inc., are startling to Kuckelman.
He believes introducing youth to the person of Jesus Christ is vital for the church’s future.
He will emphasize that in his role as the new consultant for youth ministry in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, which he started on May 15.
“The consultant for youth ministry is an adolescent faith development expert who supports parish leaders in delivering encounters where teen conversion is likely and delivers select direct experiences, like World Youth Day,” said Deacon Dana Nearmyer.
Deacon Nearmyer, director of evangelization for the archdiocese, said Kuckelman was the perfect fit for the job.
“Kyle has ministry experience in parishes, diocesan events and college campus work,” he said. “He has been successful in passing on the love of Jesus, forming disciples and sending them on mission, at all of those levels.
“We look for him to do the same in this role.”
Kuckelman and his wife have two sons — a four-month-old and a 4-year-old. They belong to Holy Trinity Parish in Lenexa.
He attended Shawnee Mission Northwest High School and Kansas State University before beginning his work in youth ministry in 2009.
He was the youth minister at Sacred Heart Parish in Shawnee and then at Prince of Peace Parish in Olathe.
After that, he worked as a campus minister at the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
Kuckelman also has experience as a full-stack web developer, and before taking the archdiocesan position, he worked as a technical account manager for Programmatis, a web development company.
But his passion for youth ministry never went away.
“I believe high school youth ministry will die in our diocese if we are not investing in our middle school students today,” he said.
That investment begins with the relationships he’ll seek to build with parish youth leaders.
“My biggest goal this year is to meet every single youth leader one on one,” he said.
Kuckelman has already been busy driving around the archdiocese to meet with those men and women, around 75% of whom are unpaid volunteers or part-time youth ministers, he said.
On a larger scale, he’ll be responsible for organizing the archdiocesan youth trip to the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., the junior high youth rally each February, the National Catholic Youth Conference and World Youth Day.
He’s appreciated the opportunity to learn from other archdiocesan youth leaders like Angie Bittner, rural youth ministry outreach coordinator, and Jessica Cabral, director of ReachKCK.
And his own experience and understanding of youth ministry at the parish level will continue to drive him to assure those ministers how crucial their work is.
“A lot of what I’m doing is making sure these youth leaders know that people care for them and that I can be an advocate for them as needed,” he said.
Youth leaders who haven’t yet met with Kuckelman are encouraged to reach out to him by email at: kyle.kuckelman@archkck.org.
