Same face, new ministry

By Ana Rodriguez Soto - Florida Catholic newspaper

MIAMI | She’s a familiar face in a new job. But for Marta Vargas, it’s a return to where she started.

In May, Vargas literally moved out of one office in the Pastoral Center - Family Life - and into another – Youth and Young Adult Ministry - although she kept the same boss. Both offices now fall under the auspices of Evangelization and Parish Life, the department led by Stephen Colella.

Vargas had worked as coordinator of marriage preparation programs since 2009. But the job that brought her from Tampa to Miami back in 2005 – and from corporate work to church ministry – was campus minister at Broward College and Nova Southeastern University.

“It’s crazy. To most people it seems like a new thing but it’s full circle. I came here to work with young adults and now I’m back working with young adults,” she said.  

“I loved family life,” she added, saying the decision to switch took her about a month to discern. “I really felt that was a need.”

But then she realized “a lot of marriage preparation is in effect young adult ministry. By the time a lot of the couples came to me, they had already made decisions about faith.”

Many of them were not going to church, but a lot of them were hungry for God. “What if we had reached them a little sooner and been walking with them from earlier on?” she asked herself.

Back at Nova, she had helped take campus ministry from non-existent to an active group that won campus-wide awards. Archdiocesan budget cuts in 2008 forced the closing of the youth and young adult ministry.

That’s when Vargas – who has a degree in human resources with a minor in communications from the University of South Florida in Tampa – began helping out with family life programs, a sideline that became a fulltime job in 2010.

She sees her new role as coordinator of youth and young adult ministry as being “a bridge that brings everyone together.”

Focusing particularly on young adults, she wants to “provide programming, leadership, inspiration and support” to parish-based groups so that they can “reach their fullest potential.”

She also wants to “bring all these groups together as one family so that all of our resources, our groups put together, will be able to accomplish even greater things.”

A perfect example of that kind of programming is her first event, “Illuminare La Notte” (Light Up the Night) which took place June 5 at St. Kieran Parish in Miami. About 100 young adults spent the evening at Mass with Auxiliary Bishop Peter Baldacchino, then in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, and finally just having fun together.

“It was a desire to begin with prayer and make that our departure point,” Vargas explained. “We are called to light up the darkness with our light.”

The name was carefully selected, she added, to appeal to all the different cultural and language groups in the archdiocese.

“I went on the translator and looked up what it would look like in Latin or Italian, the language of the Vatican. It’s a name everyone can own because Rome is a part of us all.”

The term “young adult” typically encompasses ages 18 through 39. Vargas said both single and married young adults are welcome to take part in the various groups and activities.

She said her experiences in family life and campus ministry taught her that young adults “want to learn their faith. They’re yearning for opportunities to live it fully.”

And that’s exactly what she’s going to give them. She already has planned two more events this summer: a beach clean-up July 18 (meet at St. Pius X Church) and a night out at the Marlins-Mets game in August.

Ultimately, she said, she took up this new challenge for the same reason she left the corporate world and moved to South Florida: “I want to be where God can use me the best, to love and serve the most.”   

Updated: The beach clean-up planned for Broward has been postponed. It will not take place in July. To stay updated, look at the Events Calendar under the Youth/Young Adults category.