Greetings from our Catholic Utah team!

You are receiving this email because you attended our Patrick Madrid event and specified that you are older than 55 years old, or your name was given to us as someone who may be interested in supporting this ministry.  We have a special request for your generation and wanted to tell you a bit more about the mission of our non-profit, Catholic Utah Inc.  Perhaps you were listening to Relevant Radio this morning and heard Patrick Madrid promoting Catholic Utah on the air (Friday, April 12th at the end of the 2nd hour).  The caller, John from Illinois, who was on the air at the time, was my Dad!  I was blessed to have such a knowledgable Father who loved and passed down his faith to me. We dream of Catholic Utah equipping our current generation of parents to do the same for their children.

Have your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and friends attended Catholic schools as children and enjoyed faith and community-building activities through a Newman Center or Catholic University?  Have you ever wondered what happens to their faith community once they no longer feel like college-age people are their peers? Where will they go for faith-formation? Who will they meet to discuss Catholic issues and who will support them in raising Catholic children?   It is a very difficult time to raise children in the Catholic faith, especially here in Utah. According to some statistics, at least one-third of Millennials who were raised Catholic, no longer practice, have left for other religions, or have become anti-religious entirely. I suspect that number is even higher in Utah, where the Catholic-culture present in other areas of the country, is largely absent.

Serving this demographic is the mission and purpose of Catholic Utah.  This age group tends to seek different gatherings than are traditionally offered by parishes.  They don’t want events that feel “churchy” and often are so over-scheduled that they have a hard time thinking a talk at a church is worth their time, or the expense of a babysitter.  Many don’t realize that God asks more from us than just an hour each week at Mass. Catholic Utah is working hard to help reach these individuals.  We are creating events for this group to help them make Catholic friends in a relaxed way, while also teaching them about the beauty of our Catholic faith.  Our hope is to help plug the leaking faucet of falling-away Catholics and build a stronger Catholic community for the next generation.

We will definitely still provide large-community events, like our Patrick Madrid event at Judge, because we know that you, too, crave faith formation and enjoy hearing high-caliber speakers like Patrick Madrid. We believe the large events beautifully complement our primary mission and we look forward to your participation in our future large-community events.  

In the meantime, we wanted to ask for your financial support for our ministry.  We are hosting a small speaking event for our target demographic at a restaurant on May 9th.  This event costs $3000 for us to host--this includes the speaking fee, hotel, travel, and the cost for the restaurant setting we use.  Because of this expense, together with the newness of this ministry, we were forced to charge $25 per person to attend this event, which still will fall short of our actual expenses.  Our registration has been slow and we suspect it is because of the high ticket price. Justifying $50, plus babysitter costs, to go to a Catholic speaker may lead people to choose not to attend.  We realized, if we can appeal to your generation to help financially support this ministry, we could bring this ticket price down. If we could raise $600 with this letter, we can bring the charge down to $15 per person, which we believe would lessen the hesitation for our registrants.  We humbly ask that you please pray and consider supporting this ministry. In the same way we support Catholic ministries for children and college students, please consider supporting the next generation.

If you are able to help us reach our goal of $600, donations can be made online at CatholicUtah.org.  No donation is too small. We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit and your donation is 100% tax deductible. If you prefer to mail your donation, please write a check payable to Catholic Utah and mail it to:  

Catholic Utah, 3350 S 2940 E #9635, Salt Lake City, UT 84109

Thank you for your consideration and may you have a blessed rest of Lent and Holy Week. Jesus, we trust in you.

Elaina Yenchek and the Catholic Utah Team