Young Adult service and missionary opportunities
Local Opportunities
Our Office of Pastoral Care and Outreach offers many opportunities for outreach including: detention and prison ministry, inclusion, seafarer ministry, immigration & refugee ministry, mental health, and more.
Agape is a 6-8 week long service project that serves the migrant farm workers in Lynden, WA. Groups of middle and high school youth come to Bellingham to serve for 6 days at a time, and stay in the hall at Sacred Heart Catholic Church. They learn about the human dignity of every person they meet and practice this Agape love through their service. The week involves tabling at grocery stores, running a food/clothing bank, working on a local farm, building friendships with children at a migrant camp, learning activities, teachings of Catholicism, and prayer and mass.
Helping another person brings a wonderful feeling of joy and satisfaction. At Catholic Community Services, volunteers help elderly and disabled persons remain living independently in their own homes. They also serve food to the hungry, tutor youth struggling in school, assist the staff of CCS day care and early learning centers, and do much, much more! CCS volunteers come from all segments of the population. Many are fully employed; others are homemakers, young people and retired persons. All bring a gift of caring and time.
In the heart of Everett at 2212 Broadway, there is a little bit of heaven for those needing a safe haven from the streets and a chance at a new life. It is a community center in a Café setting, a healing place for men and women in recovery. The core of the program lies in the effective, evidence-based strategy of peers supporting peers in recovery from life’s challenges. The Everett Recovery Café offers a stabilizing presence in the community for people on the margins, giving them many chances to sustain recovery, rebuild their lives, and break the cycle of addiction, homelessness, isolation and poverty.
Jesuit Volunteer Corps Northwest responds to local community needs in the Pacific Northwest by placing volunteers who provide value-centered service grounded in the Jesuit Catholic tradition. Honoring the Divine at work in all things, we envision the Northwest as a sustainable region where all live in dignity, are treated justly, and actively contribute to their own empowerment and positive change in their communities.
Inspired by the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy declared by Pope Francis in 2016, MercyWatch established a mission to serve the marginalized and outcasts of Snohomish County; men, women and children living on the streets. We do this with street medicine and outreach. Our mission is to sow new life, hope and peace through a commitment to serve and be present to those on the streets mired in addiction, mental health crisis and poverty, and to work with them for a better future.
In addition to directly coordinating & assisting with various parish programs at Our Lady Star of the Sea, a missionary intern’s main task is evangelization and discipleship, bringing people to an encounter with Jesus Christ and encouraging involvement in the parish community. The missionary intern program provides valuable spiritual, personal, & professional growth for young adults who are discerning a potential path in youth, young adult or other parish ministries.
Compelled to action by the convictions of our founders, St. Vincent de Paul of Seattle and King County joins the community to listen, engage, and build relationships that assist and advocate for individuals and families to meet basic needs and achieve stability and self-sufficiency.
National Opportunities
Catholic Volunteer Network fosters and promotes full-time domestic and international faith-based volunteer service opportunities for people of all ages, backgrounds, and skills. As the leading membership organization of Christian volunteer and mission programs, we support and enhance the work of our members through volunteer recruitment, training and resources, networking opportunities, and advocacy.
Creatio offers mission trips and experiences to create an environment of encounter with God, with ourselves, with others, and with creation. CREATIO members are volunteers, professionals, and friends working to address environmental and human issues on a deeper level. Their goal is to facilitate an active transformation of ourselves and others, as well as the environment. For more information, click here.
FOCUS through Bible studies, outreach events, mission trips and one-on-one discipleship, missionaries inspire and build up students in the faith, sending them out to spread the good news and to live out the Great Commission: Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations (Mt. 28:19).
Through a variety of different lengths and locations available, Life Teen Missions is dedicated to providing opportunities for young adults to rise up and answer the missionary call in a concrete, formational, life-changing way that leads teens, families and communities closer to Christ.
NET Ministries challenges young Catholics to love Christ and embrace the life of the Church. Every August, 175 young Catholics aged 18-28 leave behind their jobs, school, family, and friends to devote nine months to serving with the National Evangelization Teams (NET). Divided into 16 teams, they travel across the U.S. for nine months to share the Gospel with young people and their families. Since 1981, NET teams have led over 32,000 retreats and ministered to more than 2 million young Catholics.
The Pacific Alliance for Catholic Education (PACE) is a two-year graduate teaching program serving Catholic schools in the western United States. PACE program participants teach full-time in K-12 Catholic schools, live together in intentional communities, and earn tuition-free graduate degrees in education. Our teachers are currently serving in 37 Catholic schools in 16 cities in Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and Washington State.
The Riverwest Food Pantry Mission house is a community food center in Milwaukee, WI that engages volunteers and community residents to end hunger, isolation and poverty. They seek out mission interns from across the country to live a full year rooted in faith and social justice through prayer, community, and service in the Catholic tradition.
SPO is a ministry that seeks to build Catholic community in college campuses across the country.
Spiritus evangelizes Catholic youth and young adults throughout Wisconsin through retreats, parish youth ministry, and college campus ministry. Over the past several years, SPIRITUS expanded to multiple teams evangelizing more young Catholics and giving young adults more opportunities to serve.
SPIRITUS is seeking young adults, in their twenties, to serve as full-time missionaries for nine months in Wisconsin. SPIRITUS missionaries live in community and travel to parishes and schools throughout Wisconsin, leading retreats that aim to ignite the faith in Catholic youth. They receive training, continual formation, spiritual direction, lodging, food, a monthly allowance, health insurance and a $2,000 stipend upon completion of the nine months of ministry. It's a beautiful year filled with many graces! I hope that you'll consider joining us as a SPIRITUS missionary. Check out their website to find out more!
International Opportunities
God continues to invite us to participate in the mission of love. Although most of the work of sharing God's love happens at home, work and in our local neighborhoods and communities, being able to step out of our own culture and context can help us appreciate God's love in a whole new way. Crossing borders and encountering our brothers and sisters around the world is an opportunity for a mutual exchange of the joy that comes from the Gospel. We not only evangelize, but are evangelized! Through Maryknoll Mission Immersion Trips, we offer group mission trips that invite teachers, DREs, deacons/wives, and other parish and diocesan ministers encounter Christ on the margins, experience the Church as Missionary, and enliven their own communities and ministries in mission when they return.
Maryknoll Lay Missioners is a Catholic organization inspired by the mission of Jesus to live and work with poor communities in Africa, Asia and the Americas, responding to basic needs and helping to create a more just and compassionate world.
Graduated from University already? Still have a desire to serve on mission? Join one of our FOCUS Missions Young Adult trips and serve alongside other college alumni from all around the country! Open to people ages 23 to 35.
The St. Francis Xavier Lay Missionary Society is a Catholic lay missionary apostolate serving in Asia dedicated to sharing the light and love of Jesus Christ -- particularly with young adults -- through a diverse ministry of evangelization, faith formation, and social justice.