The Steubenville Young Adult Conference is coming to the Cousins Center, Saturday, Nov. 8. The conference is an all-day event aimed at attracting young adult Catholics who have left the church.
“The whole program is designed to really get the attention of this group and put their focus on Christ for a day,” said John Beaulieu, director of partnership and engagement at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. “Have them work on their relationship with God. Go to confession. Spend some time in prayer.”
Titled, “Encounter: Awakening a Generation,” the day will include talks, music, Mass, confession and Eucharistic adoration.
The conference normally takes place on the campus of Franciscan University, but for the second year, conference organizers have taken it on the road. In 2013, the Archdiocese of St. Louis hosted it and received positive feedback.
It has partnered with Arise Ministries, a local group that works with the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to bring Catholics together and foster a relationship with Christ in creative ways.
Dominick Albano, executive director for Arise, said he’s excited to work with another group in their common mission.
“Steubenville conferences are probably, objectively speaking, the most effective wave of the new evangelization that the church is seeing in the United States,” Albano said, adding having the event in Milwaukee will help boost enthusiasm in the church. “If you look anywhere else where they have a Steubenville Conference, the youth conferences … the diocese and the archdiocese where these conferences take place, they just flourish.”
According to Albano, the Steubenville Conference was looking for another location in the “Chicago area” to hold an event. Arise knew some employees at the Steubenville Conferences who put in a good word about them. After a series of meetings and discussions, they decided on Milwaukee.
“This is huge,” Albano said. “There are literally hundreds of other dioceses and organizations who would want this conference.”
Arise has helped make hotel, food and other arrangments, and will provide some speakers and musicians, something Albano said is typical for a Steubenville Conference.
“That doesn’t happen at any other conference, so this one is pretty rare in that regard,” he said. “Arise has a little bit more of a hand in kind of everything that goes on.”
Beaulieu said the conference is meant to be an “access point” for those in their teens and 20s who have drifted from their faith.
“We know there is a very vibrant and active church in Milwaukee,” Beaulieu said. “The talks are relevant, impactful, speak to the world young people are living in.”
The conference will feature Fr. Luke Strand, director of the archdiocesan vocations office; Pete Burds, director of evangelization for Arise Milwaukee; Ennie Hickman, a missionary from Houston; Paul George from Lafayette, Louisiana, founder of Adore Ministries; Sarah Swafford from Atchison, Kansas, founder of Emotional Virtue Ministries; and musician, Paul Vogrinc from Chicago, who is in charge of music for Arise.
Fr. Strand said the conference will help young adults grow in their conviction for their faith.
“No one at this conference is going to be shoving the faith down anyone’s throat,” he said. “But rather it’s going to be a community of young, vibrant Catholics who are going to want to do nothing else than introduce people to why they love the Lord and the church.”
Since its beginning, in 1975, Steubenville conferences have engaged audiences through faith. Beaulieu said the conferences served more than 46,000 people last year.
Albano said he anticipates the local Catholic community will be directly impacted by it.
“This one decision to have the conferene here, I think, is going to have an impact on the Archdiocese of Milwaukee for decades to come,” he said. “We just can’t quite see the fruit yet.”
