Altar Servers

Participating in the Mass

Serving at the altar is a great way for our youth to be actively involved at St. Joseph. Open to all parish youth from 5th to 8th grade, participation begins with a year-long commitment to this important ministry.

During the first year of service your daughter or son will become more familiar with the rites and rituals of the Church, while at the same time enjoying more active participation during Sunday Mass. Second and third year members become lead servers, as they become more comfortable with the ministry and are able to jump in to help whenever and wherever the need arises. Additionally, senior members can return to St. Joseph during their high school years to captain Mass teams while also, possibly, earning their service hours at various schools.

• Program will consists of 5^th-8^th grade students from the St Joseph parish including kids from St Joseph School and other public/private schools.
• 8^th graders will generally be leaders in the program and serve as trainers. When scheduling altar servers, an 8^th grader should be included on any serving team until younger servers are fully trained
• An overarching theme of the program will be to engage youth and stress the importance of serving at mass in other forms. Ideally, 8^th graders will roll out of altar serving and into lecturing, eucharistic ministering and ushering
• To begin with we will try to have kids serve twice a month, which seems like the right balance of not serving too often, but serving often enough to remember what to do. We want to get as many kids involved as are interested. We will start with only serving at the 9 AM mass, but hope to get enough servers to eventually cover other masses
• Scheduling will be through the parish’s online scheduling system already in place for other ministries like lectoring
• A parent volunteer group of no less than four parents will provide support to the staff person and help to run the program. Support will include:
            Recruitment
            Help with training and social events (likely quarterly pizza party/training)
            Communication with St Joseph School
            Reminder calls/emails
            Training kids/parents on the scheduling system
           Outreach with other ministries (lector, usher, EM) to help 8^th graders move into these ministries

If you are interested in learning more or signing up, please email altarservers@ for information.

We would love for you to join us!