YCP

Catholic Focus is a segment featuring Joan Ebustinsky and Brian Lynch, president of the South Central Pennsylvania chapter of Young Catholic Professionals. The organization was started in 2010 in Dallas and now has 40 chapters nationwide. Their mission is to help young adults incorporate their faith into their work through events like happy hours, speaker series, panel discussions, and an annual retreat. Membership is available and includes benefits like mentorship. The organization aims to reach and connect young adults in the diocese and inspire them to live their faith in their professional lives. Thanks for joining us for this segment of Catholic Focus. I'm Joan Ebustinsky, and today I'm joined by Brian Lynch. He's the president of the South Central Pennsylvania chapter of Young Catholic Professionals, correct? Correct. Thanks for having me, Joe. Well, thanks for being with us here at Holy Family Radio. Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about you, first of all, if you don't mind. Sure, sure. My name is Brian Lynch. I grew up in Ephrata, right outside Lancaster. Moved away for college, went to Bucknell, and then went down to North Carolina for graduate school. After I graduated from graduate school, I moved back up to the area, moved back to Lancaster, and I've been there for the last five, six years at this point. Are you a cradle Catholic? I am a cradle Catholic, yeah. All right. We've got two cradle Catholics here. Tell us a little bit about the Young Catholic Professionals. Sure. Young Catholic Professionals was started in 2010, down in Dallas, Texas, by Jen Ball. She started it as just a local chapter in Dallas, and it's since expanded to 40 chapters nationwide. Here in the Diocese of Harrisburg, we have the Young Catholic Professionals South Central PA chapter. We started the chapter officially about a year, or about six months ago, back in January. We started organizing the chapter about a year and a half ago, and it just took a little time for us to get our volunteers together, get some fundraising done, and to get the chapter off the ground. The mission of the organization is to help young adults learn about how they can incorporate their faith into their work. We have a variety of different events. We have happy hours, speaker series, panel discussions, and a retreat once a year. Our speaker series are intended for somebody to come in, talk about how they've incorporated their faith into whatever work that they've done. Panel discussions, we typically have three panelists that will all speak on a virtue, or are all in the same field, or have done similar work, or similar volunteer work, just to have a common thread between them where they've been able to express their faith in what they do professionally. And then happy hours are just young adults getting together, socializing, and it gives us the ability to learn from each other about how we've incorporated our faith into our work and the things we do in our faith lives and in our professional lives, and just socially being able to get together and meet each other and enjoy each other's company. What kind of things do people talk about? I'm trying to imagine how young people can incorporate their faith into their daily lives and their work. Yeah. So I guess for our speakers, that could be a wide range of topics. So we've had three speakers so far. Our first speaker talked about his military experience and how faith was a very important part of his military experience and how he really was able to show that his faith was important to him and how that guided his time within the military. Our second speaker was Jim Weber, who is one of the founders of Lancaster Brewing Company, and he now runs an ad agency as well. He's just a serial entrepreneur. He talked a lot about how faith has just been this underlying, you know, it's underlying everything that he's done, and, you know, he's a big reader, and he talked about the different writings of saints or, you know, different spiritual books that he's read and how that influences his decisions as a founder and business owner and, you know, in the way that he treats people, manages people, and runs his businesses. And then our last speaker was Julie Shore, who runs her own recruiting and career consulting business, and she talked about how her, you know, when you're looking for a job or when you're in a job, you know, your faith is an important part of you. So considering your faith and considering your values when you're making those big decisions in your life. So really when we have that prompt for individuals to come in and talk about how their faith is, how they incorporate their faith into their work, it's really very broad, and as you can see with those three different people, they're three people that have a really big variety of experience in the world, but they're all able to share how faith has guided them in their career paths. Yeah, I should give a shout out to Julie Shore. She's one of our supporters here at Holy Family Radio. She actually supports our free mobile app that we have, so everybody around the world can listen to Holy Family Radio. So Holy Family Radio really has a, we really do love Julie Shore for her supporting our app. So what a great Catholic woman, what a great Catholic entrepreneur she is. So yeah, it sounds really exciting to me. Is there a cost to join your organization? No, it's all of our, we have monthly events that are free. We do have a membership that you can join. It's $3 or $7 a month, depending on what you're interested in. With the $7 a month, you can be paired with a mentor that can guide you both career-wise or if you're interested in talking to somebody about work-life balance or whatever you might be interested in. So we give a summary to our members about what the mentors, what their experiences have been, and then you're able to look at that and see who might be the best fit for you. Our monthly events, all of them are free, and then we'll have quarterly member events where, like I said, there's a cost to it. And with the cost, there's a bunch of membership benefits that you get through the National Young Catholic Professionals Organization. So that can all be found on the Young Catholic Professionals website. Which is? It's youngcatholicprofessionals.org. Now, one of the things that you just said was work-life-family balance. That's something that was a, no one ever heard of that when I was starting my career 40 years ago. That's something, there was no such thing as anybody, anyone ever talking about the fact that you should have a balance between your work life and your family life. And I would think that would be a really important concept for people, young people starting in their careers. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, I mean, that's a big thing, too. And I see that when the young adults come to our events, even, you know, especially at our happy hours. You know, when people are talking, I think everybody has that same question of how do I balance my work life with my faith life and social life. And I think it's really neat to see people coming out and seeing that, hey, you know, there's a bunch of people here that are all on the same page as me. And we're all kind of going through the same thing. And we all have these same questions and not saying that somebody there is going to have the answer. But, you know, you can develop friendships and relationships to be able to navigate that time together. Yeah, I know from my experience, that would have been really helpful because I really did not think when I started my career, I did not think that my job could live without me. I remember going on vacation and taking paperwork with me. I remember going to the beach and working on a budget on the beach. I was talking to my wife this other day, like, why did I do that? You know, we were talking about when we first got married and we were professionals, we were like, we went on vacation, we took work with us on the beach. I'm like, I can't believe we did that. What kind of crazy people were we? But we didn't have anybody that had experience to tell us, you know what, there needs to be a line between your work life and your family life. And I missed many things with my children as I was working also because, you know, I thought my job is super important, so I wish I could go back because I missed family events, I missed weddings, I missed birthdays, I missed soccer games, and I can't go back and get those again. So, I mean, that to me sounds really important. Yeah, this organization, it's for people in their 20s and 30s, young adults in their 20s and 30s. And so we span from people just coming out of college to, you know, people that are into their careers for sure in their 30s. So it's a wide range of experiences even within that group. Now, I know you just started just in January. What kind of numbers do you have at your events? Yeah, so we're typically getting about 30, 40 people out to our events. We have pretty good turnout. We are spread across the entire diocese. So within the diocese, we're between, our events are between Lancaster, west to Gettysburg, Carlisle and then north to Harrisburg. So it's really the southern half of the diocese at this point. But we try and have events all across the diocese and, you know, try and reach people wherever they may be. And how do you reach people? How do people know that? I mean, I happen, I'll tell you how I just happened to come across you because I was on an EWTN webinar and they were saying, make sure that you make connection with your Catholic young professionals. And I was like, I never heard of them. So that's why I looked you up. Yeah, so we are active on social media. We have our, we're at YCP South Central PA on Instagram and Facebook. There's also youngcatholicprofessionals.org. You can go slash chapter South Central PA to learn about us. If you email info at YCPSouthCentralPA.org, you can also, that email goes directly to me and you can reach out to me with any questions. What kind of goals do you have for the organization? Yeah, we're just, at this point, we're trying to, we're really just trying to get the word out and reach people and try and connect people, connect young adults all around the diocese. So yeah, you know, we have, you know, like I said, we started about six months ago, so we're still in the beginning phase of everything. But yeah, we really want to reach young adults and, you know, connect people and, you know, be able to inspire young adults to live their faith out in all aspects of their life. What kind of people do you have coming at this? What kind of professions do you have? Oh, everything. I mean, you don't, that's, that's the, that may be one misconception about our organization that it's just for, you know, white collar professionals, you know, like lawyers and doctors and that's definitely not it. People from any sort of career can come out. The only qualification is that, you know, you need to be in your 20s and 30s, essentially, you know, so we welcome everybody. And as far as the spiritual side of it, do you get into, is there a spiritual aspect to the whole thing? Yeah. So, I mean, our most spiritual thing is our retreat and that happens once a year. This year it's going to be in October. But, you know, within, within the talks, you know, obviously faith is incorporated. But yeah, our retreats are real, one big spiritual event for the year. That sounds really good. And you're part of a national organization. How long, has that been around for a while? Yeah, that's been around since 2010. So there are 40 chapters nationwide. We are the 39th, the 40th just started a few weeks ago out in Indianapolis. So it's, it's really an interesting and it's a really good network to be a part of. They have a national conference every year down in Dallas. So I've gone the last two years. And at these conferences, there's been over 700 young adults, both of them, from all over the country. So people that are involved in their, their local chapters or, you know, have, have friends or, you know, you don't necessarily need to be a member of a local chapter. It just could be that you have a friend or you heard about it or whatever. But it's, like I said, over, it was over 700 young professionals for the last two years. And it's people that are all coming together with a similar mission, similar minded, and just really, really passionate about their faith and, you know, again, wanting to incorporate their faith and into all aspects of their life. Excellent. Well, Brian Lynch, thanks for being here with us here at Holy Family Radio, President of the South Central Pennsylvania Chapter of Young Catholic Professionals. Give us the website one more time before we go. Sure. youngcatholicprofessionals.org slash chapter south slash south dash central dash PA. That's easy for you to say, right? And thank you, everybody, for listening to this segment of Catholic Focus. We appreciate you joining us here at Holy Family Radio. Keep listening. I'm Jonah Bistinsky. Thank you.