St. Paul’s in Fayetteville has traditionally used youth acolytes exclusively. Thankfully we have a large number of youth to fill this ministry. Acolytes serve at all three of our Sunday services. The first service is a spoken service at 7:30. The service that most of our families attend is at 8:45. The children’s choir sings at this service. This is also when we use our youth ushers. We found that most of our youth acolytes also wanted to work at this service.

Finding youth acolytes for the other two services became increasingly difficult. I spoke with our Rector about using adults as acolytes for these services. My next step was to inquire whether adults would be interested in doing this. The response was overwhelming. We had 25 people attend our first adult acolyte training, many of these were acolytes in their youth. This was over two years ago and most of the people attending that first training are still serving as acolytes today. They are doing a wonderful ministry for our church. I strongly suggest that you integrate adult acolytes into your acolyte program. This work serves to fulfill a strong ministry both for the church and the adult acolyte.

Verger and Master of Acolytes