"We are not there to draw Catholics into any other Christian tradition. We want to them to grow where they have been planted. How we can help, though, is to help reanimate their faith in Christ and then reconnect them to the Catholic Church at the local level."
Additionally, he said the goal is to aid Catholics in evangelization. Havercamp pointed to the rapidly growing population of people without religious affiliation and the need for tools to help ground adolescents in the Christian faith and parish level.
"We've heard more and more…about the rise of the nons, not religious women in habits, but those with no religious affiliation. Well, this is the largest and fastest growing religious demographic in the west and in the United States."
As a Catholic himself, Havercamp said many Catholics struggle with the idea of evangelization, but cited the bishops and popes who have called for a "new evangelization."
"[Catholics] have not fully realized their baptismal call to evangelize, or they feel very ill-equipped to do it."
"The bishops, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops certainly, but also the worldwide college of bishops, have been very intentional about re-grounding the church in the mission, which is evangelization. Pope Paul VI, way back in 75, said the Church exists to evangelize."
Havercamp hopes more partnerships with dioceses will begin as bishops realize Young Life is not looking to draw teens away from parishes, but instead to become a tool of the Church to aid Catholics in evangelization.
"This is what Young Life really wants to do, to normalize evangelization as the centerpiece to what it means to be Catholic and to learn the natural ways of doing this respectively, particularly as faith is being challenged in our age more and more."
Perry West is a staff writer for Catholic News Agency. He graduated from Franciscan University with his bachelor's in English. Prior to his job at CNA, he worked in construction staffing and coffee.