93% of Youth Ministers Can Bilocate, New Study Finds

16 JAN 2011

Youth minister simultaneously attends benefit dinner, plays retreat hide-and-seek

     A nonpartisan study on youth ministers' wages and workload was recently released to Economy Today.  What the study found was unprecedented.

     "We actually learned that 93% of youth ministers have multi-tasked to such an extent that they have actually exceeded the speed of light barrier and managed to actually be two places at once," said Bob Richards of the Edith Stein Institute for Independent Research.

     Bilocation, the ability to be in two places at once, has reported occurrences in the lives of saints such as Padre Pio, St. Anthony of Padua, and St. Ambrose of Milan.  It is considered an extremely rare gift of the spirit granted only to the most longsuffering and charismatic souls.

     "Well, the old saints never had to deal with a room full of 100 high schoolers, another room full of 200 parents, Confirmation classes, and a retreat planning committee all scheduled in the same hour," said one youth minister, who declined to be named.

     The trend was first discovered while one researcher was chatting with a group of 10th graders pursuing Confirmation.  They commented on a very hilarious skit put on by one Mr. Gordon, their youth minister, at 7pm the Sunday night before. The researcher suddenly realized that he had been speaking to some parishioners earlier that day who commented on Mr. Gordon's "unbelievably delicious" chocolate chip brownies he brought to the parish council meeting, also scheduled at 7pm that Sunday.  The researcher asked around and found that parishioners consistently reported that the youth minister was in two places at once throughout the entire day.

     "I kept wondering why he looked so exhausted," said Julie Smith, wife of Theodore "Tedster" Smith, youth minister at Holy Trinity parish.  "He would go to bed at 9PM sharp and wake up 9 hours later looking like he hadn't slept a wink."

     Turned out, Mr. Smith hadn't slept a wink.  While sleeping, he was actually still in the parish office, poring over details of an upcoming high school retreat.

     "Once we knew what we were looking for, we found the trend was endemic," said Richards.  "We conducted a close analysis of 500 different youth ministers and found that 465 of them had been reported being in two places at once."

     "We have been aware of the excessively high rate of bilocation among youth ministers for several years," says one top Vatican official.  "We kept it quiet to make sure individuals were seeking a career in ministry for the sake of God's plan, and not for the prestige of sainthood."

     When calculating bilocation into the hours put into an average workweek, the 60 hour workweek doubles to 120 hours. The average youth minister makes around $30,000 per year.

     This works out to about $4.81 per hour.