rob tessier

No Clowning Around for This Youth Minister

By HENRIETTA GOMES
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of 7/26/07) tessier

Sometimes Rob Tessier balances a chair or a desk on his chin to get the attention of his students he said as he casually grabbed a chair to demonstrate.
Tessier, youth minister and seventh and eighth grade teacher at All Saints Parish in Manassas, uses some of the antics he learned during his professional clown training in his classroom or while ministering to his teens.
The former Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey Circus clown often refers to his time touring around the country as a “missionary experience” that prepared him for his calling to work with young people.
During the year-long nationwide circus tour, Tessier prepared a circus member’s daughter for her first Communion, giving her catechism lessons in their train car. Other ministerial opportunities included visiting the sick in hospitals and bringing “Gospel values” to those he encountered.
“I felt like the circus was mission territory,” he said. “It was not just fun and games, but a mission opportunity.”
It was not the dream of being a clown that led Tessier to the circus. In fact, it happened “on a fluke” he said smiling as he recounted the events. A theatre major in college, Tessier heard about clown college and decided with a friend to tryout just for the experience. Having no expectations, Tessier and his friend applied. Out of 3,000 applicants only 30 would have the opportunity to attend, and to their amazement they were both chosen for two months of 16-hour days of clown training. Following the training only 14 out of those 30 would be offered a spot on tour with the circus, and again, the pair were given the opportunity.
After prayerful discernment, Tessier realized God was giving him this unusual opportunity to serve in a different way. Simultaneously, his girlfriend at the time, now his wife, was preparing to serve as a missionary in Bolivia for a year.
Tessier said their time apart, where they could only communicate once a month for 20 minutes, allowed them to grow closer and helped them focus on “openness and communication.” They would make in-depth tape recordings of their experiences and mail them to each other.
Even though it was often difficult to juggle the life as circus clown and a devout Catholic, Tessier attended daily Mass, sometimes walking two or three miles just to find a Catholic church. To stay spiritually connected with Youth Apostles, a group he had joined as a college student, Tessier prayed the Divine Office.
Being a clown is “not a huge part of who I am,” Tessier said, but he conceded that he uses his training when it comes to his students and teens. The skills come in handy, he said.
“I know how to read an audience,” he said. “I can read my class and I can tell when it’s connecting and when it’s not.” He knows when to continue a lecture and when to switch to an activity or break into discussion.
“I’m able to be present to people,” he said, attributing it in large part to his experience as a clown.
All clowning aside, youth ministry entails genuinely caring for the kids, he said.
“I have to go out, sit with them at their lunches … [and] let them tell me about their problems. When you listen to someone they will give you their attention back.”
Recalling his own days as a teen, Tessier lamented the fact that he was a “Sunday Catholic,” and only began to take his faith seriously after his grandmother died. He began asking internal questions about the purpose of life and death, and gradually turned toward his faith, which became an integral part of his life. In college, he joined Youth Apostles and attended their annual Ignatian retreat. As he deepened his faith he realized that he was called to serve kids in the faith.
Through his own experiences he knows the importance of youth ministry and tries to reel kids in however he can.
“I have no problem getting kids to come just for pizza, but eventually they’re going to come for Jesus,” he said. “We have to hook them first. We can’t take them from zero to 100.”
One of the most rewarding aspects of youth ministry is to “get kids who aren’t connected,” seeing conversions in the once indifferent teens…
“Those are the best moments,” he said.
His philosophy with youth ministry is to “find what you love and use what you love to make it a ministry,” said Tessier who started a theatre ministry at the parish. Last summer he started a theatre camp where kids from around the diocese can come for acting lessons.
Tessier never voluntarily tells his students or teens about his clown background, however, if they are on their best behavior, he said, sometimes he rewards them by balancing a podium on his chin.

Henrietta Gomes can be reached at hgomes@catholicherald.com.