Dear parish catechists, and members of Team Spirit and recent discipleship groups:
I would like to invite you to a summit meeting on the evening of Thursday, the 3rd of December, to consider a new way of offering catechesis for families in our parish. The summit will be at St Dyfrig’s Presbytery at 6.30 pm starting with a meal (please advise any special dietary needs).
GIFT – Growing in Faith Together – is a successful model that’s been running in Exeter now for several years. The concept is that once a month on a Saturday morning, there is an event for families. A short Mass is celebrated; refreshments follow; and then two parallel activities take place: one where parents work together with primary age children, and another for teenagers. Website: https://www.blessedsacrament.org.uk/parish-life/gift/
When a family enquires about first communion or confirmation, they are asked to attend the monthly sessions. They can start at any time because the sessions do not have a syllabus which works towards a particular sacrament; rather they form a rolling program of Christian instruction that may be based on the liturgical season.
By taking part in these sessions, families grow in discipleship, and build relationship with the team of catechists. It respects the principle that Catholic parents are the first instructors of their children in faith, so when it seems that a child is close to being ready for one of the sacraments, then the parent is given additional resources to prepare their child for that specific sacrament at home, supported as needed by members of the team of catechists.
As Parish Priest, I believe we should seriously consider this model here. It would raise a number of practical questions: Would we run parallel activities at all three parishes? Would we rotate once a month around the three parishes? Would it run at one central venue? At the outset, would it replace Young Disciples, or only serve families with primary age children? Would it in part or in whole replace the baptism preparation course for parents of infants? And given that our human resources are limited, would we need to stop doing some of our current activities to release people to make this possible?
It is not intended that this should replace the adult RCIA, which would continue as normal; but for an adult who found the usual evening slot impossible to access, attendance at these sessions, perhaps over the course of two years, might provide an alternative pathway. An adult who is already Catholic but not yet confirmed might appropriately prepare over the course of one year.
Our mission as catechists is not to provide lessons so that children can answer questions about particular sacraments. Our mission is to draw people deeper into relationship with Jesus, until they fall in love with him and freely choose to follow him. Our goal is not to get the maximum number of people receiving the sacraments, but to have the maximum number of people being able to grow in faith together – which is exactly the name of the concept.
There is good published evidence that the one kind of church activity most likely to plant seeds so that young people grow up and become churchgoing young adults is precisely this kind of activity: families pray together, eat together and do some kind of faith development activity together. I believe that implementing this kind of approach will be the very best gift that we can give to the families of our parish. It will be controversial, because it will not offer an easy route to the sacraments; but I believe it is what we need to do in order to fulfil the Lord’s command to go and make disciples.
It may be premature to imagine launching this immediately, and I’m conscious that by the time we have the summit, it will be past the normal time in November when we start making application forms available for the spring cycle of First Communion. But it will probably take a good few months to prepare, if we decide we are ready to make this kind of radical change; we are probably looking at running another year in the current model while we imagine doing something different. Once we come up with a definite plan for how this could be done in practice, and not just affirming it in principle, we should take it to the Pastoral Advisory Council. But before that, we need to decide whether we have critical mass to make this big step at the moment. And that is the reason for the summit.
So please let me know if you can join me on the evening of Thursday, the 3rd of December, whether you can come in time for supper, and if you would want to attend over a Microsoft Teams link if that is the only way that you could be present.
Every blessing
