Improve next year’s Triduum by evaluating this year’s celebration with this easy-to-use process.
1. Remembering
The first step in evaluating is to remember what happened. In the catechumenate process, this is called mystagogy. What did you see? What did you hear? What emotion did you feel? What was especially powerful? Negative responses are as valid as positive ones. It is more helpful to use the phrase “I felt ____.” It is less helpful to use the phrase “I liked (didn’t like) ______.”
2. Theologizing
What we remember about our worship shapes how we believe. Choose two to four particularly powerful memories. It could be a memory of a symbol, a song, an action, a phrase or a sound. Then, for each memory, ask these questions:
- What did (the thing I’m remembering) tell us about God?
- What did (the thing I’m remembering) tell us about Jesus?
- What did (the thing I’m remembering) tell us about the church?
- What did (the thing I’m remembering) tell us about our community?
- What did (the thing I’m remembering) tell us about myself?
The collective memory of our celebration and what we believe about our memory is how we, as a parish, are “teaching” theology.
3. Evaluating
Our liturgy then, can be evaluated on how well it spoke about each of these areas:
- Were we satisfied with how this liturgy spoke to us of who God is? What was said clearly that we want to keep? What needs to be improved?
- Were we satisfied with how this liturgy spoke to us of who Jesus is? What was said clearly that we want to keep? What needs to be improved?
- Were we satisfied with how this liturgy spoke to us of what we believe about church? What was said clearly that we want to keep? What needs to be improved?
- Were we satisfied with how this liturgy spoke to us of what we believe about community? What was said clearly that we want to keep? What needs to be improved?
- Were we satisfied with how this liturgy spoke of who I am? What was said clearly that we want to keep? What needs to be improved?
Our final evaluation of the overall Triduum might look at these questions:
- How did this year’s Triduum make us different as a parish?
- What goal will we set for ourselves to achieve as a parish next year?
- How did this year’s Triduum make the world a better place?
- What goal will we set for making the world a better place next year?
