In the past month, the Office of Communications of the USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) published a document on social media guidelines. The publication of the guidelines coincided with a recent conversation among the team members of TeamRCIA—Diana, Nick, Rita, Miriam, and Rita—during which we discussed our desire to grow our Web site with more interaction, creative discussion, and peer support among all who visit our site. We want to become a virtual community of initiation ministers who minister to one another. What if TeamRCIA could become a dynamic, cross-cultural, international, community of support, encouragement, education, and resourcing for the work of faithfully implementing the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults!

Evangelization and catechesis

The guidelines document recognizes that “the world of digital communication [has] almost limitless expressive capacity” that can enhance the work of evangelization, catechesis, and apostolic action (note the echoes of Paragraph #75 here!) in ways that we have yet to imagine. “The Church can use social media,” the document reads, “to encourage respect, dialogue, and honest relationships—in other words, ‘true friendship.’” We know that TeamRCIA is already a community of over 8,000 friends and colleagues with a wealth of knowledge and experience. Moving forward, we hope to both build and experience our community in new and exciting ways.

Recognizing that social media offer both opportunities and challenges, the guidelines document calls out three in particular: visibility, community, and accountability. Indeed, we at TeamRCIA are striving to become more visible as a consistent, user-friendly, online resource for those who strive to be faithful to the vision of the Rite and its effective implementation in a variety of settings. Our hope for community building through future webinars, real-time interaction, and online discussion and consultation inspires us to seek new offerings in the near future. Accountable to one another and to the call of Vatican II for the restoration of the Catechumenate, we will continue to grapple with the cultural, social, economic, and individual issues that call for our pastoral response.

Share your thoughts

Your suggestions for helping us achieve our goals, and your response to this post would be most welcome!

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Once you master the goal-setting and limit-busting process we explored in the previous posts (here, here, and here), you will be ready to do something really big. How big? As big as you can imagine. If you can dream it up, you can set a goal for getting it.

What would make you great?

We often tend to think of practical goals—goals that make sense and that are actually doable. I think, though, if we are going to be forming catechumens, we have to shake off this self-limiting attitude. If you think about it, it’s actually a form of idolatry. Idolatry is worship of an image or idea that is not God. When we adore the practical, we are turning our face away from the unlimited possibility of the Divine. Nelson Mandela is the personification of someone who refused to settle for the practical. In his inauguration speech (quoting Marianne Williamson), he said, “Your playing small does not serve the world.  Who are you not to be great?”

So what would make you great? What is it you really want? What is your biggest limit? What is holding you back from everything God is calling you to be? If someone gave you unlimited resources (money, time, people, space), what is it you would do? Write that down. And then write some more, following the process we have been discussing.

Don’t know what you want?

But what if you don’t know what your most profound dream is? What if you don’t really know what you want?

That happened to me. When I was in college, I thought I wanted to be a psychologist. At the time, I was working part-time at the campus Newman Center to pay the bills. I loved the work. I loved it much more than school and much more than my psychology classes. But back then, “lay ministry” was not a career. The only people who did professional ministry were priests and nuns. I had a very practical plan. I would be a psychologist, so I could help people, and maybe volunteer some time at a parish.

I didn’t even think of it as settling for something practical. I just saw that path as the only one available to me. In her book, Write It Down, Make It Happen, Henriette Anne Klauser outlines a process for discovering what it is you truly want.

1. First, get up 15 minutes early and just start writing. Write about anything. Write about hating to get up early if you want. Just write for 15 minutes. Do this faithfully, everyday, for two weeks.
2. After two weeks is up, go back over everything you wrote and look for patterns. Don’t re-read anything before your two weeks are up.

Her point is that our conscious mind often buries what we truly want. However, just because our desire is buried doesn’t make it go away. By writing while we are still half-asleep, Klauser says we start to unearth our unconscious—where our true desires are secreted away.

Write down your dream

Spend some time these next two weeks praying about what it is God is calling you to. What is the biggest, scariest, most audacious dream you have? Find it, and write it down. And don’t dream too small.

1. What are your limits?
2. Lesson from a VW Beetle: Turn your limits into opportunities
3. A 5-step, dreams-to-reality process for RCIA teams
4. Teach catechumens to dream big—by example

In the first post in this series, we looked at the various ways in which we limit ourselves. We said there are three kinds of limits: personal, team, and parish. In the next post, we explored the secret for turning our limits in to opportunities. That process is: write down a positive goal. Now we’re going to walk through an example of turning a limit into an opportunity by writing down a goal. I’m choosing a team limit, but this will work with any limit you have set up for yourself.

1. Thank God

A common limit I hear expressed is there are not enough people volunteering to help on the team. I’m sure you have been praying about this, but I want to ask you to change your prayer a bit. Instead of praying for more team members, begin to thank God for the team members you already have—even if that is just you. God put you on this “team” because you are the exact person God called and gifted with the talents your parish needs right now. So start by offering praise.

2. Define the limits

Next write down all the tasks you need help with. Don’t focus on people yet. Focus on tasks. Break them down as small as possible. So, you don’t need a catechist to lead dismissal sessions and the extended catechetical sessions. You need help with:

• Preparing the room where dismissal sessions will be held
• Leading the catechumens out of the liturgy
• Leading 52 dismissal sessions (that’s 52 separate tasks)
• Preparing the room where extended catechesis will be held
• Making or buying cookies and putting on coffee for the extended catechesis (times however many sessions you have in a year)
• Leading a reflection on the readings during the extended catechesis (times however many sessions you have in a year)
• Leading an extended catechesis that flows from the liturgy (times however many sessions you have in a year)

If you asked me to do all of that, I’d say no. If you asked me to do 6 of the 52 dismissal sessions (one every other month), I’d say yes. The key here is to think of finding people for smaller tasks rather than one large job description.

3. Write down a goal you believe will happen

Now, write down a specific, measurable goal. To do that, you need to make an estimate of the number of people you would need to fulfill all those tasks. I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark and say “30” is the magic number. In your parish, you might find several people who would lead 12 or 24 dismissal sessions a year instead of 6. So you might need fewer than 30 people. The exact number is not important. What is important is writing down a specific, measurable goal. Here is an example of a positive goal statement—a dream you believe will come true:

With God’s help, St. Clementine parish has 30 active, committed parishioners contributing to the catechetical tasks of the catechumenate process by [insert date].

4. Plan to reach your goal

Now make a plan for reaching your goal. You have to figure on getting about five “no’s” for every “yes.” So, if you want 30 “yes’s,” you need to ask about 150 people. How in the world are you going to come up with a list of 150 names? Well, if you’ve been in the parish for more than a few years, I’m guessing that you can come up with at least 50 with some concentrated thinking time. Make some copies of your list with 100 blank spaces and hand it out to parish staff members, committee chairs, and social butterflies. Ask them to suggest more names for you. Also, see this post for a list of different kinds of people in the parish you might consider asking.

The next part of your plan is to create an “asking schedule.” You can start asking before you have your list complete. You need to ask as many people a week as it will take for you to get 30 “yes’s” by your goal date. So, if your goal date is six months from now, you need to ask six to seven people a week in order to have spoken to 150 people by the goal date. If your goal date is three months from now, you need to ask 12 to 14 people a week. The exact number is not critical. What is important is to regularly ask enough people so that you get enough “yes’s” by the date you set for yourself.

5. Thank God

At the end of each day, remember to thank God for all the team members you have (even if that is only you) and all the team members God is preparing to send you.

If you already have plenty of team members, choose whatever it is that is limiting you, and adapt this process to bust through your limit. Once you’ve done that, you will be ready to supercharge your dreaming, goal setting process to accomplish something really significant. We’ll look at that next.

1. What are your limits?
2. Lesson from a VW Beetle: Turn your limits into opportunities
3. A 5-step, dreams-to-reality process for RCIA teams
4. Teach catechumens to dream big—by example

We all live within limits. However, there is a simple process for turning limits into opportunities. It is so simple, you may have trouble believing it will work. The process is: Write it down.

Write down your goals

Write down what you would like to have happen. Write it in a positive way, as though you believe it will happen.

This isn’t magic. It’s part psychological and part biological. To understand the psychology, think back to when you were a child. Before you learned to ride a bike, you probably believed you couldn’t do that. You were too scared, not big enough, or not skilled enough. Your parents knew better. They knew your limit was an illusion. They encouraged you, modeled for you, held you up, and taught you how to believe you could overcome your limit. Believing was half the battle. Parents know their children can ride a bike. But they have to get us to believe in ourselves before it will be “true.”

Writing down what you want to happen, what you believe will happen, is a substitute for your parents running alongside you, holding onto the bicycle seat. Something in your mind is telling you that you have a grown-up, current-day limitation. By writing down the opposite, you are teaching yourself that your limitation is an illusion.

Overcoming our limit-illusions by writing down what we believe will happen also works on a biological level. We have a built-in fight-or-flight mechanism. We hardly ever have to fight or flee anymore, but our primitive brain doesn’t know that. So it is always filtering all the stimuli we experience in a given moment into “life-threateningly-important” and “not-such-a-big-deal.” Remember the last time you heard a siren while you were driving? Your high-alert status kicked in and pretty much shut down all other higher brain functions until the “threat” passed.

Alert yourself to the right information

By writing down what you believe will happen, you are placing a small siren on that part of your thinking process. Your primitive brain begins to move your written goal higher up on the priority list. Then you become more and more alert to everything in your life that is or might be connected to that thought. Your brain begins to filter in favor of data that support your goal and filters against data that negate your goal. For example, when I was a kid, my mom bought a red Volkswagen Beetle. I don’t remember ever having seen a Beetle before she brought hers home. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed like the roads were clogged with Beetles—especially red ones. Of course, there had been no dramatic uptick in the number of Beetle owners in my city. My Beetle filter had simply changed.

1. What are your limits?
2. Lesson from a VW Beetle: Turn your limits into opportunities
3. A 5-step, dreams-to-reality process for RCIA teams
4. Teach catechumens to dream big—by example

All of us live within limits. This is a paradox. It is a paradox because we tell the catechumens that God’s love has no limits. God can overcome any obstacle. We tell the catechumens that no matter what their situation or their history, God will show them a solution.

We say that. And at the same time we are saying it, we are submitting to our perceptions of our own limits. When I think of what limits me, and when I talk with team members, I notice three areas of limitation.

• We limit our personal potential
• We limit the potential of our teams
• We limit the potential of our parishes

Examples of personal limits

Have you ever said, “I don’t have enough time”? How about, “I’m so disorganized”? Have you ever been frustrated because you didn’t know how? Have you ever thought or said that you’re not smart enough? I know I have. All of these statements are false. Nevertheless, we tell ourselves these things, and we submit to our limits.

Examples of team limits

You’re probably way ahead of me. Fill in the blank: “We don’t have enough ______.” What is it you don’t have enough of? Team members? Volunteers? Sponsors? Catechumens? Resources? These cries of “not enough” are also false. We have and have and have in abundance! We have exactly what God has sent us—and God has sent us a lot. Even so, instead of reveling in God’s limitless gifts, we—like Adam and Eve—focus on what we don’t have. It is the original sin.

Examples of parish limits

There seem to be two types of parishes in the world. Parishes that used to be perfect before X happened. And parishes that would be perfect if only Y would get fixed. We tend to focus on the pastor, the preaching, the ethnic mix, the age demographic, or the school (or lack of a school) as insurmountable problem areas. Naming any of these—or any other element of the parish—as a limitation is another falsehood. The parish we used to have was never as perfect as we remember. The parish of the future will never be like we imagine. And the parish we are in now is not as hopeless as we sometimes tell ourselves. What the parish is is the People of God—the people God has called together in this time and in this place. Either God made a mistake or we are missing something.

How big is your limit?

Did I name your biggest limitation in any of these examples? Maybe not. Whatever your limitation is, whatever your roadblock, write it down. If you have more than one, write them all down. Place your list of limits on a card or piece of paper on your desk. Every day for the next seven days, look at each limit on your list and ask yourself: “Is this one too big for God to handle?”

I’ve done this. Here’s what happens. When I try to bring my own limits before God, a clanging “Yes, but…” alarm goes off in my head. “Yes, God can take care of this, but God hasn’t done so yet.” Or, “Yes, God can move that limit, but then another one pops up.” Or, “Yes, God can do anything, but I don’t have enough faith or I’m being tested.” False, false, false!

So then I have to change my prayer. I simply pray that God will give me the courage of faith. I pray for the strength to believe that, no matter how big and how strong my limit seems, there is nothing there. I pray for the strength to believe that everything on my list is, in fact, not a limit—but an opportunity.

I’ll say more about converting limits into opportunities in the next post.

1. What are your limits?
2. Lesson from a VW Beetle: Turn your limits into opportunities
3. A 5-step, dreams-to-reality process for RCIA teams
4. Teach catechumens to dream big—by example

I read a blog post today on delegating that has some interesting ideas for busy RCIA team leaders. Sometimes the “leader” is the whole team, and there is no one to delegate tasks to. Michael Hyatt lists seven strategies for distributing or reducing your workload. I’m going to reframe three of them for the work we do.

1. Ask for volunteers

I know you’ve probably done this already without much success. I’m going to suggest you try asking differently. First, write down your most unpleasant task or the one you find to be the biggest burden. Then, break that task apart into smaller pieces. Try to break it down into at least three to five separate parts. Next, make a list of 20 parishioners you know. Now, with your list of three to five tasks in hand, approach each of the 20 parishioners individually, and ask them if they would be willing to do one of the small tasks on your list. I’ll bet you have your volunteers before you get through the first half of your parishioner list. If so, choose your second most unpleasant task, and repeat the process.

2. Reprioritize

When I’m overwhelmed, the thing that calms me down the most is making a list of absolutely everything that is on my mind. Try it yourself. Set a timer for five minutes and write like crazy until you have everything out of your head and down on paper. Next, on a clean sheet of paper or on your computer, sort your tasks into four groups. Group 1 is all of your most important, most urgent tasks. Group 2 is all those important things that are not urgent. Group 3 is all the tasks that you need to do that are not critical. Group 4 is your delete file. If it’s not important, scratch it off your list.

3. Learn to say no

Really, how did those Group 4 things get into my head in the first place? I probably said yes to something I didn’t really want to do. An essential skill of an effective RCIA team leader is being able to set boundaries. As important as this ministry is, there are other things in our lives that are more important. Family and health, for example.

What do you do to delegate in your situation? Do you have team members to share the load with? Or are you on a small or non-existent team? How do you manage getting everything done?

Today’s readings (the third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C) are outstanding for many reasons, but what struck me most of all is how they seemed to be speaking pointedly about things we do in the catechumenate.

Some of you may be puzzled to hear me say this. But think about it. These scripture passages for this Sunday are talking about… well, us.

•  The reading from Nehemiah talks about “men, women, and children old enough to understand”—they are the adults and children of catechetical age.
• Ezra reads from the scroll and they say Amen. It’s a powerful scene. His listeners are moved to tears of repentance—it’s all about conversion and commitment.
• But they are told not to weep but to rejoice and celebrate a feast on this day—just like Sunday.. and the Eucharist!
• The reading from Saint Paul talks about a variety of gifts—RCIA team, take note.
• He says we need each other, and that our diversity builds up the body of Christ—the community of the faithful is not a collection of competitive individuals, but a caring and graced and organic whole.

You see what I mean. In fact, you could write the rest of this post yourself. But here’s the rest of my thought.

• In the gospel reading we hear that Luke’s “orderly account” is for “you, Theophilus” (the name means “lover of God”), so that he will understand all that he has heard—I think we are meant to put ourselves into the picture here, as a sort of modern-day Theophilus. The gospel is written for Hearers of the Word, so that they may understand. In a very special way, every catechumen is the “lover of God” whom this gospel addresses.
• Finally, Jesus himself, by opening up the word of Scripture, reveals himself as the Word who has come to save us. It’s the encounter with Christ that liberates, heals, and brings the “year of favor” about which Isaiah speaks.

For the record, let me emphasize that I’m NOT seriously suggesting we create a “Catechumenate Sunday” like we have “Catechetical Sunday” or “Catholic Schools Week.” Heaven forbid. No, every Sunday is Catechumenate Sunday as far as the Church is concerned!

But it is good now and then to notice how thoroughly and well the central themes and institutions of the RCIA correspond to what we hear in the Sunday Word of both Old and New Testaments. That Word is “fulfilled in our hearing” in the very practices of Christian initiation, when we follow the vision of the rite.

One last item. RCIA catechists and team people, here’s a question for you, sparked by this Sunday’s readings: How many of you used Minor Exorcism H (found at RCIA #94) in praying with your catechumens today? This beautiful prayer is based on today’s Gospel reading.

If you haven’t discovered it yet, you might want to look it up in your ritual text and put a marker in that page for future reference. In my opinion, it’s one of the loveliest prayers of the Minor Rites. (I’ve reproduced it here, for your convenience.)

Lord Jesus Christ,
sent by the Father and anointed by the Spirit,
when you read in the synagogue at Nazareth
you fulfilled the words of the prophet Isaiah
that proclaimed liberty to captives
and announced a season of forgiveness.

We pray for these your servants
who have opened their ears and hearts to your word.
Grant that they may grasp your moment of grace.

Do not let their minds be troubled
or their lives tied to earthly desires.
Do not let them remain
estranged from the hope of your promises
or enslaved by a spirit of unbelief.
Rather, let them believe in you,
whom the Father has established as universal Lord
and to whom he has subjected all things.

Let them submit themselves to the Spirit of grace,
so that, with hope in their calling,
they may join the priestly people
and share in the abundant joy of the new Jerusalem,
where you live and reign for ever and ever.

Amen.

Happy Sunday, everyone!

This is a guest post from Father Robert Duggan. It’s one of the longer posts we’ve featured on the site, but it is well worth your time.

Father Bob is a presbyter of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, and a frequent speaker and author on topics related to Christian initiation and liturgical and sacramental renewal.

You’ve probably heard people say the RCIA is a “process, not a program.” But what does that really mean?

Implementation suffered from pastoral exhaustion

The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults is an extremely provocative document. The pastoral efforts to implement the RCIA in the United States were undertaken by a grassroots movement of pastoral workers and theologians who were left to their own resources. There was no national leadership, in the beginning, to guide them. Without this grassroots movement, the RCIA might easily have been ignored as a text “meant for missionary lands.”

Recall that this document came from Rome as one of the last revised texts developed in response to the Second Vatican Council’s call for renewal. By the time the RCIA was issued and translated into vernacular languages, the “reform the reform” folks in the Roman Curia and elsewhere were already attempting to blunt the spirit of liturgical renewal that had so inspired an entire generation. There was a fatigue abroad in the land, a pastoral exhaustion, after having tried to assimilate so many liturgical changes in such a short time. The bishops didn’t have the stomach to expend any more energy taking this obscure document in hand and helping the church entrusted to their care to implement what to them seemed like a marginal document at best.

RCIA embodies a renewed ecclesiology

However, a few theologians and pastoral leaders understood the significance of the RCIA and saw it as a providential instrument of the Spirit—a way to further implement a Vatican II ecclesiology that was rapidly being shut down by post-conciliar, reactionary forces. Those who understood the significance of the rite include people like Aidan Kavanagh, Christiane Brusselmans, Mark Searle, and Jim Dunning.

These prophetic voices insisted that the faith of the church is shaped by the church at prayer and that pastoral structures, Canon Law, etc., should take their inspiration from the church’s distinctive experience of God that is centered in our liturgy. They discerned in the rite a renewed ecclesiology, a renewed pastoral agenda. They discerned, in short, an operative version of the renewal that Vatican II had called for. At the core of this vision of church was an understanding that the intentional faith nurtured in the catechumenate is the norm that should be followed by all Catholics. It was a radical attempt to articulate an alternative to the cultural Catholicism that has defined membership since Constantine’s embrace of Christianity as the state religion (I exaggerate, I know!).

Essential to the integrity of this vision is an understanding of conversion that is multifaceted, progressive, and lifelong—conversion that is experienced and nurtured in the formative dimensions of the catechumenate spelled out in paragraph 75 of the RCIA.

RCIA hindered by pragmatism

I number myself among those who found these prophetic figures convincing and who saw in the implementation of the RCIA an opportunity to continue to work for the vision of Vatican II’s renewal that has been increasingly under siege. The North American Forum on the Catechumenate provided a structure around which like-minded people gathered and worked to implement the RCIA. Many of us who appear(ed) “purists” were/are convinced that implementing the RCIA faithfully is an important way to insure that the leaven of renewal remains deeply embedded in the church at the local level.

However, what we found over the past three decades of doing workshops and other training around the country is that American pragmatism wants to take a very complex and demanding pastoral challenge (i.e., implementing the rite properly) and figure out ways to do it more easily and quickly.
 
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• How do you know if the catechumens are ready for the rite of election?

• Who decides?

• What is the process for discerning their readiness?

Take a look at Sr. Miriam Malone’s invitation to a one-hour, live training workshop to answer these questions and more.

Click here here for more information and to register for the workshop. 60% off the registration fee if you act before January 1, 2010.

Marketing guru Seth Godin goes a bit over the top in a rant about the ineffectiveness of nonprofits to cause change in the world. But one question he asks struck me as particularly apt for parish leaders:

When was the last time you had an interaction with a non-profit (there’s that word again) that blew you away?

We might ask, when has anyone had an interaction with our parishes that blew them away?

Godin’s post could be brushed aside as a message to “big” nonprofits, but that would be a mistake. In your zip code, your parish is the most likely and potentially most effective source of change for the people of that neighborhood. Red Cross or even Catholic Charities cannot hope to have the impact your parish can have, because you live there and they don’t.

On the one hand, I wouldn’t take Godin’s comments too seriously. Some of his markers of success for a nonprofit seem silly. (e.g. having lots of Twitter posts; to read someone who disagrees with Godin’s post, click here.)

On the other hand, his underlying concern should keep us all up at night. Do our parishes really make a difference? Are we causing the world to change?

What do you think? Do you see Catholic parishes as a force for change in the world? Can you share some examples or best practices?