Sister Kate O’Neil, IHM, sent me an e-mail recently, telling me about her parish’s plan to begin catechizing the baptized candidates and the catechumens separately. As you know, in most parishes, that would take a whole bunch more person-power. Well, Sister Kate has what it takes. She told me she’s recruited seven new team members. Seven! I asked her to share her successful strategies with us. Here’s what she said: Read the rest of this entry »

One of the reasons often given for doing only a partial RCIA process is a lack of volunteers. So let’s look closely at how you can redeploy your current volunteers more efficiently. I’m going to imagine you have a team of three people, plus sponsors or godparents as needed. You may have fewer than that, but these principles will still work. Certainly if you have more than that, they will work.

Limit the inquiry process to true seekers

Let’s look at inquiry. What is the inquiry period in the first place? Flip open your RCIA text to paragraph 36 and underline this sentence:

It is a time of evangelization…. Thus those who are not yet Christians, their hearts opened by the Holy Spirit, may believe and be freely converted to the Lord.

So inquiry is not a place for Christians. Usually. It is sometimes the case that a person baptized as a child was never raised in the faith and has never “freely converted to the Lord.” That Christian could be in inquiry. But the faithful Protestants who are married to Catholics, who believe in Jesus and go to church, do not belong in inquiry. Where do they belong? That’s a subject for another post, but the short answer is, if they believe in Jesus and they are going to church, they are not our first concern.

To see what I mean, flip open another book, if you have it: the General Directory for Catechesis. (You can also read it online.) Turn to paragraph 46: Read the rest of this entry »

Whenever I serve on a Beginnings and Beyond institute, we always ask how many of the teams present are using a year-round process for the catechumenate in their parishes. Typically, about a fourth to a third of the hands go up. Granted, a B&B probably has a more than average share of beginners present, but that still seems like an awfully low percentage to me.

Now in all the time I’ve been working in RCIA ministry, I’ve never met anyone who thought a nine-month program was a good idea. Nine or ten months are all they can handle. Almost everyone would, they tell me, do a year-round process if….

Fill in the blank.

Usually, the “blank” is more team members. “If we had more team members, we could do year-round.”

So how many team members does it take to do a year-round RCIA process?
Read the rest of this entry »

We don’t often think of the acolyte or server as a team member, but this minster’s role can be important in the smooth flow of the rites. Perhaps because most parishes have someone who schedules and trains servers, we don’t think it is our place as catechumenate leaders to step in.

Every parish has its own ways of deciding such things, of course. But in my experience, I’ve either been the person that scheduled the servers or I had a good relationship with the person that did. I always scheduled or asked for the best of the best when we were celebrating RCIA rituals.

These are the five characteristics I look for in top acolytes:
Read the rest of this entry »

The ideal sponsor is someone fully immersed in their Catholic faith, and it’s wonderful when you have sponsors like this. In my experience, however, sponsors are sometimes not much more catechized than the catechumens. When that is the case, the sponsor coordinator is really a sponsor to the sponsors.

If you find yourself working with under-catechized sponsors, consider these four points. Read the rest of this entry »

I love stories, especially stories about how people got started in ministry. And more especially about how people got started in catechumenate ministry. We are, after all, a pretty specialized group. Sure, if we all showed up at a convention, it would look like there were a lot of us. But next time you are in a social group outside of church people (not likely, I know; I have a rich fantasy life), tell someone you are a specialist in the RCIA. The puzzled look will confirm that we are definitely our own small group.

The chances that you and I would wind up here are, indeed, pretty small. Some might say miraculous. So what’s your story?

Diana just created TeamRCIA’s essential reading list for catechumenate teams. It’s a work in progress, and there are more resources we want to list. But here’s a start.

What’s missing? What resources does your team depend on? Click on comments, and share your secret sauce with the rest of us.

Ever have one of those days? Ever have a string of them? Last week, I thought I should have just stayed in bed for most of it. I wish I’d have seen Mike St. Pierre’s post, 6 Ways to Rebound from a Tough Week, earlier. Here’s my favorite from the list:

Don’t give up by Wednesday. I find that if I can tough it out through Wednesday, my week is salvaged. This is a pivotal day so hang in there on hump day.

I’d add one more to Mike’s list. I saw it at the bottom of somebody’s e-mail, and I can’t remember to whom it was attributed:

Plan ahead. Noah didn’t start building after it was raining.

One of the complaints I sometimes hear from catechumenate teams is that the parish isn’t really the full expression of church that the catechumens-now-neophytes might have come to expect. It is one thing to catechize them fully and correctly about how word, worship, community, and service are fully realized in the Body of Christ as it gathers around the Table of the Lord. It is another thing to shove the new Christians out of the small-group nest and into the less-than-perfect, not-quite-open arms of our fellow parishioners.

The disconnect is not difficult for catechumenate team members to spot. We, for the most part, have taken seriously the church’s mandate for ongoing, lifelong faith formation. Sometimes our fellow parishioners and sometimes even parish staff members haven’t quite embraced that vision of church.

A vision of parish

What if you could get the whole parish to engage in the kind of ongoing faith formation that we shape the catechumens in? What if the entire parish were undergoing a lifelong conversion process that led to a full implementation of the ministries of word, worship, community, and service? What if our parishes were so committed to growing in faith that the neophytes could leave the catechumenate thinking, “This is exactly what I signed up for!”?

Well, I can’t promise that’s going to happen in your parish, but I can tell you the way to get there. Or rather, Bill Huebsch can. He’s written a book called Dreams and Visions: Pastoral Planning for Lifelong Faith Formation. The book is deceptively simple. It provides a blueprint for how to move from zero to a fully realized parish, actively involved in lifelong formation. Bill’s blueprint is ten easy-to-understand steps. Easy to understand, but perhaps not so easy to commit to. The first one is the doozy:

1. Decide to do this and commit yourself to the vision.

The pastor, senior staff members, and key volunteers have to be on board. Once that’s accomplished, the rest is going to be a piece of cake by comparison. Fortunately, Bill’s book provides lots of support, suggestions, ideas, and even meeting agendas. And he has an even deeper level of support on his Web site, PastoralPlanning.com.

If you want to hand off the neophytes to a parish that can help them continue to grow in their new faith, you have to check out these resources.

All of us here at TeamRCIA.com are active team members with the North American Forum on the Catechumenate. We serve on Forum institutes to provide ministers-volunteer and paid, full and part-time, lay and clergy-with deeper understanding of the vision of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and the skills to implement the Rite.

If you or the members of your team have never been on a Forum institute, why not take advantage of the opportunity this year? I guarantee you’ll love it.

Beginnings and Beyond

The “foundational” institute is called “Beginnings and Beyond,” and it gives you the full experience of the Rite, covering vision and skills needed to implement a process for catechumens.

Because the B&B is five days long, and not everyone can get away for that much time, there is a compressed version (four days), called a “Beginnings Plus.” If you can possibly do the longer version, it is definitely worth it. But if you can only give up four days, the B+ is your option.

Other institutes

The foundational institutes deal strictly with the catechumens, part 1 of the RCIA. There is a two-day institute called “Concerning the Baptized,” that deals with, well, the baptized. The focus of the institute is on how to implement the Rite of Reception into Full Communion.

The Forum also sponsors Vision of Initiation Ministry Conferences in partnership with local dioceses or formation institutions. These intensive two-day events cover evangelization, pastoral formation, the roles of the initiation process, and the connections between liturgy and catechesis.

There are several other institutes as well (which you can read about here), but these are the ones that members of TeamRCIA.com will be serving on over the next several months. Come join us!

Where you can find TeamRCIA

Aug. 22-23, Concerning the Baptized, Monterey, CA, Nick Wagner

Aug. 1-2, Concerning the Baptized, Boston, Rita Ferrone

Sep. 8-11, Beginnings Plus (with children’s focus), San Francisco (Menlo Park), Diana Macalintal

Sep. 19-20, Concerning the Baptized, Gaylord, MI, Rita Ferrone

Aug. 22-23, Concerning the Baptized, Los Angeles, CA, Nick Wagner

Oct. 7-9, Vision of Initiation (for clergy), Dodge City, KS, Rita Ferrone

Oct. 10-11, Vision of Initiation (pastoral ministers), Dodge City, KS, Rita Ferrone

(TeamRCIA.com member, Miriam Malone, SNJM, is taking the season off from doing institutes so she can focus on her dissertation for her DMin.)