Is your RCIA open all year-round? Maintaining Focus

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5 thoughts on “Is your RCIA open all year-round? Maintaining Focus”

  1. Marjorie Desmond

    First of all, our parish [All Saints, Bridgeport, WV] has started the year round catechistes {sp} and I love it. Here is my question:

    Do you have anything available for me for mentoring the sponsors – or training the sponsors – or sponsors can use????

    Thank you for all of your help in the past. Margie

  2. What a great analogy – short vision and far vision! I believe that the main focus of RCIA is to guide people to experience a life-changing friendship with Jesus; therefore, every gathering needs to walk with the candidate or catechumen in this direction. The far vision is to journey with them into discipleship; with this far vision in mind, RCIA needs to connect the people to the community to help them find the ministry to which God is calling them. This is our goal – relationship with Jesus which leads to discipleship.
    Thank you for the way in which you provide leadership and guidance to all of us who are privileged to serve God in the RCIA.
    Blessings and prayers!

  3. Sydney Farnum

    Our RCIA program is year-round and so I have plenty of time for formation as a Catholic. One thing that I do that I believe has helped with retention is I begin every class with teaching the participants Catholic prayers. I teach the history of the prayer, when and why we may pray a particular prayer and then we pray it together. I repeat the Liturgy of the Hours, the Rosary, and Stations of the Cross several times because they are a little bit more of a challenge to be comfortable with for a beginner. When my catechumen & candidates are received into the church, I feel like they are well rounded Catholics knowing not only the teachings of the Church but also being more familiar with the Bible and knowing our prayers. So far its been successful. Also, only the unbaptized are received at the Easter Vigil and those already baptized are brought in with the Rite of Full Communion when their “approximately one year” is completed.

  4. Glenn Carlson

    We try to send our new team members to a TeamRCIA workshop so that they can grasp the vision of RCIA before they start on the team.
    We have an evaluation of our process for the past year at a local monastery. We start with morning prayer, a light breakfast, then review our process from precatecumenate to mystagogy. We join the nuns for Mass and finish by setting goals for the next year. We try to focus on a couple specific improvements that we hope to make.
    We also attend a workshop in OKC for a weekend for retreat and formation in the initiation process. This is a good opportunity to meet with other teams from other parishes to exchange ideas and challenges. These planned formation weekends, allow us to grow as a team, welcome new team members, and take time to pray for the seekers that the Lord will be sending our way.

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