PARISHES REPRESENTED: Our Lady of the Assumption;
Our Lady of Mercy; St. Ambrose; St. Clare’s; St. Francis de Sales;
St. Pius X PURPOSE: LIFE-LONG FORMATION (YOUNG ADULTS) The meeting participants heard a brief report from the work
group that was put together at the May meeting to address the faith formation
concerns and needs of young people in high school and in junior high school. A 40-minute DVD was shown. Six young adults were featured
discussing 19-39 year olds (young adults) in the church. Following are
comments from the parish reps after viewing the DVD: THERESA DE ANGELIS: One of the things I noticed was that
the group was all white. There were no other nationalities or ethnic groups
represented, which could possibly have different needs. LINDA BERKERY, OLA: I wanted to just add to what Dolores
said. Because what struck me was, other than when they were speaking about
perhaps just returning from college -- and that's usually at about 21
or 22 -- most of the other things they were talking about to me are just
-- I don't see the difference between all adults who want to be welcomed,
who want to feel that they're needed. I didn't really get the distinction.
And what really played up for me was that most of what they were saying,
except for just that little opportunity when they're first coming back
from college -- maybe young 20's -- it's very hard to look at someone
who is 39 and separate them out. I have children in my family who range
from 22 to 32, and I think they would find it almost offensive to be called
or separated out as “you're the young adults in this parish”.
They would consider themselves adults. So, other than that returning time
from college for maybe a few years, really they're adults, they want what
we want as adults, I think. SANDY ZELKA, St. Pius: My apologies, but I think there's
almost two groups in this. There is the group that will be the singles,
and then the married kind who find a way to get back into church through
the vehicle of having children, being married and so on and so forth.
And I think that the singles in this young adult group is where we're
missing, because they're looking to belong, not only to belong in society
itself, but they're looking to find their place, find their careers, find
a home, and find their way back into the church and have it become part
of their life. ANNE SNYDER, Our Lady of Mercy: I was heartened at some
of the things I heard. They're people of action. They really want to get
in there and do something. And that really made me feel good that they
want to be used and have their gifts used. And maybe we're missing the
boat on that. TERRY RYAN, St. Francis de Sales: Something that really
struck me is that this age group feels a disconnect, or at least a lot
of them feel somewhat of a disconnect. I go back to the earlier topic,
the earlier age group. One of the guys said on the film that, from Confirmation
till marriage, there's a huge gap there, and that's where I think we lose
some of the young adults. I never thought about it quite that way until
he said it. CAROLINE GOMER, St. Ambrose: They all seemed to have some
connection now with church. It would have been interesting to reach out
to some people who were not connected right now and find out why. BILL MIELKE, Our Lady of Mercy: The one fellow mentioned
the way with which you would be able to get them involved, and that would
be to personally ask them. They're comfortable with technology, the internet,
and cell phones, but you can't put too much emphasis on that personal
contact. You can stand up there in that pulpit or that presider's chair
and say we need your help. But until you put a name with the request,
they're constantly thinking they need the other person because they don't
know me. And you just cannot disregard that personal touch. You've got
to reach out, stick your hand out and say “my name is, what's yours”,
and start the process. ED PRINCE, St. Francis de Sales: I'm going to play the devil's
advocate for a minute. Young adults are very stingy with their time. They're
caught up in their own whatever -- their own studies, or their own work,
their own pleasure. And they're also very lazy. I don't mean all of them,
but a lot of them are lazy when it comes to a lot of things. I just wanted
to throw that out. FR. MICHAEL FARANO, St. Pius X: There were three comments
that struck me. The question “why do they go to other churches or
parishes”. I think specifically they were concerned about the Grace
Fellowships of this world. One thing that she said was that, in speaking
to her friends, there are no demands or obligations there, and the Catholic
church makes a lot of demands on you, a lot of obligations that at least
she said her friends -- if I heard it correctly -- they don't experience
in these others places. That's true. Now, what we demand and what obligations
we put on people can be up to discussion. But there's a price on discipleship
-- I mean a cost of discipleship. That is one comment. The other one is that something was said about the responsibility
to get them into church is a peer to peer responsibility. It's not just
programs and the relationships, it's person to person. I think that is
a very powerful statement; it's peer to peer. And that's true no matter
what your age is. It's that personal invitation among peer groups. The third thing is one of the young women said “I
can't put my finger on what we can do differently”. And that, I
think, is the situation that we're struggling with……what is
it that we can do differently that will attract young people? And I'll just make two other comments of my own. As we were
meeting the other night in our parish to talk about this, we looked at
that 18 to 39 age group. And you have to subdivide that. What was just
said by this gentleman here about the schedule of young people, it's true.
I mean, you're dealing with one age group from Confirmation to college.
Then you're dealing with during college, and that's a whole other scene.
How did the church relate to that? But then you're dealing with right
after college, trying to find a job, get an apartment, figure out where
you're going to live, etc, etc. That's another age group. And then there's
the other group from, let's say, 26 upwards. So, I think when you're talking
about the young adult ministry, you're talking about ministry within ministry.
And we have to be realistic in terms of what a parish can give. The other thing is I didn't hear a lot of suggestions, and
I think that young woman was very honest when she said “I can't
put my finger on what we can do differently”. I didn't hear a lot
of suggestions. And these people that are involved, all of them except
for Joe who is a teacher at Emma Willard and he's got three little kids
-- except for him they're all employed by the church, all involved. And
it is refreshing as this woman here said to hear them, but they're involved.
It's trying to get someone to assume leadership on a parish level to involve
these people. We started a youth ministry -- or tried to start a young
adult ministry a number of years ago - and we had a good group; that was
when Father Tom Konopka was with us. But when he started to withdraw and
tried to get them to take over the leadership, it fell apart. So, the
parishes I think are willing, but the parishes need someone to do it. NANCY STREETER, St. Francis de Sales: The feeling that I
think one of the young women said was, "I don't feel comfortable,
because when I go and look around, I see that there's very few people
my age there". And it's sort of a conundrum because they don't go,
so you don't see them, so you don't go yourself. And one thought that
struck me was maybe that some Mass on the weekend schedule, maybe one
at one parish within the cluster, might be designated for this particular
age group, and that there would be more of a grouping of them so they
would feel comfortable. I think if you think about it in the reverse,
say, people who are 50 and 60 years of age -- which most everyone in this
room is -- if we were asked to go to, you know, a church filled with 18
to 30 year olds, we would feel uncomfortable. It's the same thing. FR. JOHN WALDRON, Our Lady of Mercy: I think it's always
a wonder why so many Catholics who go to these other churches, they abandon
the Eucharist. There's no Eucharist, and they don't seem to notice the
loss. And this group never mentioned that as one of the questions or concerns.
And part of worship life and part of our prayer to Christ is the Eucharist.
And people who go to these groups and it's not there, they don't miss
it. But that's a question that wasn't brought up by this group. THOMAS ACEMOGLU, St. Ambrose: I think part of that when
you're saying the Eucharist, I think that there are two sides of the coin
of the Eucharist: one is at the Lord's Supper, and the other is the presence
of the Lord among us in the community. But the aspect of the community
is the part that I think we need to focus on. I think that's why the Grace
Fellowship, for example, is so large; they really are focused on having
a huge community, but also a young adult community. And what they do --
which I think is interesting -- is they segregate young adults or high
school age or what have you, and have them on their own terms. But you
have to have a way of letting young people have a moment of self-empowerment
and try to bring them towards the church. I think that we have a hard time when somebody new comes
in, but there should be certain practices when somebody new comes in to
help them to immediately be comfortable. There's the computer, yes. But
part of community would be to involve the ministry, even if it's on a
lower level, that is face-to-face, phone numbers -- you know, somebody
can call and just say “how are you doing, this is so and so”.
Then you get involved together in community groups. But what they're lacking
is they seem to doubt technology, which is always a problem. You can't
do that. We're dealing with a generation of our youngest non-denominational
Christians and Catholics as a whole. But if we focus on the community
element of the youth, and identify people that they can just hang out
with and where there will be people their own age, there are so many ways
of balancing it out when focusing on the community. SANDY ZELKA, St. Pius X: That's the one thing, the questioning,
that we heard. They have a need for information, questioning themselves,
questioning their place in church, questioning church itself. Maybe that's
what we need to allow is their questions. That's the whole crux of it.
We need to work on getting that communication so we can answer their questions. MARY ELLEN EGELSTON, OLA: I think that one of the young
women said that some of her friends can't exactly say why they don't go
to church. I think that's really the thing. I think it's very difficult
to get people who aren't here when they don't really have a reason why
they don't come, they just sort of don't. I think that many of the young
people who are part of the parish who aren't participating don't have
any major issue with the Catholic church; they just sort of don't come. JACK HAUCK, St. Francis de Sales: I was reading an article
in the AARP magazine on Alzheimer's about a woman who was being treated
over a hundred years ago for Alzheimer's, and they tried to get her to
write her name and who she was, but could not get her to do anything else.
And they tried and tried, but the only sentence that they got out of her
was that she said “I have lost myself”. And that sums up the
whole issue of Alzheimer's. I think we have a lost generation that have
lost themselves. And to put it in very simple terms, when you have a lost
sheep, you go out and you look for it. And I think a lot of the things
that people are saying is just that…..this is a lost generation
to a certain extent; let's go out and look for it. NANCY URUSKYJ, St. Pius X: I think some of the comments
we just heard when Mary Ellen talked about the friend saying why the friend
wasn't there, and the comment about the Eucharist and why that isn't important,
and that sort of plays up how this perhaps would have been a more effective
presentation if we hadn't been subjected to such a stacked deck. What
we saw is not a typical, I don't think, representation of young people.
We saw people who all either work for the church or are very involved
in the church. And it would have been nice instead of hearing one person
talk about friends not going to church, to have that friend sitting there
so we could have heard her talk about herself. I think it would have been
more effective. RICHARD OSTIGUY, St. Ambrose: I don't think this younger
generation is lazy, as I think everybody is saying. But what you're actually
saying is that they're very busy. And why are they busy? Because they've
got the time and we are not offering them anything to fill the space.
So, they are definitely going to take that space and use it themselves.
And if you have to contact them, my personal opinion is our priests should
be doing this. I know myself -- and I've said it before -- that I would
love to have my pastor give me a call and say “hi, how are you”.
It would be more meaningful to me than to have Dolores here give me a
call and say “hi, how are you”. FR. MICHAEL FARANO, St. Pius X: Somebody said about “sometimes
there's no reason for not coming, they just don't come”. One of
the things I talk about with young people in preparation for marriage
-- I would say the majority of them go to church occasionally or on somewhat
of a regular basis -- and I almost always ask is there an issue with the
church. And I'm always shocked. I'm sitting there waiting for some big
diabolical problem like “I hate the church”, or “somebody
threw a snowball at me”, or “some nun hit me”. And I
haven't heard that. And even if I probe a little bit -- what about this
issue or that issue -- maybe they're not being honest, or they don't want
to tell me -- but they are being honest. A very few times you get substantive
things, but most of the time you don't get a substantive thing. It's just,
"Father, you know we just kind of stopped", or "I was in
college, I always used to go in high school, but I was in college".
So, it's this drift. And I guess I'm shocked at the number of times I
don't get these big issues that I'm waiting to be hit with again. GAYLE BOUCHARD, St. Pius X: I just want to address the lost
sheep. I feel like we don't grab a hold of these young people. I know
that when we were first married at 24 or 25, the associate pastor grabbed
a hold of us and said we would like to have you in our parish marriage
preparation program. And even though we were newly married ourselves and
we didn't have the experience, I really feel like we became involved with
so many different host couples and we grew in our parish because of these
other couples mentoring us. And I feel like because they grabbed a hold
of us -- sometimes it's just natural that after you get married you just
don't attend -- if you don't set a certain precedent in married life,
it doesn't happen. If we don't help them early on and catch them, pull
them in, there's no precedent being set for them to make room for church
in their future. And I feel like because of them grabbing us, we made
it a priority and we made room, and we continue hopefully to make room
for our parish. And if we don't have that expectation of the young people
to be pulled in and be involved, they don't make room for it. And as Fr. Farano said, there's that steady drift, and by
the time we're not pulling them in early on, they drift slowly away. And
that becomes, "I don't know why I'm not involved in church".
I think if we had a lot of these people in that video who are now not
involved in church, they would probably just say “I don't know why”. ERIN MUIR, St. Ambrose: When they say that they don't know
why they're not there, it really ultimately seems to go with what Tom
Acemoglu was saying, that if they had a relationship with Jesus Christ
and a hunger for the Eucharist, they would be coming. And they seem to
have missed that. And it's very sad to think that they don't have that.
That's what the Catholic church has to offer ultimately. It's the social
aspect and the welcoming that brings them in, but then it's a step beyond
that to the relationship with Christ and the hunger for the Eucharist
that maintains them and keeps them there, and has them turn around and
invite others to come, almost like we brought them along. And once they're
here, they sometimes feel welcome and sometimes they don't, but they haven't
taken that step that makes them have that relationship with Christ and
the hunger for the Eucharist that will keep them coming wherever life
takes them. BILL MIELKE, Our Lady Of Mercy: My daughter is a senior
in college. When she was 16 she came up to me and said, "Dad, I'm
not going to practice the Catholic faith any more; it doesn't mean anything
to me". And I think at this point, maybe for a lot of young adults,
and even the teens, they just don't see the relevance of practicing a
faith. I don't know where the disconnect is, but my daughter quite literally
had assessed and realized at this point in her life that she's getting
absolutely nothing out of going to church and preparing for Confirmation,
and she just stopped. Maybe that's what's going on with a lot of these
people; they just don't see the need for it any more. THERESA DE ANGELIS, St. Ambrose: One of the things -- I
forgot your name over there -- Gayle -- she said early on that, because
they were talking about young adults -- and really once you get past the
beginning years, that they are adults -- and we're talking about adults
who have been away from the church, to come to church. But there is also
a group of adults -- because I was one of them until five years ago when
I got married at the age of 39 -- but adults who are single in the church
and who went to church and participated, but it took a long time. The
focus is on families. If you have family, or if you're married and have
kids, it's great, connections are great because kids are in school and
everybody knows everybody. But as a single person in the pew without kids,
or a husband, it's tough. You're not a mom. You can youth minister and
different things, but still it's tough to have that connection. There's
a disconnect. I'm not sure how to fix that. I know because I experienced
it, and I've been to church my whole life. The other comment that I want to make is about the connection,
and the electronics, and e-mails, and the personal connection of having
the priest call you and all that, but in this generation to recognize
that electronic communication is part of this generation. And I can also
tell you that, yes, it's different but that connections can be made through
e-mail, through web site information -- but definitely e-mails. And we
have to really start taking a look at how we can use that to make connections. NANCY STREETER, St. Francis de Sales: This is about being
a single member in the community. I feel the same way. I'm older than
you are, but I felt this disconnect myself because I'm a divorced woman.
And you want to be way out in left field as a Catholic going to church
and being a divorced person, you really aren't very welcome in many cases,
especially if you're in a community and your family is in another. And
it takes a lot of courage Sunday after Sunday. There are a lot of people
who go through that experience. I've seen that happen over and over. (A brief refreshment break followed, after which the participants
regrouped at tables with their own parish.) A recorder was assigned at each table to record group responses
on newsprint to the following questions: If there isn't a college in the area of your local planning
group, skip the next questions. You have about ten minutes to focus on these questions,
write down the feedback, and then move to the next section. (Group discussion followed at each table.) SR. ANNE: As I look at the sheets, it looks like maybe you
could share what's on the sheets with each other and start to hear this.
Because then we move into developing a plan. ST. AMBROSE: What currently exists in our parish…..we
are going to start a college group in the fall similar to the Life Teen,
but a college group so that they'll have their own special time together.
We emphasize -- we went through the whole thing -- that young adults need
young adults to help them, to engage them. But we're also saying that
they should not be separated from the parish community either. You have
to keep a balance. We use the college kids as catechists for our teens, and
we try to get them involved in other things like the partnership down
in Mississippi. We had a cafe on Sunday morning after Mass, there's coffee
and donuts. And that has been great. People stop, they talk, they spend
time together. That's only going to be for June, though. We'll see what
happens after that. Last Sunday, Father welcomed the college kids back for the
summer at Mass, and that made them feel kind of good. We try to involve
them in service projects. Someone said that we should invite young people to non-threatening
parish events; in other words, “not throwing the bible at them”
are the words that were used, but things that are fun to bring them around.
As I said, use other young adults to bring young adults. OUR LADY OF MERCY: Young adults are invited and involved
in our faith formation youth ministry programs, liturgical ministries,
lectors, music, decorating, greeters, coffee hours. They all participate
in this. They started out as they were teenagers and needed service projects,
and some of them have enjoyed it so much that even past Confirmation and
into their college days, they still come back to be involved in those
ministries. OUR LADY OF THE ASSUMPTION: I think what Dolores said we're
continuing to do -- they're not separate groups, they are already involved
in everything we do -- RCIA, sacramental prep, lectors, etc. We do see
a lot of the young adults on summer evenings when we have kickball once
a week -- kickball barbecue -- they return from college and some of the
older ones come and enjoy themselves. So, sometimes activity -- and I
guess that would be a non-threatening activity - or there are generic
activities like we have a group that makes Baptismal stoles and things
for young children, and that's a mixed age group. Whether you're a knitter
or things like that. Fr. Burke does call after registrations of all new
families. Anyone who registers new in our parish does receive a phone
call, and that's very well appreciated. And if you do notice any young
people or people that are new coming to church on Sundays, we do try to
make an effort to go out and find out who they are. I think everything
else is pretty much repeated. ST. FRANCIS DE SALES: We found that most of what currently
exists kind of exists for everyone in general, and things you all have
said -- pre-Cana, pre-Baptismal sessions for parents -- they're involved
in the ministries like lectors, Eucharistic ministers, outreach, that
kind of thing. But none of these are designed specifically for that age
group. But we came up with these ideas that might focus on that
age group in a more powerful way. One would be to start a program of personal
welcome by sending cards from the parish, from Father, for various milestones;
like, birthdays, Baptisms, that type of thing. Another might be broadcast e-mails to that group for the
same purpose, for certain milestones or seasons of the liturgical year
-- Easter, that type of thing, because they're very much into technology. A third thing that we talked about is faith-sharing sessions.
And this can be intergenerational because I think we came up with that
idea before, or it could be specific. But in our world today we can talk
about almost anything openly, but religion seems to be a taboo subject.
And it seems to be an inspirational thing. We had a study group that we
just concluded…..it was a faith-sharing, and we learned so much
and were inspired by each other just sharing our faith. And we thought
it would be nice to have those types of groups initiated, not studying
anything, just sharing your faith. And the fourth suggestion is to have focus groups for those
who don't attend, have not attended; ask them to come in and just share
with us their thoughts on faith and what they would need. ST. CLARE'S: We currently do not have any programs that
specifically target 19 to 39 year olds. But our programs -- we have a
number of programs of which are intergenerational. And I think it's just
everything that everyone has here from Baptismal prep, marriage prep,
RCIA, we have parent and tot programs on Saturday morning or Wednesday
mornings. We just have a number of programs that everybody is invited
to. It's not specifically to that age group. So, then our group kind of revolted and decided that they
wanted a list of what they would like to do. They want to target church
shoppers, people who go around and shop for different churches; try and
target them and have a specific kind of program to sell our church. They want to target young fathers. We have a lot of young
mothers who come in with the kids. But if we can get the young fathers
involved, I think that we will have a better -- cultivate the male spirituality.
We feel that we have a hierarchy of males, but there's more of a feminine
voice in the majority; so, we need to cultivate that. They want to target the young married people who do not
have children yet; target those who have social justice issues. They want
to send four mailings during college years, and e-mail bulletins and have
parish chat rooms so the kids can go in there -- young adults can go in
and ask questions. ST. PIUS X: I'll just do what people have not said. Number
one, it's just various programs that incorporate the youth. And then the second question is we felt like -- and we had
met as a parish on Thursday to go over these questions, too -- and one
of the things that we discussed is we have a hard time identifying who
the people are in this age bracket. I know a couple years ago we were
trying to find out who the college students were, and I think we put something
in the bulletin and thought we would get some addresses and maybe send
care packages or something to the college students, but I don't think
we got much of a response to that. So, it's hard to identify who this
group is. And, of course, the problem is once we identify them, to engage
them. As far as number three, one of the things that we thought
is again young people inviting young people, young adults mentoring Confirmation
- the youth and Confirmation programs. And another thing we came up with
is possibly -- at our school we have a director of development -- why
couldn't there be some kind of director to work among the parishes to
really target and focus on this particular age group. It doesn't have
to be one parish, it could be a combination of parishes maybe hiring a
development director who -- it would be a paid position, someone to really
focus on service opportunities for this age group and how to engage them
in the church. SR. ANNE: All right. We're going to ask for those pages
back, and make sure your parish is listed at the top because I'm going
to collect those later. But this is the last piece and you have to be practical.
Each table -- each parish -- think of three suggestions that this group
would choose as a practical response to the needs of young adults. So,
that's the next question, developing a plan. So, come up with three suggestions,
three practical suggestions. (Individual group discussion followed.) SR. ANNE: All right, let's put this together. What we're
looking at is a plan. They have asked us for three suggestions that this
small group would choose as a practical response to the needs of these
young adults. So, let's begin with St. ST. PIUS X: Number 1, to take a census and build into the
census some way of identifying the “hidden” parishioners.
A lot of times, once you become a parishioner through your family, you
think you're a lifetime parishioner. Perhaps everyone should register
as an individual, not as part of a family, after they make their Confirmation. Number 2………put together a focus group
of single adults, and have each of them personally invite one or two of
their friends (involved in church or not) to come together to begin dialogue
about needs and solutions. Number 3……..definitely a follow-up of couples
after Baptismal and marriage preparation, perhaps getting them involved
in a ministry right away. Another possibility is to pull parishes together -- or actually
partner with local colleges in service opportunities. Pool financial resources among the parishes to hire someone,
as we discussed before, in a development role. ST. CLARE'S: We liked the idea of getting a development
director for this age group. And we also liked the idea of parish chat
rooms and the use of technology, more use of that. And we also would like
to develop a men's prayer and faith discussion group. ST. FRANCIS DE SALES: I think basically we gave them before.
I'll go real quickly. Reach out to these young people with cards or e-mails
at various milestones. And the faith-sharing sessions, we thought they might work
well being home-based instead of church-based, because there's an aversion
to coming to church to begin with. But we also have in our parish -- it needs to be revitalized
-- but we have a “share and care” program that we've had for
about ten years, and the whole parish is divided into sections. But we
could revitalize that and have focus groups within these -- or a combination
of these sections in our share and care groups that we already have. And
within that, then we could have focus groups, we could have a barbecue,
we could have a neighborhood sharing. So, we have something in place already,
but it would be the responsibility of each share and care section to do
this rather than the general church, and it would give more responsibility
and, therefore, more involvement to more people. OUR LADY of THE ASSUMPTION: We were thinking in terms of
some type of a reunion for Catholics, maybe parish-wide or maybe broader,
especially targeting those who are out of college and maybe returning
back to our community in the North Colonie area……to do some
type of a Catholic reunion. Also looking at Catholic singles as a group, maybe not the
“Theology on Tap” type program, but more of a social program,
an invitation to Catholic singles to reach out. Also looking at our census, and we do have the ability to
pull it up and kind of see within our own parish who are these people
who are in that age range, to intentionally seek them out or to be sure
that they are represented on various groups such as a RCIA team, or lectors,
or eucharistic ministers, to just be sure that we are always including
and inviting those people in. And again the technology……there should be more
internet communication, and perhaps reaching out to them that way. OUR LADY OF MERCY: Communication has been a theme in every
group, and it certainly is in ours. And we also thought maybe something
a little more personal -- we know when people have come in and had their
child baptized, or when they got married, maybe a little card to them
or something to people we haven't seen necessarily since that event. Maybe some mentors for young people who are going to be
getting married or baptized, maybe another couple within the parish --
you know, kind of a mentoring kind of thing. And also we were thinking
that maybe a good time for surveys and questions about what they need
is when we meet with these young people who come to get married but then
- you know, they get married and then that's it. But, I mean, to ask them
what their need is. We do a little focus group with maybe those young
people who have come to be married, or the families who are coming to
have their child baptized. Father made an interesting remark that we never
see pregnant women in our church, but all of a sudden people show up with
babies. We're not sure how that happens. But I think those were a few
of the things that, you know, we have them present when they want to get
married or they want their child baptized, that might be a good point
to ask them what their needs are. ST. AMBROSE: We talked about issue that there is within
our community right now, there is this need among a lot of the young people
to do something for young adults. So, the first step would be to establish
a core group of young adults and have them organize other young adults,
in the sense that we're orienting this towards this base level to get
them to actually establish maybe a time-limited program…..that would
go on for maybe three weeks or so…..where we could have something
that would be -- maybe, like, three consecutive weeks -- have young adults
between 19 and 39 come together so they can kind of get to know each other
in an established community, but also to connect them with the life of
the community as well. So that this program would be on the one hand something
that would be community-oriented but we may also have the life of the
parish somehow represented within there. So, not only would we bring them
together, but say “we need help with this, would you like to be
involved” or something like that. Because the thing is we want to
be able to reach out to the life of the community that we have right now
because they're dealing with two things. They're dealing with continual
conversion and evangelization. And to reach out to the live community
is going to be harder. It's not that we can't exactly do it ourselves,
but to be able to evangelize, to take the people that we have and empower
them to help evangelize the community. Then we're also talking about connecting through web site
technology. We have generation through Life Teen and through the grade
school, and we have the school alumni, but just essentially embracing
that. SR. ANNE: You did a whole a lot of good work tonight. And
as we start to head home, let us end our evening with a prayer. (Closing prayer followed, and the group meeting was concluded.)
LOCAL PLANNING GROUP MEETING
June 11, 2007
SR. ANNE: Wonderful feedback. What we're going to do now is meet back
in the other gathering room. And this time I ask you to please get at
tables with your home parish. Because the next part of this will be done
with your own parish.
Pius, please, with three suggestions.