What makes a great parish adult education program?
For about a year, I’ve been hearing bits and pieces about an awesome one in the Austin, TX area. It’s at St. William Catholic Church in Round Rock.
I first heard mention of it from blogging friend Devin Rose of St. Joseph’s Vanguard. He credited it with a large part of his deepened conversion. From what I gather it’s been wildly successful and the source of many deepening conversions.
Then I found out the founder of the Catholic Sistas blog, Martina Kreitzer, is on the planning committee and core team for the program. I had to talk to her and find out more about it. What I found out from our limited Facebook message conversation was fascinating.
I’ve had a few other conversations with her over social media and I’m always moved into a deepening sense of awesome at what her parish was accomplishing with this program. I seriously wanted to attend to learn more about it! But, alas, I don’t live in Austin.
However, praise God that the Spirit moved Martina to write about the program and share it on her blog as it’s happening. So, I can virtually attend!
I wanted to share each class not to replace the experience of attending in person, but rather to bring another dimension of learning to the ever-growing digital continent. Our task as Catholics is to reach out and evangelize on the digital continent – I believe sharing the course online is almost necessary to fit the bill of the pope’s call to evangelize. In that spirit, I offer you the next 16 installments of what it’s like to attend the Jesus Is Lord course.
Here’s a short description of the program. It’s called Jesus Is Lord:
Come, take a walk through our Christian beginnings and learn the truth about our Catholic faith and heritage that is built up on the Word of God. The Word that became flesh in Jesus Christ. Come! Jesus invites you to learn about the innermost mysteries about the Trinity and how we fit into God’s plan.
The Adult Faith Formation program was designed to bring you the truth about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as you journey with Christ. No matter where you are on your spiritual walk with Christ, the Adult Faith Formation program is for you.
For the next 16 weeks, Martina will share the essential content of the Jesus Is Lord series. The series is designed for you to participate remotely for spiritual renewal or to just see how a great program is structured. I plan to do both.
What really excites me about this program is it’s centered around sharing the Kerygma, the basic Gospel message of our salvation. As Martina puts it, this is “the very essence of what we believe.” It’s the “why” of Catholicism…the core that drives everything.
Understanding and being able to deliver the Kerygma is critical to evangelization. This is the content of the initial proclamation stage of the evangelization process. It’s the message Christ came to give us. It’s the saving message of hope for everyone, and sadly, hardly any Catholics know it. Even more sad is the fact that so few catechists know how to teach it.
This is why we’re in a crisis of faith today. We’re not passing down this essential “why” of our religion and young people are becoming disenchanted. Catholicism holds nothing for them because we haven’t given them anything to hold on to. This program gives that.
Every week Martina will share:
- a summary of the main portion of the class, broken into segments {i.e. teaching, scripture, testimony}
- videos {where possible},
- questions for you to answer that cover the content from the evening
- homework
- concluding prayer
I’m extremely excited about this series. Not only because it will be awesome to go through, but because it’s an incredible gift to the Church to share an amazingly successful adult formation program. This is something sorely lacking in the Catholic parishes. I hope this series will inspire many catechetical leaders to take up the mantle and run with similar programs.
So, check out the Jesus Is Lord series on Catholic Sistas. Week 2, on “Sin & Its Consequences,” was just posted today. There’s also an Introduction and a post for Week 1 on “God’s Love.”
See you there!
