Things to keep in mind as a Small Church Community Facilitator
Focus on Belonging:
The initial experience for Small Church Communities aims to get people comfortable with each other so they can begin to share what they are thinking and feeling. In short, the goal is for members to belong, that is, know that others really want to get to know them better and will miss them if they are absent.
A false sense of what it means to be religious can be an obstacle for many parishioners in getting involved or continuing in a Small Church Community. The Core Team at St. Veronica want to stress that people can “be religious without being religious.” So many of us hold an image of a religious person as always unruffled by the stresses of life, always kind and giving, always praying, knowing the Bible, having special experiences of God. Most ordinary Catholics, however, do not identify with this image. Nor have they ever experienced God in a dramatic way. They therefore conclude they are not religious people. They live in an ordinary life of job, family, kids, aging and financial concerns. To get into a religious group with religious people from church sounds life having to pretend ‘to be nice’.
In this first phase of Small Church Communities at St. Veronica we want to get people feeling at home by speaking their everyday life experiences and learning to listen – listen to self, others, the Word, the wider world and people who are different. The group interaction has to be simple and easy. That is why we designed the format to be very simple and straight-forward. The listening is what will make listening to and hearing God possible.
A sense of belonging and making a difference to a particular group of people is what the beginning of Small Church Communities is all about. This is the single most critical factor in a group’s continuing and preserving.
(excerpts from “Creating Small Church Communities” by Arthur R. Baranowski)
Focus on Belonging:
The initial experience for Small Church Communities aims to get people comfortable with each other so they can begin to share what they are thinking and feeling. In short, the goal is for members to belong, that is, know that others really want to get to know them better and will miss them if they are absent.
A false sense of what it means to be religious can be an obstacle for many parishioners in getting involved or continuing in a Small Church Community. The Core Team at St. Veronica want to stress that people can “be religious without being religious.” So many of us hold an image of a religious person as always unruffled by the stresses of life, always kind and giving, always praying, knowing the Bible, having special experiences of God. Most ordinary Catholics, however, do not identify with this image. Nor have they ever experienced God in a dramatic way. They therefore conclude they are not religious people. They live in an ordinary life of job, family, kids, aging and financial concerns. To get into a religious group with religious people from church sounds life having to pretend ‘to be nice’.
In this first phase of Small Church Communities at St. Veronica we want to get people feeling at home by speaking their everyday life experiences and learning to listen – listen to self, others, the Word, the wider world and people who are different. The group interaction has to be simple and easy. That is why we designed the format to be very simple and straight-forward. The listening is what will make listening to and hearing God possible.
A sense of belonging and making a difference to a particular group of people is what the beginning of Small Church Communities is all about. This is the single most critical factor in a group’s continuing and preserving.
(excerpts from “Creating Small Church Communities” by Arthur R. Baranowski)