Our leadership team reflections on the past 4 years and reasoning for making the shifts we are this year
It has been four years since we made the transition from traditional Confirmation preparation to focusing on Discipleship Groups and offering Confirmation as early as 8th Grade through High School, our team has spent the end of this year and summer evaluating the fruits and struggles of this transition. Here are just a few of our insights
Fruits:
Many youth have experienced a real sense of belonging through being a part of a small Discipleship Group.
More youth have remained involved in their faith after Confirmation then before.
We have more amazing adults sharing their life, prayer, formation and mission with young people in our parish.
Struggles
We have been unable to separate the Sacrament of Confirmation from our Discipleship Groups.
Maintaining leaders for the full 5 years has proven challenging and made keeping groups together difficult.
Discipleship groups are spending less time discipling and more time working on pre-evangelization/Evangelization.
Moving forward we are implementing a few changes to help address the struggles and build upon the strengths we have already achieved. Here are the main changes:
Make the steps for confirmation clear and simple separated from Discipleship Groups.
Focus the 7-8th grade years on pre-evangelization and Evangelization which we are calling Alpha Youth, with a soft start to Discipleship Groups at the end of each year. (Sadly due to space issues this year this focus will be just for 8th Graders)
As parishes make a more intentional outreach to families to help them understand what we offer as parishes to assist them in fulfilling their role as primary educators and evangelist of their youth.
This year we will be offering Wednesday Ministry Nights which include Youth Alpha focused on the basic introduction of the Gospel ending in a weekend retreat focused on the Holy Spirit.
Our hope was to include both 7th and 8th Grade in these nights, but due to our space limitations for this school year this night will be only for 8th Grade Students.
We will continue to offer Discipleship Groups for those in 8th-12 Grade, however they will begin at the end of the 8th Grade year instead of the beginning.
On our parish website you can find information for those desiring the Sacrament of Confirmation and for families on what they need to do if their child desires Confirmation.