St. Francis de Sales

2010 Adult Faith Formation Conference Report

 

¨ What We Wanted to Learn

How can adult faith formation become a central force in our parish?  Who are we anyway? What makes a good parishioner? How do we want to grow in our faith? These questions and others were tackled by a diverse group of thirty-seven parishioners from the English-speaking community at St. Francis de Sales.

 

¨ Early Beginnings

The spirituality of a parish is determined by what adults do or fail to do in it.  As far back as 1971 U.S. Bishops began to underscore the importance of adult faith formation. Taking adult faith formation seriously would foster the health and depth of a parish.  In 1999 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops published Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us: A Pastoral Plan for Adult Faith Formation in the United States, renewing its commitment to adult faith formation and urging Catholics everywhere to appreciate its central role in parish life.

 

¨ Locally

In the fall of 2009, Marilyn Torborg, Director of Family and Adult Faith Formation of our parish, invited Jack Bender, Jane Delgado, Juan Delgado, Aimee VandenElzen, and Noelia Wise to create the means to place adult faith formation in a central role at St. Francis. Committee members brought themselves up to speed by reading Our Hearts Where Burning Within Us and studying the Adult Faith Formation Best Practices Project, Archdiocese of Detroit. One shared learning—formation can take many forms, well beyond traditional speaker series and classes. Future growth opportunities could take many forms.

 

¨ Committee Work

A great deal of effort went into inviting a group that would reflect the English-speaking community by considering the gender, age, ethnicity and status (married or not, with children or not, working/retired, etc.) of participants. A highly democratic large-group model was selected that would help answer the question: What do our adults need and want to learn? The shape of adult faith formation in the future would be determined by the participants, much less a committee or an individual. Six weekly bulletin inserts informed all parishioners about adult faith formation and invited anyone interested in attending the conference.

 

¨ Our Conference

On purpose, the conference title was rather quirky—Discipleship and Oxygen Masks: Creating Growth Opportunities for Adults. Oxygen masks? When on a commercial airplane, if the oxygen masks drop from above, adults should put their mask on before helping their children. There’s a parallel here. Solid Catholic Christians are most able to support the development of their own children and others. On May 14-15, 2010 participants worked thirteen hours on a dozen tasks that resulted in a tremendous amount of information being generated. Jack Bender and Chuqui King were the facilitators and the model used was the “Future Search” conference. Participants worked alone, in small groups and as one large group.