With class beginning tonight, my only thoughts are, “Lord, send out your Spirit!” Here is a Catechist’s Prayer from the Finding God catechist manual that I am using: Loving God, creator of all things, you call us to be in relationship with you and others. You are the giver of all I possess, the source of all my blessings, for which I thank and praise you. Help me to desire nothing more than to be […]
This coming Monday is week one of religious ed classes. Looking ahead, my overall goals are the following: to get there early to look over my classroom to see how I can set it up so that the arrangement will be conducive to faith sharing and good behavior to have name tents ready to place on their seats as they arrive (I will assign seating striving for boy-girl, boy-girl, as much as possible) so that […]
Tonight is our first catechist meeting of the year – an opportunity to “report for duty” and to get the scoop on what this year holds in store for us. Yes, we’ll get our class lists tonight so I can see how many kids I have (our DRE is very good at keeping class size no larger than 15) as well as their family information and special needs, if any. I’ll also find out what […]
I’ll be meeting tonight with 30-40 catechists in Munster, Indiana, to help them get to know the new textbook series they’ve adopted (Christ Our Life, 2009). Becoming familiar with a new textbook and the catechist manual is a crucial step in your planning and preparation process. If you are using a textbook/catechist manual for the first time this year, here are a few pointers that may be helpful: Read through the children’s book first…get to […]
The other day, I offered some quotes and reflective questions on the Church’s catechetical documents. I thought it might be good to follow-up with a little annotated bibliography of sorts, describing just what these various documents are about. In the weeks before many religious education prorgrams begin, you may want to read one or several of these documents (the shorter ones of course…if you wanted to read the Catechism, the General Directory for Catechesis or […]
Too often, when we catechists plan for our lessons, we concentrate on what it is that WE will be doing. “I’ll cover chapter 10, then play Jeopardy to review the main points of the lesson, then I’ll lead prayer, and so on…” It’s important to remember that, in our planning, the focus should be on what the participants will be doing. Today, most catechist manuals use the phrase learning outcomes to identify what the participants […]
To be a catechist is to have a vocation – a call from God. This means that if you are contemplating becoming a catechist, you need to involved God in the decision-making. We call this discernment. Here are a few tips I’ve written on the practice of discernment: Many choices we face in life are very complex. How do we know what God wants us to do? What is God’s will for us? This is […]
What an amazing world we live in that a catechist in North America (me) can somehow connect with a potential catechist in Australia, some 10,000 miles away! I received the following comment from a prospective catechist in Australia after she viewed my catechist recruitment video. Joe, Viewed your video clip as I am considering the call to become a catechist in my Parish in New South Wales Australia.As you would be aware we have just […]
Here is an excerpt from my new book, A Well-Built Faith: A Catholic’s Guide to Knowing and Sharing What We Believe: Shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, there was a great deal of tension between Muslims and non-Muslims in many parts of the United States. In an effort to respond to the situation with Gospel values, I invited the Imam of a local Muslim community in the Chicago suburbs to meet with a […]
Last night, we had our final catechist meeting for the program year and it was a delightful and enriching experience. We gathered in a large circle and began with an opening prayer that including a meditation led by Arlene, our DRE. The entire focus was on being called by name. We each had a few moments to reflect on our own name, what we like/dislike about it, and how/when we feel we have been called […]
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