What Do I Do Now? - A Guide for the Reluctant Catechist (Pflaum Catechist Series)

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Make that your top priority in your faith formation and training! For learning and digging into the Catholic faith, I recommend these books: Be an Amazing Catechist: The editors of Catechist recommend these books for catechist formation first list and for classroom use second list: Called to Be a Catechist: Catechism of the Catholic Church: Mercy , from the editors of Catechist magazine Pflaum Publishing Group, Teaching the Basics of Catholic Morality: The General Directory for Catechesis in plain English: Available only as a PDF ebook. The Spirituality Of The Catechist: To All the World: What Do I Do Now?

Active Learning for Catholic Kids, Volume 1: Sarah Reinhard writes online at SnoringScholar. Copyright , Bayard, Inc. Take the positive approach and continually invite people to embrace their baptismal call to serve and spread the Gospel. Get your current catechists to share positive reflections about what being a catechist means to them. Invite people to take a look at some of the resources here on my blog for those considering becoming a catechist such as the Top Ten reasons to become a catechist https: I feel your pain.

Even with the best volunteer catechists, a sudden job change can leave you without an adequate number of teachers for your classes, and I hate to lean too heavily on the dedicated volunteers as much as you do. I do feel, though, that you might be overlooking a gold mine. Call up your home schoolers and see where they are with their own programs. Most folks who home school make great volunteer catechists. Invite them to share their faith, not only with their own children, but with the children of the parish.

Very often they have been helping to teach the younger siblings already. Pair them with an adult in the classroom, and watch them bloom as catachists themselves. Are there any other churches in somewhat close promimity to yours that you can put out a notice in their Sunday bulletin? You might catch someone who would like to get more involved but for whatever reason timing, too many volunteers etc.

Barbara, God bless you! It sounds like you are working very hard to make this program be the best it can be — be encouraged!

The suggestions provided here are very good. One that has not been mentioned yet is to bring it before the Lord in prayer. Maybe pray a Novena to the Holy Spirit to raise up catechists. I would not recommend being overwhelmed by attending lots of meetings to find catechists usually the summer is a slower time in many parishes which makes things more challenging. Since the pastor is the shepherd of your parish you have to rely on some element of support from him because otherwise you could be very discouraged about things.

Barbara, First of all, pray. Ask the Holy Spirit to assist you in your search. I would add the following suggestion: Do a couple of weeks of bulletin announcements, calls, etc. After some mingling time, share with them how and why you got involved and how it has been a blessing to your life. Have a simple lesson planned — on one of the commandments or sacraments, for example — and show them what the lesson would be like.

Getting older students to serve as aides with them or team teaching which has already been mentioned are also great ideas. The fact that the number of students you have is not overwhelming should mean that class sizes can be small and manageable. They have put together a program weeks for each sacrament where the parents teach their children with your coaching.

Barbara, These suggestions are all great ones.

A Call for HELP!!!

Every time I am short on teachers, God provides and sometimes the most reluctant turn out to be the most dedicated! I would also suggest polling parents to see if home study or on-site classes are their preference. Whatever choice they make takes a commitment on their part. Every other year, God did provide me with teachers at the last minute.

This year was the exception. Our parish is going through a very difficult time with people being very unhappy with many aspects of the parish. People feel the priest is just biding his time and does not want to get involved with anything and therefore, no conflicts are resolved and people are leaving. We also combine grade levels because of classroom space. There is a great benefit in having all ages together in that older children have so much to offer the younger ones. I also use older teens with an adult and the children respond so well to them. God bless you for volunteering you are a light to others.

My suggestion for a small group like this, especially if you are able to meet at one time, is a multi-generational progam. There are resources that are lower cost that standard textbooks, based on the Sunday lectionary readings. The Loyola website for instance has some good gospel resources for various age groups, there are also some you can purchase such as Pflaum Gospel Weeklies, celebrating the Lectionary from LTP can be costly for a small parish , or for even less cost, reproducibles tied to each liturgical cycle A, B, and C such as those from 23rd publications.

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There is an opening for the whole group. Then split into groups. Do the reflection and activities based on the readings. Supplement with a teaching on a doctrinal topic according to a plan Pflaum has a book of basics of the faith for each age level that is free with subscription. You again can use textbooks you have for that. The parents are participating, so they learn to see the needs first hand.

When they realize there will not be age level classes until they volunteer, they will be more will to do so. Also after a year or so of this format, they will feel that they are learning and so more able to teach a class. This is a combination of a couple of pulpit pleas I make. It can be adapted as needed:. I am here this to tell you about an important ministerial need and opportunity in our community. These people are moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, bankers, factory workers, people who have made it a priority in their lives to pass down the Catholic faith to our parish children.

At this time we are still in need of a few more people to help in our religious education program. We are looking for: By the mere fact of your presence here today each of you is a person of faith. You have wisdom, faith, and life experience that is just waiting to be shared with our students. They are full of such awe and wonder of our faith. In essence you gain so MUCH from the experience.

It brings you into a closer relationship with God as well as an overwhelming sense of joy as you share your faith with the children. Well, none of us knows everything and we provide all of the teaching resources you could ever need. Besides, Father is also great at answering questions! We have a wonderful catechist community. We support and help one another. God calls us in many ways. Make a Poster for the Back of the Church I also make a poster of the various classes we offer and put the name of the catechist beside each class people LOVE to see their name in print, the affirmation is great.

Add this quote in large print: Add to the sign: I am going to use what you said when I speak at the Masses. I had already planned to bring the books we use we did start using the Pflaum gospel weeklies this year. Experience has shown that surveying those already involved in the parish in some way about who MIGHT be a good candidate for a catechist is a great beginning. Tell me a little about your family…..

Who has a special love of the Eucharist? Who is always there? There are many retired, young adults, young marrieds looking to be more involved in the parish. They just need to be asked. This is perhaps one of the hardest parts of our ministry over the summer… Most of all, pray to the Holy Spirit to help you find His people to teach the children.

He will in time…. And offering them encouragement and training in a catechist community helps make for great friendships and great teaching! Your pastor also needs to be more supportive. Put your needs into the weekly petitions, in the bulletin for prayer and if you have any prayer groups, ask them to pray for your needs as well.

He can announce it after all Masses and why not get him to personally invite people he knows to come forward to volunteer. He must know more people than you and what gifts they have to share. Put out flyers that have comments from your catechists about the joys of teaching.

These could be 2 different days or one day, 2 time choices. You use the time with the parents to go over what the next unit will involve, make suggestions for extra materials they might use or family activities they might try — basically you are preparing them to teach their kids. The kids can be involved in a review activity from the previous unit, a movie, or such groups can have different age levels with the older kids help the younger- training them to be future catechists , and then have the families and kids get together for an activity that they can do together.

You could have age appropriate activities for the same theme, so families with more than one kid will be doing similar things with each child. Your last paragraph is basically what the Diocesan homeschool rules call for. If the parents homeschool, someone either the pastor or myself must been once a month with them to check the progress. This would most likely fall on me, as this past year, the pastor did not meet with any of the homeschoolers.

This was not really a problem, because the people who were homeschooling I know personally and know that they would be doing a great job with the possible exception of one or two families. HI Barbara, We know the feeling of trying to get volunteers also our programs are shrinking by the minute. I told our DRE to add begging to one of her attributes on her resume, because she has to beg people from the pulpit for there is not enough volunteers.

You have brought to light a huge problem for all of us not enough teachers, volunteers or resources etc. I am a certified teacher and have 4- 6 years of training before we enter a classroom. Teaching is very intimidating especially for people who feel we know so little about the subject of our FAith. The books used are not lesson plans and in the classrooms we need real direction especially for the volunteers without teaching experience. In public schools and even catholic schools there is a curriculum. WE need sound curriculum to have successful programs that teach sound catechesis.

Without sound curriculum, we cannot I repeat cannot teach anything. With so little volunteers we need to keep in mind God chose just 12 apostles that changed the course of history. Learning about God is amazing. The flyer advertisement goes like this. EVerything is possible with God. Each day the kids will hear bible stories, learn songs, play fun games, participataed in a project that will help children show Jesus love to others, collect Bible Memory Buddies, create fun crafts.

This is what the curriculum needs all year not just in the summer months to keep our FAith exciting and use all of our gifts and talents. This is the year of Faith: WE need sound catechesis to ensure our children not our future but they are are NOW of the church, are equipped for the 21st century spiritually.

We need to check our spiritual finances in our FAith formation program and put all of our resources into the building block of our Church EDucation and FAith Formation the basis of our FAith. The Diocese actually has a very detailed curriculum for each grade. There is pretty much no way we could get through the whole thing in the amount of time we have.

We have gone to a basic Catechism book from Pflaum along with the gospel weeklies.

With children that sounds like a BIG job to keep them involved, notified and engaged. I would suggest Whole Community Catechseis where everyone is learning and sharing together and would engage the parents and parish in the process. Coaching parents is an element that all the major publishers are encouraging. I used the Frist Reconciliation and First Communion maeterials this year form twenty Third Publications — Pastoral Planning Center and the parents really loved working with their childrn, learning and sharing and growing in faith.

It was one of the best years for us for the preparaton.

Oprotunities for catechists working as a team so no one person has to do all the preparations helps encourage new catechists. I have suggested VBS, but it has been turned down. The Lutheran church in town has one that most children attend no matter what religion. As I am sure some of you are aware, quite a few parents use CCD as a weekly babysitting service. I have had parents not know who I am when I see them, even though their children have been attending CCD for a few years already. I have been DRE for 6. CCD also seems to be at the bottom of the list when it comes to the other parish functions — the Knights schedule their free throw at the same time as CCD, the parish council has been downright mean to me when I attend their meetings, they schedule breakfasts, using up where 3 of my classes meet without letting me know — I have to read it in the bulletin and rearrange things.

That is part of the reason that 2 of my longtime teachers have decided not to return — lack of respect for the CCD program by parents, parishioners, etc. The other problem is that we are a very small town, isolated from other towns by at least 8 miles. Posters and bulletin announcements.

I do plan on driving home the point of the benefit to the catechist. Perhaps I can have a small booth at the annual festival with various books and materials.

Thank you all again — I knew I could count on you. I will take some of these suggestions to my pastor and see what he says. I think getting the parents involved is also key — maybe teams and not being committed every week. I will digest all of this and keep all of you in my prayers. Barbara, I feel for you. Teachers showed up eventually but they were more relaxed in their search because they had a plan. Do you have a local DRE organization? They can be a great source of collective wisdom. Do you have any religious in your town or the neighboring towns? We have Sisters of Mercy with various jobs throughout the diocese but some of them take time to teach CCD on Sunday mornings just because they enjoy sharing their faith.

Getting the respect of the parish is an issue also. I have DRE friend who reminds me periodically that if we dress like professionals we will be respected as professionals. Teenagers get a real kick out of teaching the younger children and can learn a lot just by teaching. Good luck and God bless.

A good recruitment message has these components: Tell the story 2. Let people know how they can help and the impact they will make. Let people know how they themselves will benefit. Let people know what you will provide such as training, resources, etc. I have three examples of what I have used below — your numbers will be much smaller, but you can adapt these if you find them helpful.

I also find surfacing names and personal invitation through letters of call sent with position descriptions very helpful. The letters of call and position descriptions give people time to pray and reflect before you follow up with a phone call. I have also sent a more general letter of call to parents along with personal letters of call to specific people.

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