Disciples in Mission

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Micki

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Is anyone familiar with the three-year Lenten program Disciples in Mission? It was formulated by the Paulist National Catholic Evangelization Association. Years ago I had gotten involved in Renew. It really watered down the faith and seemed mainly concerned with a false ecumenism. In this age of poor cathechises (sp?), we don’t need another program that will encourage social justice without have a strong understanding of our faith and Christ’s church.
Any experiences out there?

Micki
 
Our diocese has chosen to implement this evangelization program in resonse to our synod recommendation. We have begun the initial recruitment and training of the parish teams. This is not related to RENEW (which we are familiar with from other parishes, other dioceses) and is about evangelization, not social justice specifically. In the several sessions around the diocese I have attended thus far, where the teams have been assessing their parish needs, by far the majority agree they need something to encourage evangelization, something the diocese is behind.

Very positive response and we are very excited about it. We have a speaker from the Paulists coming next week to address the teams on the New Evangelization as our “kick-off”. He is also speaking to all the priests who are gathered for their annual meeting.

We have already mobilized the older teens and young adults who have been confirmed in the last few years, who have a great interest in evangleization, and are starting to train them as small group facilitators aka FCA, which many of them have already been a part of. The consensus is that small faith groups are the way to go, and everything I have heard and read backs up that assumption.
 
I asked a similar question without doing a search to see if someone was already addressing this issue.
My parish is on its 3rd year, the last for the written program, I think the small groups are supposed to go on another 2 years. I quit after the 3rd session I attended in the 1st year. The program is by the Paulist Press, the same ones who brought us the Renew 2000. I also have a Celtic Prayer Book by the Paulist Press that encourages prayer to Queen Maeve and has a Divine Allurement prayer that instructs one to parade around their lover’s bed 3 times.
The program for DIM (wow, dim) is Christianity lite, no real Catholicism offered. There is much encouragement to share your feelings with the other small group members…what if I don’t want to share my darkest thoughts & experiences that got me there because I know these people and I don’t trust some of them. Why do I need to share all with these people they are not priests in confession nor are they therapists, and going over these experiences endlessly can be really harmful. Sometimes staff (deacons) wonders in and out of meetings, how is a feeling of trust supposed to occur if the group is in flux?
In my opinion, this is another attempt to change the Catholic Church beyond recognition as the bastion of truth she is.
 
I’m currently a group leader for my parish’s Disciples in Mission program. And tho I do agree that it is Catholicism lite, they really are trying to emphasize the “faith-sharing” part of the program - no apologetics, no defense of the faith - just reading the Sunday Lenten readings for Mass, then reflecting on them out loud to each other. We are told to have a CCC on hand, in case some discussions do get sticky, and they do have closing rituals at the end of each session. A couple of times, I chose to skip, or re-do the closing ritural to reflect a more Catholic mind-set, and my group really appreciates that. They do have this quirky resemblence to protestant-type thoughts.

My group is a pretty small group of 5 women - all faithful, devout, life-long Catholics, who are doing their best to follow the Church.

Overall, the program seems to be ok…I wouldn’t bank on any earth-shattering changes in the Church through this program, nor get any of my cathesis from it.
 
the purpose of the small faith sharing groups that are a feature of Renew, Disciples or any other parish renewal and evangelization program, is to move the participants to a consideration of the gospel in their own lives, and to a response to that gospel. As long as the group is content to focus on their own membership and refuses to respond to that gospel, and evangelize in some way, shape or form outside the group, to that extent the program has indeed failed.
 
<Overall, the program seems to be ok…I wouldn’t bank on any earth-shattering changes in the Church through this program, nor get any of my cathesis from it.>

Don’t you think JPII was counting on earth-shattering changes when he encouraged evangelization?

I thought the purpose of Disciples in Mission was evangelization. How can one evangelize successfully if one is not fully versed on the differences between the the Catholic and Protestant religions and the reasons why the Catholic Church holds the truth?

<the purpose of the small faith sharing groups that are a feature of Renew, Disciples or any other parish renewal and evangelization program, is to move the participants to a consideration of the gospel in their own lives, and to a response to that gospel>

If the program does not provide us with hard answers when the person next to you on a 7 hour flight tells you you are going to hell because you are Catholic, and lists half a dozen reasons why and expects you to respond with scriptural references, what good is it to discuss how the Lenten gospel readings have affected your life? How ready is anyone to face that kind of intensity, when all that has been studied is Lenten gospel readings? Reaching out in love isn’t enough, we need answers to the misconceptions bred by anti-Catholicism, until we can be as pursuasive as the Evengelical Protestant churchs we will continue to sit by and watch them use their spring breaks and Christmas breaks going to formerly Catholic countries to “save the poor Catholics”.

That was what I was needing from our parishes Lenten program and it is one of the reasons I quit, to study on my own, when I saw there was nothing I could actually use to “evangelize” the kind of anti-Catholic attitudes I encounter regularly.
 
57classic said:
<Overall, the program seems to be ok…I wouldn’t bank on any earth-shattering changes in the Church through this program, nor get any of my cathesis from it.>

Don’t you think JPII was counting on earth-shattering changes when he encouraged evangelization?

I thought the purpose of Disciples in Mission was evangelization. How can one evangelize successfully if one is not fully versed on the differences between the the Catholic and Protestant religions and the reasons why the Catholic Church holds the truth?
Click to expand...

That was exactly how DIM was present to the parish - as a response to the call for evangelization. This is only my personal opinion, and granted, I’m only into the 4th week of this, but I really cannot see at this point how this program can help us in this call.

Nethertheless, I’m going to stick to it…see what comes up and how it progresses. Supposively, each year of the three years gets more intensive. The first year looks like the “breaking-in” year for those who have never shared their faith before.
 
Well, there is a Disciples In Mission handout on our weekly bulletin. My parish is in the 3rd year and the action for this 4th Sunday of Lent is to “Try to plan one change in your personal life. Write out a goal, develop some objectives and strategies, and form a schedule to carry them out. What are the results?”
Ok, this does not set me on fire to evangelize. I have a better plan to clean the house (thank you Flylady.com).
It still is so very elementry school, it’s not just in the first year! It is the dumbing down of religious education.
In my opinion, there is a lot of encouragement— (“how do you feel about this, fill in the blank, gospel reading”)— to Sola Scriptura.
 
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