D
derekohachey
Guest
Dear CA Forums,
I posed a question today on CAL and reflected after that it was a rather loaded question for radio, so I hope to lay out the situation here better to get some suggestions on what can be done. This issue is about a community that I visit about once a year, and it always pulls on my heart every time I visit here.
For the last 10 or so years, a small parish here in North Eastern Manitoba, of this small town (population under 1500) has had a very dry run. The Parish has had priests that may not have been as engaging or good communicators as they should have been. For the last 18 months there has been a good new priest in town who preaches good Orthodox Catholicism from the pulpit and who has done a lot of good in the Parish.
During the previous tenure, there was a new Pentecostal assembly that came into existence in the community. To put it bluntly, the Parish has been hit hard and many Catholics have been lured into this congregation. The demographic of this town is slanted towards senior citizens, but there is still a good younger presence too. The overwhelming majority of the people staying in the Parish are seniors. The Pentecostal church has a good Youth program that has pretty much taken over most of the youth in the community.
The new Priest has taken some steps to building the community within the Parish by hosting a movie night once a month (Catholic movies like the 13th day and such) and having coffee & snacks after mass once a month.
So the problem is how does a Parish in this situation get revitalized, how does it re-engage people that have left and how does it engage people whom have never been Catholic? Like I said earlier, this is a loaded question.
Has anyone here had any success in re-evangelizing a lost community? If so, please share your success story. I am also interested in knowing what did not work, so please don’t be shy to share this also?
Here are the suggestions that I have received so far:
One suggestion, which I think will be essential, is to start apologetics classes. I have always done apologetics at the personal level, but how do we setup classes? Is there a program that already exists? One issue with this is that the parishioners are on the older part of the demographic spectrum, and the younger folks attend church irregularly. Perhaps an apologetics class would serve well to evangelize them!
Patrick also suggested a new series called “Dogmatic Theology”, which after watching its trailer threw me off and made me wonder why Patrick recommended it. On a hunch, I watched it a second time with additional clips that are on youtube and realized that this may be the trick to sparking a renewal within this parish. I have contacted the folks that have produced this for more information. You can check it out for yourself at dogmatictheology.ca/.
They also recommended to have a speaker come to the Parish to get things revved up! I think this is also a good idea that needs to be considered.
Thanks & God Bless,
Derek
I posed a question today on CAL and reflected after that it was a rather loaded question for radio, so I hope to lay out the situation here better to get some suggestions on what can be done. This issue is about a community that I visit about once a year, and it always pulls on my heart every time I visit here.
For the last 10 or so years, a small parish here in North Eastern Manitoba, of this small town (population under 1500) has had a very dry run. The Parish has had priests that may not have been as engaging or good communicators as they should have been. For the last 18 months there has been a good new priest in town who preaches good Orthodox Catholicism from the pulpit and who has done a lot of good in the Parish.
During the previous tenure, there was a new Pentecostal assembly that came into existence in the community. To put it bluntly, the Parish has been hit hard and many Catholics have been lured into this congregation. The demographic of this town is slanted towards senior citizens, but there is still a good younger presence too. The overwhelming majority of the people staying in the Parish are seniors. The Pentecostal church has a good Youth program that has pretty much taken over most of the youth in the community.
The new Priest has taken some steps to building the community within the Parish by hosting a movie night once a month (Catholic movies like the 13th day and such) and having coffee & snacks after mass once a month.
So the problem is how does a Parish in this situation get revitalized, how does it re-engage people that have left and how does it engage people whom have never been Catholic? Like I said earlier, this is a loaded question.
Has anyone here had any success in re-evangelizing a lost community? If so, please share your success story. I am also interested in knowing what did not work, so please don’t be shy to share this also?
Here are the suggestions that I have received so far:
One suggestion, which I think will be essential, is to start apologetics classes. I have always done apologetics at the personal level, but how do we setup classes? Is there a program that already exists? One issue with this is that the parishioners are on the older part of the demographic spectrum, and the younger folks attend church irregularly. Perhaps an apologetics class would serve well to evangelize them!
Patrick also suggested a new series called “Dogmatic Theology”, which after watching its trailer threw me off and made me wonder why Patrick recommended it. On a hunch, I watched it a second time with additional clips that are on youtube and realized that this may be the trick to sparking a renewal within this parish. I have contacted the folks that have produced this for more information. You can check it out for yourself at dogmatictheology.ca/.
They also recommended to have a speaker come to the Parish to get things revved up! I think this is also a good idea that needs to be considered.
Thanks & God Bless,
Derek