The Main Goal: Helping our parishioners form an active spiritual life, embodied in daily living, informed by Christ’s teaching, and within Christ’s Church.
In simpler terms, we want to fill our parishes and communities with disciples of Christ, who practice the faith and pray.
Want to add to the conversation? Print out the note sheet below. Follow along with the video. When it comes to the discussion section, pause the video, and jot down some thoughts on the note sheet. Specific questions for you to consider can be found in the slideshow. Feel free to type up your thoughts and email them to discipleship@stjohnthebaptistsf.org, drop your sheet off in your parish's office, or set up a time to meet up and discuss what's on your mind.
The book "From Christendom to Apostolic Mission" was mentioned during the presentation. We have copies in the office at St. Lambert if you would like to stop by a pick one up. You can also order a copy from the link below.
The Main Takeaways:
Intentionality in all we do: We need to aim for great intentionality in all of our initiatives. Our focus is on the five aspects of discipleship, and all of our parish programs and events should be based on helping people practice the faith and pray.
Less but higher impact programming: Our parishioners are busy and so our programs should be as impactful as possible. Instead of offering pop-up programs throughout the year, we will offer two programs for adults through the pastorate on a consistent basis. One of them is geared towards sharing the gospel message (the Rescue Project), the other is geared towards entering into a conversation that addresses the questions people have about Christ, his Church, and what the Church teaches (Adult Sunday School).
More room for parishioner initiatives: This doesn't mean that parishioners can't pitch their own ideas and carry out their own programs in their parish. The hope is to switch our focus from putting on a lot of big parish programs to helping you all form relationships and small groups with each other. One of our jobs is to support you in this.
Focus on networks of families: All of this will be aimed at helping you all form relationships with your fellow parishioners so that you can support each other in living the faith. We want to be more focused on building up networks of families who live and practice the faith together. These groups do not need to look like a standard small groups with readings and discussion. There are many ways to practice discipleship.