Day 1 at ILFF

Ooooh I spent a great first day at the Institute for Lifelong Faith Formation being held at the seminary in Brighton. It's put on by the center for Ministry Development, who are the geniuses responsible for Young Neighbors in Action, Youth Leader, Generations of Faith, and CLI. In fact, CLI (which stands for Christian Leadership Institute) was written in part by John Roberto, who is directing this Institute too. It was CLI that taught me so much about Youth Ministry and leadership.
The Institute, if today is any example, will be intense and inspiring. Today we looked at the Catechetical documents the Church has produced since 1971, and heard about the groundbreaking catechetical leaders and thinkers to whom we owe whatever progress has been made since Vatican II.
The resounding (and confounding!) message of these documents as we dug through them was that radical change has been called for since the late 60’s. Over and over, the people who paid attention to what was happening in catechesis were telling us that One-Size-Fits-All does NOT. For 35 years, we’ve been getting nudged to think not only about what the doctrine is, but WHO we are trying to teach and HOW we can do that better. They even have formulated some goals for catechesis, and guess what? They don’t say, “get through the book” or “have the kids complete 24 hours of classes”. They say things like:

The Good News of the Gospel should be taught to young people.
Faith is fostered by a community of believers.
Instruction must be related to the life of the congregation.
Family is sacred.
Catechetical leaders are the agents of the parish.
The teaching of doctrine is a means- not a goal.
The parish is the curriculum.
Education always transforms.
The paschal mystery can only really be understood by adults.
Church is MISSION- not maintenance.
And of course, the importance of catechizing adults primarily- not our habit of teaching kids only.

Seriously, this is what’s been talked about for years and years. WHY haven’t we made any changes? This stuff is not being pulled out of the air, it’s spelled out in the documents from Rome and our Bishops! It’s so frustrating to me to go to things like this and hear ideas that make so much sense, but are knocked out of the realm of possibility somewhere along the line.
I’m so excited for the rest of this week. I can’t wait to dig in and see what’s possible. I'm hoping for new hope.