ENGAGING FAITH IN THE WORLD: FOSTERING A MISSION SPIRITUALITY IN YOUNG PEOPLE DYYAM

Marissa AlspaughWayne Hipley

Ted MilesHelene Murtha

INTRODUCTIONS

Goals for our Gathering:

• To think together about what it means to sent in mission … hold a faith life that is both personal and social (MISSION).

• To explore a model that can help lead young people to a sense of mission as rooted in our Catholic Social Tradition.

• To share resources and ideas that enhance service learning models appropriate for Catholic education and youth ministry

Find someone in the room with the same item on his/her nametag.

Introduce yourself by the significant relationships in your life.

Because we are so much more than what we DO.

And a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years, who (had spent her whole livelihood on doctors and) was unable to be cured by anyone, came up behind him and touched the tassel on his cloak. Immediately her bleeding stopped. Jesus then asked, "Who touched me?" While all were denying it, Peter said, "Master, the crowds are pushing and pressing in upon you.“

But Jesus said, "Someone has touched me; for I know that power has gone out from me.“ When the woman realized that she had not escaped notice, she came forward trembling. Falling down before him, she explained in the presence of all the people why she had touched him and how she had been healed immediately. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has saved you; go in peace."

Luke 8: The Story of the Hemorrhaging Woman

Relationships that Turned Our World Upside Down

Consider a relationship or an experience rooted in relationship . . .

a relational moment or chance encounter. . .

of someone on the margins or who led you to the margins …

a relationship that helped you to see differently

Relationships that Turned Our World Upside Down

• What happened within the experience that changed you?

• What qualities, characteristics of the person or the relationship fostered an awareness of “the other”? Of the need to commit to a larger vision of justice?

• Has its origin in our understanding … experience of God– Communitarian– Involved & Inviting– LOVE

• Engenders a deepening experience of God through our response/commitment to love

• Fosters a new way of seeing and living that empowers us to cross “boundaries” … a lifelong response & commitment … discipleship

Discipleship … Jesus Christ

Jesus:• Reign of God

(letting no one be anonymous)• Giving away of self,

compassion, & opening of arms - vulnerability

• Abundant Life

Societal norms: Affluence, Economic Success, Self-Interest, Greed, Individualism

Justice …

Right Relationship

What we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to become is who we already are!

Thomas Merton

God’s mission has us!

How do you connect young people with the sense of mission that our Church upholds

through service opportunities?

What might I need to re-considerthat would foster

a deeper sense of mission?

Look Closely

Look Critically

Look Closely

• Read the scenario provided to your group.• Scenarios have been distributed randomly,

and may or may not be similar to an experience with which someone in your group has been connected

• Try to refrain from assessing the scenario or “filling in blanks”

Look Critically

• Our next session will allow us to break open the Pastoral Circle.

• As the components of each stage of the Pastoral Circle are presented, critique the service scenario in light of the particular stage of the Pastoral Circle.

• Each group should identify one member to record the group’s critique for the four stages of the Pastoral Circle.

Why?

• The value of Experiential Learning is the experience, the doing.

• Working together allows us to be companions to one another on this particular journey.

• Working together allows us to share Best Practices.

• Working together reminds us that none of us is as smart as all of us.

Experience

Do not conform to the pattern of the world, but be

transformed by the renewing of your mind.

(Romans 12:2)

How does our service opportunity integrate relational experience?

What is “missing” from our service projects that

could have taken them to the next level? What can I do - or should have

done – to make our service opportunity

more relational?

ExperienceSocial

Analysis

Caritas in Veritate- Word Cloud

STEP TWO: SOCIAL ANALYSIS (REFLECTION)

Help the experience to be named!• Start with senses …• Move to feelings, insights, disturbances,

questions that emerge, etc.• Include imagination … an important ingredient for

reflection• Journal … dialogue … prayer

Listening Deeply to Experience

Step Two: Social Analysis

• Establish the Context & Content– The set of circumstances or facts that surround a

particular event, situation – The who, what, where, when, why and how?– Substantive information

• Develop Critical Thinking Skills– Understanding personal assumptions and biases– What are the root causes?– Where do you see connections?– What if…?

There still are

dreamers, particularly

in our Catholic faith

tradition and in our

lives.

Gandhi Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Pope John Paul II

Dorothy Day

Archbishop Oscar Romero

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

How does our service opportunity integrate social analysis?

How can social analysis / reflection be better integrated into our

service opportunities?

ExperienceSocial

Analysis

TheologicalReflection

Theological Reflection

“And the Grinchwith his Grinch feet ice cold in the snow,

stood puzzling and puzzling: ‘How could it be so?

’…And he puzzled three hourstill his puzzler was sore.

Then

the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.

Reflection

• Good life skill• Significant when

an experience cannot be explained using previous “frameworks”

• Experience Cognitive Dissonance • Know Cognitive Dissonance creates a need, and an opportunity for assistance and encouragement with the reflection process • Often too easy to avoid the dissonance, for all

Critical Reflection“Critical Reflection is a process

specifically structured to help examine the frameworks that we use to interpret experience; critical reflection pushes us to step outside of the old and familiar and to reframe our questions and our conclusions in innovative and more effective ways.”

A Practioner’s Guide to Reflection in Service Learning Student Voices and Reflections Janet Eyler, Dwight E. Giles Jr. , Angela Schmiede

Four C’s of Critical Reflection

Continuous…ongoing part of student’s learning and service involvement

Connected…to the intellectual, academic( and spiritual) pursuits of students

Challenging…engage students in a critical manner, ask the hard, unfamiliar, uncomfortable questions

Contextualized…appropriate for the setting and context of experience.

Eyler, Giles, Schmiede

Theological Reflection

Basic Premise… desire to make meaning in one’s life

Theological reflection … placing into dialogue life experiences with a religious tradition to produce new insights, deeper meaning and action.

“Theological reflection is the discipline of exploring individual and corporate experience in conversation with the wisdom of a religious heritage. The conversation is a genuine dialogue that seeks to hear from our own beliefs, actions and perspectives, as well as those of the tradition. It respects the integrity of both. Theological reflection therefore may confirm, challenge, clarify, and expand how we understand our own experience and how we understand religious tradition. The outcome is new truth and meaning for living.”

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Framework for Theological Reflection

How does our service opportunity integrate theological reflection?

How can theological reflection be better integrated into our service

opportunities?

"If the present situation can be attributed to difficulties of various kinds, it is not out of place to speak of ‘structures of sin,’ which... are rooted in personal sin and thus always linked to the concrete acts of individuals who introduce these structures, consolidate them, and make them difficult to remove. And thus they grow stronger, spread, and become the source of other sins, and so influence people's behavior."

(Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 36)

ExperienceSocial

Analysis

TheologicalReflection

Response

“Charity calls forth a generous response from individuals; justice

requires concerted communal action to transform institutional policies,

societal laws, or unjust social situations... Transformative action gets at the root causes; it does not stop at alleviating the symptoms.”

(In the Footsteps of Jesus: Catholic Social Teaching at Work Today, United States Conference of

Catholic Bishops)

“To this you were called, because Christ suffered for

you, leaving you an example, that you should

follow in his steps.”

(1 Peter 2:21)

In the context of the service project we already do,

how can we make our response one that is meaningful

and addresses the root cause of problems in our society?

What makes our responses uniquely Catholic?

“Transformers, more than meets the

eye!”

We’ve formed . . . God has transformed . . . Now what?

Fan the Flame

“The role of education is much more profound than merely the process of imparting facts, broadening knowledge, or developing skills needed for functioning in the world. At the heart of education, what we really do is awaken in [others] an awareness of God’s presence within them and around them so that through the exercise of their God-given gifts and talents, they may become the persons they are intended to be for the benefit of the wider world. There is no higher calling.”

Katherine Feely SND “Engaging Faith in the World: Exploring Catholic Social Teaching and Global Solidarity”

We need

Teen Servant Disciples who:

- Share their experience! - Live their experience!

“ . . . they may become the persons they are intended to be for the benefit of the wider world.”

• Language• At Home• At the Parish• Taking the message where we can’t go . . .

What can we do to help our young people SHARE their experience?

• Do our teens know that service can be lived outside of a 1 time experience?

• On-going service• Mentoring• Vocations• Career Path

What can we do to help our young people LIVE their experience?

Forming Servant Disciples

• Reunion• Social services career fair• Internet Testimonials• Bulletin board: pics, testimony, ed info, what’s

next?• Teens host Social Justice teaching night

Leading Young People to MissionHow can we re-shape or re-think youth ministry / religious

education so that it fosters a sense of mission?***

One take-away …

Something you want to remember from today

How would our parishes/schools be transformed if they were filled with teen servant disciples?

Some concluding thoughts:

We must be prepared

spiritually, practically

and academically to do

the difficult!

We must be prepared

spiritually, practically

and academically to do

the difficult!

Young people can and will involve themselves in a parish that asks a lot

of them.

Young people can and will involve themselves in a parish that asks a lot

of them.

The stuff of social ministry is inherently linked to abundant life! People want to go to the “thin places” of life!

Resources

Handout

s DYYAM