How can we help you better connect in…?
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PREACHING Connect with your people Preaching matters. If we want to renew the Church, we need to renew our preaching. The Sunday liturgy is the privileged point of contact for our people. There is nothing that carries as much weight as the Sunday celebration. Our best efforts at auxiliary programming fittingly culminate in this communal celebration as source and summit. Yet for many parishioners, young and old, especially for those on the margins of faith, this may be their only source of input. They base their opinions of the parish and the institutional Church on the quality of the homily. For parish-shoppers and those who tiptoe in and out of liturgy, the preaching is a key element in their decision for and against attendance. Your preaching matters to your people What can we do to help you to strengthen your homiletical skills and your message?
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EVANGELIZATION Connect with those who are far from faith The disciples on the road to Emmaus heard a message that resonated within them. Their response, “Were not our hearts burning within us?” (Lk 24:32), is used so often in religious circles that it has almost become cliched. Yet that expression describes an inner experience: a fiery beating of the heart, a swelling of the lungs, a mental exhilaration, which motivates and drives a person to attend and to learn and to listen and to follow. Each generation rediscovers this silent coming of the Holy Spirit; it is the renewed enthusiasm of faith; it is the inner fire that keeps the church going. This encounter with God is the goal of Sunday preaching within the Eucharistic liturgy. Our focus in evangelization is to understand how we can connect the gospel message so that it resonates within the hearer. That begins with asking those who listen about their experience, then building from those responses to create programs that connect with the needs of the estranged listener. In addition, evangelization means to so empower the faithful so that they race to tell others about this Jesus whom they have encountered. How? By giving them the words and the tools so that they themselves can preach to the world in which they live.
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PRAYER Connect with God In this over-scheduled world, there is a hunger for prayer and mediation. The Holy Spirit hollers, “Slow down and listen!” How can we speak of God if we are not connected to the One about whom we speak? Effective ministry is founded on this relationship. We offer brief and extended moments to pull away and refresh – days of reflection and weeks of retreat. The titles listed are just a sample of what we could build together
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