Description: This program empowers young adults to lead small faith-sharing communities with their peers. Throughout four weekly meetings and an opportunity for service, participants explore the Lenten theme of “desert” to reflect on their relationship with self, God, and others.
Get Ready
- Prep Time: Up to three hours to organize and publicize the program. Up to one hour each week during the program (or as long as it takes) for the facilitator to become familiar and comfortable with the materials (See the “Recommends” section).
- Volunteers Needed: One young adult facilitator per small group of three-nine participants. One volunteer host (if you have this program in someone’s home). The host might be a different person than the facilitator. You might also want to arrange for childcare in order for parents of young children to participate.
- Ideal Group Size: The ideal size for a small faith-sharing group ranges from four-10 (including the facilitator). If more people are interested, consider asking someone to facilitate a second group.
- Who Is This For? Appropriate for young adults in various stages of life.
- How Long Is This Program? One hour-90 minutes for each faith-sharing group and an additional 2-4 hours for the volunteer service component.
- Reserve the Space: It is ideal to host these programs at someone’s home. If that isn’t convenient, you could reserve room at your church for the expected size of the group.
- Supplies: Laptop, external speakers, Bible, and copies of each week’s handouts for the group (see “Recommends” section below). Invite participants to bring their own personal journals each week. Provide some blank paper and pens in case someone forgets.
- When Is a Good Time for This? Begin the faith-sharing groups during one of the first few weeks of Lent. The program can be scheduled at a time convenient for the facilitator and participants, possibly a weekday evening.
- Prepare for Service Work: Review the Day of Service Guide from the Romero Center. Work with your parish outreach coordinator or a local service organization (e.g., food pantry, soup kitchen, daycare, tutoring program) to schedule a time for the group to come and volunteer for a few hours during the program. This might happen at a different time than your faith-sharing group — on a Saturday or in the afternoon — depending on the organization you work with and your group’s availability. Share this information with the faith-sharing group at least three weeks in advance.
Prayer for Program Planner: Loving God, help me to lovingly prepare and invite people to walk with each other, and with you, throughout the forty days of Lent.
Community Building: This program builds small communities through weekly faith sharing. Two ways to help make this community building more social:
- Invite small groups to meet each other for dinner or drinks once before they begin meeting for the formal program (this is also a great way to break the ice if people don’t already know each other).
- Take turns bringing snacks and drinks to the meetings, or head out after a meeting to grab a bite or a drink.
Make It Happen
- Use this Facilitator’s Guide from the Romero Center to help you facilitate each week’s faith-sharing group.
- At the start of the first faith-sharing group, welcome all participants and share how excited you are that you’ll be walking together on your journeys through Lent.
- Reassure them that anything shared in the group will remain confidential, and that everyone is invited to share as much as they feel comfortable sharing.
- Overview the arch of the four weeks, both in terms of content and format.
- Explain to them that tonight’s session will be about beginning to unpack what it means to be in the desert.
- Tell them that they can expect each session to run between one hour-90 minutes.
- Continue to follow the Facilitator’s Guide each week — weekly faith-sharing groups follow this general outline:
- Opening prayer
- Scripture reflection/sharing
- Reflection questions/discussion
- Closing Prayer
- Share the details and logistics of the Volunteer Service component of this program with the group at least three weeks in advance. Be sure to take time before the volunteer service to ask everyone in the group to share one hope and one apprehension about the day of service. Follow-up the day of service by asking everyone to share one gift, one challenge, and one hope based on their experience of the day of service.
Ideas
- Diocesan or parish leaders might organize multiple faith-sharing groups
- Give yourself at least five weeks to invite young adult leaders to be facilitators, prepare the facilitators you select, advertise, and arrange the day of service.
- Personally invite young adults leaders to serve as facilitators of a small group.
- Invite the facilitators to decide where and when they would like to have their meetings (e.g. at a coffee shop Tuesday evenings, starting the second Tuesday of Lent; at their home Wednesday evenings, starting the first Wednesday of Lent.)
- Set up a meeting with the facilitators before the first group is scheduled to meet to: Give them copies of the Facilitator’s Guide, Tips for Facilitators, and all handouts (see “Recommends” section). Walk through the program and work with them to prepare for leading a small group.
- Create a Facebook group for facilitators to encourage sharing of ideas and resources.
- Decide whether you would like to organize the Lenten day of service for all participants of the faith sharing groups (i.e. plan one day of service that all the small groups would feed into. This requires scheduling spots with local service sites, etc., and making sure you arrange a place where people can meet before and after their service experience to frame the day in service and reflection). Or, work with the facilitators to make sure they are organizing their own days of service with their small groups.
- Use Google forms and embed a sign-up form on your website’s home page or link to a sign-up form from Facebook. Here’s an example of Romero Center Ministries’ sign-up form from Lent 2011. Here’s information from Google on how to create a form.
Promote
- Contact your parish secretary for permission to invite folks from the pulpit during Mass and stand at a sign-up table after Mass to answer questions and welcome people.
- Ask the director of faith formation at your parish for contact information of young adults in the parish: catechists, parents of children in any faith formation programs, and those who have recently been married or had their child baptized in your church. Reach out to these people with an invitation to be part of the Lenten faith-sharing group.
- Ask for permission to post a flier at local coffee shops or gyms.
- If you are able to offer childcare at the time of this event, advertise that with information about the Lenten faith-sharing group.
- Personally invite people, including your friends!
Recommends: These weekly handouts will help you facilitate faith sharing groups —
- Week One: Desert In Your Daily Life
- Week Two: Timeline of Your Journey
- Week Three: Sharing Our Stories
- Week Four: Transfiguration in the World’s Desert Places
- Week Five: From the Desert to the Garden
- Week Six: I’ve Been There
Also use these guides for facilitating and planning your service project —
