My niece recently headed back to college. The State Fairgrounds gates open the day this paper arrives in homes. These are among the signs that the long-awaited fall 2021 is coming quickly. I say long-awaited because life in our parishes and schools, we pray, will be back to a new normal after Labor Day. Soon thereafter the Synod Parish Consultation Process with Small Groups will begin at each parish. Archbishop Hebda has repeatedly shared how he views it as providential that we will emerge from the strange past 18 months journeying together as an archdiocese, focused on our shared future, through the Synod Small Groups.
The archbishop has asked my brother pastors to set aside six weeks on each parish’s adult faith formation calendar solely for Synod Small Groups (with the one exception being sacramental preparation). He is also asking all ongoing small groups to hit pause on their usual materials for six weeks to use the Synod materials instead. Archbishop Hebda made those extraordinary requests desiring that adult parishioners (high school students are welcome, too) across the archdiocese focus on “synodality” — engagement, prayerful listening, and discernment — to address issues crucial to our Church.
Father Joseph Bambenek
In recent months, more than a thousand volunteers have been preparing for the Synod Small Groups. There are teams developing the materials, which Archbishop Hebda personally approves. At each parish, trained volunteers are making the necessary arrangements for the Small Groups. They are also recruiting and coordinating volunteers who will be trained to facilitate the discussions and report back the results. The preparation process has been an encouraging example of collaboration, as bishops and priests have worked with lay volunteers and archdiocesan staff members to prepare an excellent experience for tens of thousands of Catholics this fall — hopefully including you.
What will that experience be like? Everyone in the archdiocese, including those who might have stepped away from the Church in recent years, is invited to come to their parish and participate in small groups of up to 8 people during six weekly sessions. Two sessions will be devoted to each of the three focus areas that Archbishop Hebda announced at this time last year in these pages:
- Forming parishes that are in the service of evangelization
- Forming missionary disciples who know Jesus’ love and respond to his call
- Forming youth and young adults in and for a Church that is always young
Each session will cover two sub-topics of a focus area. For example, Session 3 will discuss how we can make parishes more welcoming and how to better collaborate in parish ministry and in session 5 we will engage on the sub-topics of supporting Parents as the primary educators of their children and what our parishes and schools can do to help the young know and love Jesus.
The sessions are video-based, starting with a welcome from Archbishop Hebda and an opportunity to pray together. Then the first sub-topic will be teed-up through a teaching, often followed by testimonies of local Catholics sharing their personal experience on the sub-topic. The majority of the session is spent in the small group dialogue that follows, as the video becomes a countdown clock. The same sequence occurs for the second sub-topic. At the end of each sub-topic, everyone can provide the archbishop with written feedback in the form of prioritizing possible ideas for moving forward while also concisely sharing their best idea. The prioritization and best ideas will feed into subsequent rounds of consultation at the deanery and archdiocesan levels. Using all this input, Archbishop Hebda will set pastoral priorities to help all of us in the archdiocese grow in unity and more vigorously proclaim the good news of Jesus.
The Synod Small Groups provide each of us a first-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give this kind of input to our Archbishop and, along the way, to deepen our relationship with God and with others in our parish. As you plan your fall calendar, please include participation in the Synod Small groups; and even now pray for the Synod. I look forward to journeying with you!
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