Passing on the faith: Guiding the next generation to know and walk with Jesus

By Barb Arland-Fye
The Catholic Messenger

RIVERSIDE — Put 45 faith formation leaders in a room with an inspiring, humorous speaker and a diocesan director wearing a banana costume and you’ve got a crowd going bananas for passing on the faith. Who would have known that developing resiliency, practical insight and spiritual depth could involve having some fun, too?

Catholic speaker Mike Patin, a popular presenter invited frequently to the Diocese of Davenport, led the Catechetical Leader Summit Aug. 13, aiming to equip the faith formation leaders for the journey ahead in the new programing year. They had expressed “a strong need for formation that speaks directly to the challenges they’re facing,” Trevor Pullinger, diocesan director of Faith Formation and Catechesis coordinator, told The Catholic Messenger in a previous interview.

The summit, held in Holy Family Parish Hall, opened in prayer followed by an exercise in which participants paired up to answer Patin’s questions that left them laughing – “has your partner ever hit the ‘send’ button after writing an email and immediately regretted it?’’’

Patin introduced himself as a “faith horticulturist.”  The eloquent definition is on his website (mikepatin.com) but, as he quipped at the summit, “Sometimes I plant seeds, a lot of times I water the seeds, most days I throw in manure.”

Patin interspersed humor with insight, thoughtful reflection, and small-group discussion that affirmed the faith formation leaders’ ministry and reinforced the importance of community — among themselves and in their efforts to guide their students to know and walk with Christ.

He asked them to identify the things that robbed them of their passion and drained their spirits. Among those things: coworkers who may resent the faith formation leaders’ atypical “office hours” or who don’t understand what they do.

Patin also shared a list of “passion robbers and spirit drainers” he has acquired over the years as the “driver of the bus” on this faith formation journey, such as rules, overburdening, institutional obstacles, mistaken assumptions about one’s calling, setting limits and lack of genuine support.

“Jesus didn’t get everything done,” Patin pointed out, and “there were times when Jesus said, ‘No.’”

“It’s like you sat in our car on the way up here!” Anna Maria Billy, director of Evangelization for St. Joseph Parish in Ottumwa told Patin. She drove to the summit with Ana De La Torre, the Ottumwa parish’s director of Religious Education.

Bishop Dennis Walsh, who presided at Mass during the summit, expressed his gratitude to the faith formation leaders in his homily. “Looking out at all of you, I see the face of the Church: the tireless catechists, the dedicated youth ministers, the faithful volunteers who spend their nights and weekends pouring their hearts into the next generation of our Catholic family.”

An invitation

“The readings we heard today spoke powerfully to the mission that has brought you together. They offered a beautiful and challenging vision of what it means to lead others to Christ.” Reflecting on Matthew’s Gospel for the day (Matthew 18:15-20), the bishop referred to the concluding line, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

… “This is not just a promise about prayer; it’s a promise about your ministry. It’s a promise about every classroom you enter, every small group you lead, every lesson plan you carefully prepare. Jesus is right there in the midst of your community … this is the heart of our homily today: the difference between simply teaching about Jesus and inviting people into a lived relationship with him.”

The first reading from Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 34:1-12) “gives us an even richer image,” the bishop said. “Moses is a powerful symbol for us. He received the law, he spoke to God face to face and he taught the people everything they needed to know. He was an expert teacher. But his mission was to get them to the edge. Joshua’s mission was to lead them in.”

“This is your call as religious educators and faith formation leaders,”  Bishop Walsh said. “You are not simply Moses, teaching the catechism and the stories of salvation history. You are called to be Joshua, leading your students across the Jordan River into the promised land of a personal relationship with Jesus.”

“We are called to raise up disciples, not just catechized Catholics,” Bishop Walsh said. “We are called to move people from a place of knowing about Jesus to a place of knowing and walking with him for a lifetime.”

He offered guidance:

• Create communities where the Gospel’s promise rings true.
• Create spaces where people can encounter the living Jesus in the “two or three gathered.”
• Live out the message of fraternal correction with love and patience.
• Don’t just teach the faith. Live it out with those you are called to serve.

After Mass and lunch, Patin led participants in a game of “Scripture-nary.” Someone from each table collected a Scripture “clue” from Patin and raced back to their tables to illustrate the Scripture. The other table members had to guess the drawing’s meaning.  Patin quipped afterwards, “Some of you should not go into art!”  The fun exercise aimed to evoke a question: What are the pictures of good, healthy ministers today?

Among the “pictures” they had not expected, Pullinger dancing around the room dressed in a bright yellow banana costume and leading them in a hilarious banana peel dance and song. His antics energized the gathering.

They learned about tools for resiliency, such as strong networks, flexibility, re-energizing, adaptability, learning, celebrating success and reflection, the latter of which happens far too infrequently, Patin believes. “One thing about our generation (of faith formation leaders) is that we are not a reflective people,” he said before asking them to consider ways in which Jesus re-energized and tended to his resiliency.

Self-care is a priority and a necessity and so is self-spiritual formation. “We’re still being formed while we serve others,” Patin said.  “God initiates and God transforms. Our part is to remain open.”

“The Catechetical Leader Summit was truly a gift, a time set apart to pause, breathe and be renewed in both spirit and purpose,” said Angie Goodwin, who leads youth ministry for St. Thomas More Parish-Coralville, Holy Family Parish-Riverside and St. James Parish-Washington. “It was a sacred space to tend to the heart of our vocation and the ministry entrusted to us.”

Goodwin said she left the summit “feeling deeply affirmed in the calling we share, more clearly attuned to where God is inviting us to serve, and more aware of the healthy tension needed in life to create space for the Holy Spirit to truly work through us. As someone who often takes on too much, sets high expectations, and strives to meet the needs of everyone, this summit was a much-needed reminder that we cannot pour into others without first allowing God to fill us.”

The summit also gave her “practical wisdom on ‘packing the essentials’ for ministry — focusing on what matters most, setting healthy boundaries and continually reflecting on my role and expectations.” When she feels overwhelmed or frustrated, she plans to ask, ‘What will the Holy Spirit make of it through me?’ It’s God’s work and our role is to trust his call, offer ourselves faithfully and rejoice in the blessing of helping create opportunities for youth to encounter Jesus and choose a personal relationship with him.”

Take-aways from the Catechetical Leader Summit:

Other catechetical leaders who participated in the summit Aug. 13 at Holy Family Parish Hall shared their impressions with The Catholic Messenger:

• Jammie Jamieson, director of Religious Education/K-8 Faith Formation for Our Lady of Victory Parish in Davenport, said she enjoyed sharing the day with fellow catechetical leaders and thought Catholic presenter Mike Patin was fantastic. She also appreciated Bishop Dennis Walsh’s presence and his homily “that showed his understanding for what we do and the real hope that exists with the seeds that we plant and the need for trusting God to do his part.”

Patin’s “engaging presentation and the small group work that we did kept reminding me that working in parish ministry is much like the oxygen mask on a plane scenario:  We must secure our oxygen masks first, before we can help other people get their masks on…. We as catechetical leaders in our parish must take seriously tending to our own spiritual fitness and closeness to Christ, so that we can be in a position to help others on their journey.”

Jamieson also appreciated taking a closer look at Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 10 as it related to packing the essentials, “which in our case is resilience, spiritual formation and community.  Leaving the summit, I felt filled with the Spirit and excited to put some new tools to use in the ministry entrusted to me!”

Among her main goals coming out of the gathering is to strive for unity. As “Mike reminded us, that does not mean uniformity, so leave plenty of room for the Holy Spirit to work.” She also wants to “find or grow a bigger community of children’s and youth formation leaders that help ‘hold while God unfolds’ and to offer prayerful support for one another this year.”

Finally, “Bananas of the world unite!” she said, referencing a hilarious song and dance led by Trevor Pullinger, diocesan director of Faith Formation and Catechesis coordinator, dressed in a bright yellow banana costume.  “Many thanks to Trevor and Marianne (Agnoli, diocesan Marriage and Family Life coordinator) for putting together such an amazing day for us!”

• Tammy Bellrichard, director of Religious Education for Divine Mercy Parish-Burlington/West Burlington enjoyed participating in a diocesan-wide event. “It is not often that we get together with people who have the same roles in the Church as we do. Our experiences are similar, which is very reassuring to both new and seasoned catechetical leaders. My expectations were met and then some. Mike is such an enthusiastic speaker and great to see again. He did a mission for Divine Mercy Parish in 2022.”

“I definitely got refreshed and energized by Mike’s presentation,” Bellrichard said. She hopes to emulate for her catechists Patin’s “enthusiasm for us as ministry leaders.” She also “met some very new ministers who helped me to see things through fresh eyes.  And I can’t wait to meet up with them again in the near future … maybe NCYC!”

• Blake Hasenmiller of St. Joseph Parish in DeWitt said he really enjoyed the summit and thought it provided a lot of good information. “Definitely met my expectations. I really like Mike’s style, as far as how he allows us to discuss (and guide) the conversation to move organically. It was also great to see a lot of people that I had worked with in various ministry capacities over the last couple of decades, but hadn’t run into much recently.”

“Unlike most people there, I’m not in full-time ministry,” Hasenmiller said. “I’m just a frequent volunteer and committee-member.  However, I found a lot of the stuff to be very broadly applicable and look forward to applying much of it to my daily life, particularly some strategies to try to achieve a better work-life and volunteer-life balance to avoid burnout.”