In his recent pastoral letter, Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez encouraged all Catholics in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to embrace their baptismal call to share the Gospel and serve as missionary disciples who invite people to return to the Church.
Archbishop Pérez began laying the groundwork for training Catholics as missionary disciples shortly after being named the spiritual leader of the Archdiocese. He asked Meghan Cokeley, director of the archdiocesan Office for the New Evangelization, to develop a missionary discipleship training program that would be offered across the Archdiocese.
To accomplish this task, Cokeley took most of the modules in Catholic Leadership Institute’s Parish Missionary Disciples program and added material the Fellowship of Catholic University Students used to train their missionaries. She also included theological information she thought was important for participants to know.
In the fall of 2022, the 10-week School of Missionary Discipleship course was piloted in collaboration with the Catholic Leadership Institute, with a focus on training parish staff members. It was presented in English at Nativity B.V.M. Parish in Warminster and in Spanish at the Mother Boniface Spirituality Center in Philadelphia.
In 2023, the course was offered in English at St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Drexel Hill and in Spanish at St. Laurence Parish in Upper Darby. The current cohort of participants at Epiphany of Our Lord in Warminster (English) and St. Isidore in Quakertown (Spanish) will complete the course next month.
Knowing the longer course is a major time commitment for most Catholics, Cokeley pared the content down to a three-part Go, Make Disciples course that has been offered on Saturday mornings since 2023.
“I went through the 10 sessions and pulled out what was absolutely fundamental,” Cokeley said. “The three-session course is just an introduction, but we wanted it to be transformative, to be an encounter with Jesus, and for people to learn practicable skills.”
The introductory course at St. Norbert Parish in Paoli, which ended in late February, drew nearly 50 participants.
The timing of Archbishop Pérez’s pastoral letter had a positive impact on the number of people who signed up for the training.
Registrations for the course were slow initially, Cokeley said, but she sent an email with a link to the Archbishop’s pastoral letter and invited people to “get a jump start on your own personal journey of missionary discipleship.”
“That’s when it filled up immediately,” she added.
One of the participants who responded to the invitation was Terry Dougherty, a member of St. Monica Parish in Berwyn.
“I wanted to gain some skills in how to talk to people who are Catholics, but not practicing Catholics, to bring the same joy to them that’s come to me over the past several years,” Dougherty said. “I thought the training sessions were really good, and I think they’ve given us really good tools to use.”
One group activity gave Dougherty the opportunity to step outside her comfort zone and practice praying extemporaneously for another person.
“I’m not really good at extemporaneous prayer, so that is one of my personal goals to work on,” she said. “I’m in a Bible study where I made myself a promise that I would do the closing prayer.”
Dougherty said she is considering becoming a facilitator and wants to bring the training session to St. Monica’s.
Peggy Kravitz, a member of St. Norbert Parish in Paoli and a public school teacher, wants to use the skills she learned to reach people who aren’t Catholic.
“I see myself as a missionary disciple, but I want to help the people in the public school world,” Kravitz said.
As the former head of evangelization at St. Norbert’s, she enjoyed learning about the path of missionary discipleship and the scenarios to describe a person’s relationship with God.
“I really love the analogies the facilitators were using with the baseball diamond and the imagery with the circle with Jesus Christ and where you are in the circle,” Kravitz said. “It’s giving me thoughts about how to use the imagery.”
Cokeley said the sessions at St. Norbert’s were the first ones that she did not facilitate. The course was led by Ryan Morris, director of mission implementation at St. Norbert’s; Jen Keller, director of parish engagement at St. Patrick Parish in Kennett Square; Chris Massaro, a member of St. Helena Parish in Blue Bell; and Father Matthew Biedrzycki, parochial vicar at St. Helena Parish in Philadelphia.
Cokeley emphasized that all Catholics are invited to respond to their baptismal call.
“It’s important for everyone to be trained as missionary disciples because Jesus called them to be one on the day of their baptism,” she said. “Taking a class like this is going to deepen your own friendship with Jesus and teach you how to bring people back to the faith.”
The Go, Make Disciples course will be offered in English at the Archdiocesan Pastoral Center in Philadelphia on Saturdays, April 26, May 3 and May 31 from 8:45-11:45 a.m. and in Spanish at the Community Center at Visitation in Philadelphia on Saturdays, March 15, April 12 and May 3 from 9:00 a.m. to noon.
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