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Love in Action

2.1 Get to Know Each Other

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One of the greatest outcomes of Beacons of Light is the intentional joining together of disciples in order to advance God’s kingdom. In Phase 1, the parishes in your Family of Parishes should be focused on getting to know one another and each other’s ministries. The Transitional Team helps make this happen. 

Here are some suggestions for getting to know each other:

Suggestion A: Hold a Love in Action Retreat

The archdiocesan Love in Action Design Team has created a retreat experience to allow parishioners involved in service, social justice and respect life ministries to gather, pray, share and dream about their work together. 

To utilize this resource, contact Mary Anne Bressler at Catholic Charities Southwestern Ohio at (513) 672-3714.

Members of the archdiocesan team will work with your Family Transitional Team to pull together the retreat. Retreat options include a three-hour or a six-hour version that could include a shared service project or guest speaker. 

Suggestion B: Organize a Potluck

Your Transitional Team can host a potluck that includes an opportunity for those involved in service, social justice and respect life ministries to meet and connect with each other.

Suggestion C: Share in a Joint Service Project

Your Transitional Team can pull together those involved in service, social justice and respect life ministries for a common service project opportunity. Examples of activities include serving at a Catholic Charities food pantry, working on a Habitat for Humanity house or participating together in a respect life prayer event.  Whatever the activity may be, there should be an opportunity for interaction among participants so that people get to meet each other.

After completing a getting-to-know-you event, let us know how it goes. Be sure to also report to your parishioners.

1.2 Form a Love in Action Transitional Team

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As Phase 1 begins, the individual parishes within your Family of Parishes will still be mostly autonomous. People will mostly worship, learn and serve in their own parishes, and parish staff will mostly serve their own parishes. This is, to start, a Family of Parishes, not yet one completely unified faith community.

As your Family of Parishes progresses down the Pastoral Planning Pathway, ministries will become more and more unified in service to your Family of Parishes. One way of coordinating Love in Action is to form a Love in Action Transitional Team.

To ensure that your Transitional Team is a good representation of your new Family, your coordinator should accomplish the following two things:

  1. Make sure the team includes at least one staff member or parishioner from each parish in your Family.
  2. Make certain that there is some diversity of ministries represented. For instance, if one or more member parishes have very active St. Vincent de Paul conferences, then at least one team member may want to be affiliated with that ministry.  Similarly, if there is a respect life ministry, mission twinning, care for creation or other active ministry, then the coordinator should attempt to have such voices at the table. Note that the goal is not for the Transitional Team to reflect every ministry but to ensure that there is a general representation of the diversity of good works taking place across the new Family.

The work of the Love in Action Transitional Team will be to jumpstart overall conversations, review inventories and imagine potential cooperation among the member parishes in the new Family. The team, whether through the coordinator or some other mechanism, should be prepared to report to the pastor and pastoral councils its efforts, however, it does not need to consider itself a permanent entity of the new Family structure. The ultimate structure that emerges, such as a Family-wide Love in Action commission, can be organized in later phases. Your Family of Parishes may or may not decide to include the same people in the permanent, coordinating structure. In the early phases of your new Family’s life, the point is to make sure that there is a core group of people ensuring that Love in Action ministries continue and are getting to know each other.

For Families with few Love in Action ministries, the Transitional Team can be just a few people. For Families with greater infrastructure already in place, it is recommended that your Transitional Team be capped at 12 people so as to ensure productive discussions.

Let us know the names of your team member and announce their names throughout the parishes.

1.1 Identify a Coordinator

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Leadership is the first phase of the Pastoral Planning Pathway.  Having the right leaders in place is foundational to any successful initiative, and Beacons of Light is no exception. Love in Action leaders for your Family of Parishes are critical and even called for in Parameter 13:

Love in Action Reversed

“Competent and qualified staff are necessary to serve the Family of Parishes, especially in the areas of worship, Evangelization (including love in action) and administration. As is possible, staff will be unified to serve the entire Family.”

The first thing to do is to have your pastor appoint (or approve) someone to start pulling people together. This person could be a parish staff member or a key volunteer. What is important is that this person is someone who has demonstrated a concern for the Church’s work to promote life and dignity and who appreciates the need to have several representative voices involved in the work.

If your parish is in the position to hire a Love in Action Director or Coordinator, please see the sample job descriptions in the “Materials” tab above.

Once the coordinator is identified, we would love to know and meet him or her. Announce this person’s name to the parishioners as well.

Love in Action Overview: Phase 1

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There are five Love in Action goals for Phase 1:

  • Build a Love in Action Transitional Team.
  • Get to know the members of the Transitional Team.
  • Understand what charity, respect life and social justice ministries are already happening in your Family of Parishes.
  • Review the Love in Action vision points.
  • Report back to your full Family.

While all this might seem formal, it really does not need not be complicated.

If any parish in your Family of Parishes has not already taken the Love in Action Parish Inventory, it should do so soon and share the inventory with the other parishes in the Family to begin to dialogue. In this phase, you will look at all parishes together using a combined inventory tool. 

“Build a parishioner-based Live in Action Transitional Team; get to know each other and understand what activities are already being done.”

I am convinced that Beacons of Light, born of great hope, will enable us to form stronger parishes, centered on the Eucharist, that radiate the love of Christ and joy of the Gospel… God has abundantly blessed our first two centuries and will certainly bless the next.

— ARCHBISHOP DENNIS M. SCHNURR