Reach More Training
This month we are starting another round of Reach More training, and the parish staff is also going to begin their own version.
Reach More (https://www.ecreachmore.com/) is a program developed by the Evangelical Catholic (https://evangelicalcatholic.org/) that trains lay people on how to invite their family, friends, and acquaintances into Jesus-centered relationships. For many people this looks starting small prayer groups and Bible studies, but for others it looks like one-on-one accompaniment or different forms of community building.
Unfortunately, Catholic culture has a tendency to believe that “spiritual work” is the exclusive domain of the priests and religious orders, so training like this is extremely necessary. All of the baptized share in the evangelical mission of the Church, but most people have never been given the tools to engage in that mission. This 12-week program helps people (1) learn how to pray, (2) learn how to pray about the people in their life, and (3) invite those people into Jesus-centered relationships.
Ultimately, my hope is that every Catholic in Whatcom County has a small community of prayer that they are part of, in addition to their weekend Mass community. That requires a LOT of people getting trained on how to develop and organize these types of small communities. I am also asking the staff to take this training so that they have a deep understanding of where our Catholic community is headed.
If this is something you think you might be interested in, please consider reaching out to your local parish office to see if there is a group you can join. Ideally, group leaders would be chosen from group participants.
Meeting with CTK
When we first learned that all of the Catholic Churches in Whatcom County would join together for Partners in the Gospel, I immediately started thinking about this as the “CTK Model”. Christ the King (CTK) is the only other church that I know about that has implemented a county-wide distributed model here in Whatcom, and I figured we could learn a lot from them about their experiences.
Well this week, I, Kathy Ernst (our Regional Director of Pastoral Ministries), and Olivia Phillips (our Regional Director of Operations) sat down with CTK’s Executive Pastor, Outreach Pastor, and Downtown Campus Pastor to pick their brains and learn from them. It was a really excellent and helpful meeting, and I am so glad we were able to hold it. My big takeaways from the meeting were (1) we should probably find a way to do more all-staff meetings and retreats and (2) the more time staff spend in relationship with parishioners, the more parishioners feel comfortable going to staff (and not just the priests). But beyond the specific nuggets of wisdom, it was also really nice just to find common ground with other Christians in Whatcom County and to renew our shared commitment to preaching the Gospel. Making common cause with fellow Christians is something I hope we can find more opportunities for as we grow into our county-wide identity.
Fr. Moore 