Faith formation leaders get creative during pandemic

While the fight against the coronavirus continues, our work, schools, workout routines and Sunday Masses have morphed themselves to operate inside the walls of our living rooms.

And as families in the Diocese navigate how to tackle these tasks from the house, faith formation and youth ministry leaders are finding creative ways to bring out the domestic church for families during the pandemic.

Maureen Billa, pastoral associate for evangelization and catechesis for St. Mary’s Church, Clinton Heights, started thinking about how to bring “the domestic church alive” during Triduum after faith formation classes were canceled in mid-March.

“I said okay, if we’re not having Mass coming into the holiest of Holy weeks for our faith and we can’t come together to celebrate, so I now have to live what I preach,” Billa said. “I always say we as catechetical leaders and youth ministers say that there is such a thing as a domestic church and parents are primary educators, so how do we feed those families?”

The question for her became “how do we feed those families” while at home, “especially when they might be used to dropping off their kids.”

The answer: do takeout. Billa started making “Takeout Triduum” boxes for all 112 families enrolled in St. Mary’s faith formation programs, which runs from kindergarten to fifth grade. Each box was filled with supplies for projects and crafts for kids or the whole family, highlighting the significance of Holy Week.

“One of my main hopes is that the families, not only the young people but the family as a whole, are able to catechize their own children,” Billa said.

“That the church is here to aid them in that process and that we are a great resource for them, and that church and home are no longer separate.”

Each box had instructions on how to make and decorate a tabernacle for Holy Thursday, a coloring page for the last supper, a word search, and a scavenger hunt/nature walk to find Biblically relevant items, like a thorn branch, a stone, or a sign of new life, such as a flower.

Billa also included battery operated candles to represent the pastoral candle/Easter Fire — plus a description explaining what each means. She even included an Easter egg with a treat inside and instructions on how to make an Easter lily out of paper and a pipe cleaner.

All of the boxes were assembled by Billa alone to “air on the side of caution” of spreading disease. As for the contents of the box, everything was also purchased by Billa. Without weekly collections, parishes in the Diocese have taken a financial hit, including St. Mary’s. “I wasn’t sure financially what was going on, so I said I’m still moving forward.”

Volunteers helped deliver the “takeout” to parishioners the week before Easter. “We dropped them off on front porches, steps or side doors,” Billa said. “If (families) were out, we could say hello and wave and chit-chat from a distance.”

For the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Glenville, social media has been a key tool in allowing parishioners and local Catholics access to a priest or daily Mass. Faith formation leaders have begun using Google Hangouts or Zoom to continue classes, and others have taken to Facebook as a means to stay connected.

“We have 275 families in K-12 enrolled, and it’s about 450 kids,” said Christine Goss, director of youth ministries for Immaculate Conception.

Goss helped start “Tuesday chats with Father Jerry” on the parish’s Facebook page for faith formation and youth ministry students. The first week Father Jerry gave a tour of his office and talked about the life of St. Francis of Assisi. In later weeks he introduced students to his dog, Grace, and talked about his vocation story of how he became a priest.

“Kids are able to see him as a person,” Goss said. “He’s relaxed and casual and a really fun person.”

Faith formation leaders also organized a Palm Sunday board where families hung a green branch on their front door and sent in photos for the parish’s Facebook page. Similarly, for Easter, Goss sent families information on turning storm doors and windows into DIY stained glass. Many families responded on Facebook, posting photos of their families working on putting the “stained glass” together. For middle school and high school kids, Goss sent out a “virtual seven churches challenge” where students visited a parish’s social media or website and reported back on things they learned.

Goss noted that the parish as a whole is seeing “an enormous online community developing,” a side effect from the sudden push in online presence from churches shutting down.

In mid-March, Immaculate Con­­ception emailed parishioners that Masses would be livestreamed to their Facebook page while the church is closed. That’s when Goss noticed a jump in numbers: “We went from 739 Facebook followers to 1,454. So our footprint on Facebook has doubled in like three weeks.”

Billa noted that this shift is really “a new way of thinking” for parishes. “It’s a new way of being church. We can’t go back. St. Mary’s will not go back to the way it was; it’s going to flourish and grow and I look at it now as it’s a new church.”

A few weeks ago, one of Billa’s middle-school faith formation students who hadn’t come all year signed up to join her weekly middle-school Zoom session. “I thought if I never went to a social media platform this kid would not have come all year, and here he is with us, regularly connecting with us again,” she said. “In church we say come to us, come to us, come to us, and here we are now coming to you.”