The 26th of February 2022 was our third Faith on Fire Catechist Formation Day, and we were delighted to welcome John Hayes from the Diocese of Cloyne.
John was part of a team in the diocese who developed a tailor-made faith formation resource for adults, 'Grow in the Love of the Lord'. The name of the programme echoes the name of the primary school religious education programme, and aims to offer parents support for their own faith in a way that parallels the 'Grow in Love' children's programme.
"Grow in Love of the Lord provides faith communities with the means to reach out to young families in their parishes, and accompany them in the ways of faith." ~ Bishop William Crean, Diocese of Cloyne
John's excellent workshop gave the Faith on Fire group a strong sense of the resource and of how to present it in practice. After an overview of the context and content, John presented one entire session, as if to a group of parents, and this was a great opportunity too for him to share his own insights and experiences on what methods, approaches and adaptations worked best in practice.
We were impressed too with the ongoing back-up for parents that is integrated into 'Grow in Love of the Lord': each week the parents receive a short email which includes:
a video input
a link to the Sunday Gospel and Readings for that weekend
a short reflection
links to the children's programme that parallel the adult course.
It was a real pleasure to have John with us not just for his own workshop but for the entire day and joining in our other presentations and seminars: our own Rosemary Swords delivered an excellent Parish Self Audit tool (see Rosemary's blog post on that here) and Joe McKeown led us into the day with an inspiring input on the notion of missionary discipleship.
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