The Priest As Empowerer of Catechetical Ministry
Chapter 7
The Symposium Process

Introduction
This book provides an opportunity to review the catechetical experiences of the priests who attended the symposium. However, you can also use it and the symposium process with a group of people to explore these insights, as well as the group's insights, about the empowerment of catechists and catechetical ministry. The process designed for the symposium can be adapted for a variety of settings. This chapter reviews how you can do this.

Potential Settings

Possible Timeframes

Approaches
Although this book provides a comprehensive summary of the symposium, take a few moments to review the detailed agenda on pages 171 to 175. This will give you a good overview of the components of the symposium as well as the time allocated for their completion.

As you can see from the detailed agenda, the symposium process has a modular structure with six distinct components that you can adapt according to your needs.

The process can be adapted to fit many situations. However, if you want to plan a meeting for a group to examine catechetical ministry based on the symposium, formulating an agenda should be the last step in your planning process. Altogether, there are four steps you should follow:

Adapt the process to fit your goal, the people and the time, or modify your goal. Your agenda depends on the variables in the first three steps. What do you want to accomplish as your goal? This may mean you focus on certain areas of the symposium. Who will attend? How many people will take part? What are the background and experience of the people? The number of people and their experience will affect the time allocated for exercises and discussion. How much time will be devoted to the meeting? Will there be adequate time to explore the topics? Once you consider these questions, ask whether or not you can accomplish your initial goal. If you do not think you can, then you should modify your goal.

Here is an example:

Working with the Agenda
Once you have identified the first three steps, you can begin to design your agenda using the following parts of the detailed agenda for the symposium.

Introduction
An introduction will be necessary, although the time allocated for this may vary significantly. During the introduction you will explain the purpose of the gathering, state your goal, and briefly describe what the participants will be doing. This will also give the participants an opportunity to introduce themselves to one another if necessary. These personal introductions should include some background information, for example, where the person comes from and what background or experience he or she has in catechetical ministry.

The Four Components
The approach to each segment of the symposium can be adapted according to your needs. The primary goal for each of these segments is to surface experiences and ideas that can be used to encourage the empowerment of catechists and catechetical ministry. The exercises used in the symposium were creative and effective. However, the number of people participating in the meeting you develop and the setting for the meeting may not be conducive to conducting some of the exercises as they are proposed here. Please use your own creativity to design something that will achieve the same end.

Before coming to the meeting, the participants should complete the reflection questions that begin the chapter being examined. As with the symposium, this will provide a reservoir of responses from which to draw. You may also want the participants to read the entire chapter before you meet. The benefits for this would be their exposure to ideas of others, which in turn may generate their own. The drawbacks would be that they may be influenced or inhibited.

Conclusion
As with an introduction, a conclusion will be important in any process that you design. During the conclusion the group should review its discussions, list the key issues that were identified, and examine how these issues can affect their catechetical ministry.

Resources
There are limited personnel and material needs for a meeting of this sort. The one person that the process truly requires is a facilitator.

Facilitator
The facilitator should be someone who can lead the discussion without dominating it. Ideally, the person should maintain a fairly neutral stance. However, with smaller groups, such as a parish staff, the facilitator will likely be an active participant in the discussion. As the leader of the process, the facilitator has overall responsibility for the meeting, and so should be certain that everything is in order and all the material is in place, etc.

Material
The material required depends to a certain extent on the facilities and on the number of people attending. However, the facilitator will need a flipchart and a set of colored markers to record the key points of the discussion. Each participant should have:

Optional items, such as copies of articles or other handouts, will depend upon the needs and background of the participants.

If the number of people attending the meeting requires division into smaller groups for discussion, (with a minimum of four and a maximum of eight per table), then each of these groups should have marker and a flipchart or some means for recording the key points that are made. If possible, the participants should be seated at round tables to facilitate discussion.

The optimum number of people depends on the interaction that is possible among the participants and between the participants and the facilitator. Time is also a factor. For example, based on the number of small groups required for the anticipated number of people, how much time would be needed to listen to the table summaries required by some of the exercises?

Trust the Holy Spirit

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Your love. Send forth Your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.

Whether you use this process in its entirety, adapt it, or design one of your own, do not fear. Be creative and use your talents to help empower catechists and catechetical ministry. Trust that the Holy Spirit supports your work in catechetical ministry.

A Selected Bibliography from The Priest as Empowerer of Catechetical Ministry will be posted next Thursday. For information about ordering this book, please see the Sadlier Religion Catalog.