Parents and Families

at the Center of Faith Formation

National Community of Catechetical Leaders (NCCL)

A Christian Parenting & Caregiver Initiative
Funded by Lilly Endowment Inc.

NCCL’s Parents and Families at the Center of Faith Formation Project is a five-year grant-funded project that will work directly with 200 Catholic parishes in 20 cohorts across the United States and engage over 30,000 Catholic parents and their families by exploring how to strengthen faith transmission at home in the first two decades of life, and create parish communities that intentionally accompany and support parents and the whole family.

NCCL’s Parents and Families at the Center of Faith Formation Project will establish a solid foundation of knowledge about how faith transmission is being practiced in Catholic families so that new approaches and strategies can be designed that are reflective of the family research and current thinking on faith transmission. The Project seeks to build on how Catholic families are already transmitting faith and values so that new approaches and strategies support parents. The new approaches and strategies will be developmentally appropriate, culturally responsive, personalized to diverse parental religiosities, and responsive to diverse family structures.

NCCL’s Parents and Families at the Center of Faith Formation Project will guide parish leaders in strengthening the parish community to accompany parents and the family in forming faith; and in designing a seamless approach to faith formation from birth through high school graduation by addressing the unique developmental and faith growth needs of young children, grade school children, young adolescents, and older adolescents. New resources and approaches will be created to guide parish communities in accompanying parents and developing a seamless approach to faith forming at home and in the parish community.

Becoming a

Missionary Synodal Parish Community

A Project of Loyola Institute for Ministry + NCCL

A Thriving Congregations Initiative
Funded by Lilly Endowment Inc.

Guided by the Catholic Church’s For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission worldwide initiative, the Loyola Institute for Ministry (LIM) and the National Community of Catechetical Leaders (NCCL) are partnering to lead the Becoming a Missionary Synodal Parish Community Initiative to revitalize 400 Catholic parish communities in 40 dioceses with the spirit, theology, and practices of For a Synodal Church by developing parish lay leadership teams. For Catholic parishes to thrive and serve the needs of the parish community and engage in mission to the world, lay leadership is essential. Working together, LIM and NCCL will equip, support, and resource lay leadership teams of 10-12 people of all ages, in 40 diocesan cohorts of 10 parishes, engaging over 4,000 lay leaders.

Becoming a Missional Synodal Parish Community is an action-learning process that engages parish lay leadership teams in revitalizing their parish ministries by:

• Discovering how the parish community and its leadership understand the mission of the Church and their local parish, and how they see the mission being lived out today.
• Analyzing the social-cultural context of their community and naming the challenges and opportunities for ministry today, with special attention to those who are marginalized and excluded.
• Leading a whole community action-learning process on the essential practices of the Christian faith and how they are lived personally and communally; and discerning how the parish community can more faithfully live its mission through a focus on Christian practices.
• Engaging all ages in a listening and discernment process to discover their gifts, abilities, and resources; and equipping them as individuals and teams for ministry and service in the parish and in the world.
• Developing new expressions of the parish’s mission by addressing new challenges and opportunities, and mobilizing the gifts of the whole community for missional action.

Becoming a Missional Synodal Parish Community seeks to apply the Synod’s vision and theological insights by developing lay leaders who can engage their parish communities in responding creatively to the needs and hungers that emerged from the Synod’s consultation process and from the people in parish communities.