Nick Wagner is the cofounder and codirector of Team Initiation.
I teach an eight-evening course on liturgy in my diocese every year. The students are parish volunteers who serve on liturgy planning committees or in music ministry or in some other pastoral role. They show up on the first night with their empty vessels, expecting me to fill them to the brim with liturgical knowledge. […]
Is your RCIA team just filling vessels?
Some time ago, I was giving a workshop on how parishes could improve their liturgy. A man in the back row stood up and told us all that we were wasting our time. As long as we had a validly ordained priest who was consecrating the Body and Blood of Jesus, that was all that
Four reasons Mass matters for your catechumens
If I asked you what Pope Francis said in his speech to the U.S. Congress last September, I’ll bet most of you couldn’t tell me. But if I asked what kind of car he drove off in after the speech, most of you will remember it was a tiny black Fiat. The Fiat made more
RCIA as a little black Fiat ministry
“Jesus Christ is the face of the Father’s mercy.” That’s the first sentence in Pope Francis’s letter announcing the Year of Mercy. If Jesus is the face of the Father’s mercy, it is then also true that the church is the face of Jesus’s mercy. As a church, our job, as the Body of Christ,
Is your RCIA team a face of mercy?
As we enter into our eighth year of ministry, you continue to be a blessing to us and to the more than 15,000 people around the world who make up the TeamRCIA community. We thank you for everything you do to be a blessing for those who seek Christ. From our home to yours,
Merry Christmas from TeamRCIA!
At almost every TeamRCIA institute Diana and I have led over the last two years, someone will complain that some aspect of the RCIA process they are doing is not working. And we will then ask why they keep doing it. And invariably the reply is, “Because that’s the way we’ve always done it.” I
Reasons to stop doing RCIA the way you’ve always done it
The best time to start an RCIA team is now. The best time to start dismissing catechumens from Mass is this Sunday. The best time implement a year-round process is today. The best time to recruit sponsors is right away. The best time to move out of the classroom and into an apprenticeship model is
When I first leaned about the RCIA in the 1980s, it was a brand new rite in the church. What caught my attention right away was the dismissal of the catechumens. I didn’t know anything about the theology of the dismissal or even much about catechumens. But I did know about Catholics. Right away, I
How to make parish renewal a byproduct of RCIA
The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults intends the period of the catechumenate to be “aimed at training [the catechumens] in the Christian life” (RCIA 75). An essential component of that training is our liturgical life. Our participation in the worship of the church is so important that it is the first reform that was
How to teach catechumens the meaning of liturgy
At one of our training workshops, a participant was flummoxed about the dismissal of the catechumens after the homily. Why, he wanted to know, would we dismiss people who are learning about Jesus before Jesus is made present in the Mass (at the moment of consecration)? Free download: 8 ways to make mystagogy work in
Why dismiss the catechumens before Jesus becomes present?
