Confirmation Resources
This page rose out of the confirmation resources day held in October 2004. A number of people asked if some of the reources from that day could be made available What the webmaster has is included here.
Karen North: Young People and Prayer (PDF)
Varous booklets on youth work are available from the Youth Office, including the booklet on planning residentals and awaydays.
My article on the day from A&B News
A few weeks ago I joined a Confirmation Resource Day at the Christian Education Centre (DABCEC). The day had two main aims. Firstly to inspire and support those who give so generously of their time to help our young people to prepare for this Sacrament. Secondly it formed art of an ongoing conversation about how we as a diocese can develop our support for young people and catechists in this important work. Bishop Kieran joined us for the second part of the day to participate in this conversation.
The day began with an opening liturgy, after which there was a keynote presentation by Clare Ward of the Catholic Agency to Support Evangelisation - a new and exciting development from the Bishops of England and Wales (www.caseresources.org). Her talk, entitled "Young People and Evangelisation" reminded us of the challenges we face in communicating the Gospel to young people with so many contrary messages in the modern media. To appreciate this you might like to look at some of the magazines targeted at teenagers, as Clare demonstrated to us. Nevertheless it must be our primary aim to evangelise, for without evangelising - without enabling the young people to experience the Gospel message and its power - catechesis will have little effect. Despite the challenges, however, we were left inspired and hopeful.
We then had the opportunity to attend a selection of workshops. Dr Muriel Robinson gave a very useful workshop on using media with young people. One of the key messages from this is not to fear modern technology - if you are not sure how to work I get the young people to help.
Ray Mooney gave a workshop on organising on planning residentials. Here a key insight was 'start from the end' - that is to say when planning a residential the first question should be "what do we want the outcome to be". The third workshop (which I did not attend) was with Kren North of Southwark archdiocese on praying with young people.
Bishop Kieran joined us for the last part of the day, in which we broke up into groups to consider various questions raised by the ongoing conversation about confirmation. The feedback from these discussions formed part of our closing liturgy, and will also be used to help the pastoral team develop resources and policies for confirmation in the future.
All in all it was a very useful day. Some of the materials from the day are now available on the diocesan website.
