Dominican Sister Donna Ciangio expects small Christian communities to be the wave of the future in parishes and an important component in adult faith formation.

“If you have more people who are talking about their faith and able to link that faith with their daily lives, it makes for stronger Christian communities,” she said in an interview with The Herald. “It’s not just something we do on Sundays.”

Sister Ciangio, director of pastoral services at the National Pastoral Life Center in New York City, was in the diocese April 30-May 1 to give two workshops on forming and supporting small Christian communities. Ninety people from 23 parishes attended workshops offered in Davis and Palo Cedro.

Small Christian communities are meeting all over the world, said Sister Ciangio, and about 50 percent of parishes in the United States have small faith sharing groups. She has worked for nearly 20 years with the NPLC and with RENEW, to lecture and train clergy, laity and small community core teams to understand the movement as an integral part of parish life.

“This isn’t just another activity, but actually a way to do parishes,” she said. “The same format can work for ministries, for activities and meetings; it can bring people together in a very meaningful way.”

Sister Ciangio said the term “small Christian communities” could describe groups that already exist in a parish, such as ministry groups, seasonal groups that meet during Lent or Advent, family groups, or small faith sharing groups that meet weekly. Small faith sharing groups are usually comprised of eight to 12 people.

A small Christian community, she said, incorporates six elements: prayer, support, reflection, learning, participation and mission. These six elements can be worked into almost every aspect of parish life.

“Prayer gathers the group in the name of the Lord present among them,” she said, noting that both personal and group prayer are required.

She focused especially on the final phase — mission — noting, “We are called to be disciples of Jesus. We need to carry his message into our daily lives. We need to be heard. We need to be good citizens.”

She said that small Christian communities that have been meeting for more than five years, “must lift out of that feeling level to learning, participation and mission.”

Sister Ciangio stressed that small Christian communities are not just another parish activity, but are foundational and a building block for other programs. “They are places of learning where seeds are planted and brought to fruition in a way people live their faith and act on it in the public arena.”

She said small faith sharing groups are a key opportunity for adult faith formation in parishes that pastors, parish staffs and pastoral councils should utilize.

She suggested that parishes bring together laity serving in particular ministries — such as eucharistic ministers and lectors — several times each year to reflect on their ministry experiences and “get them talking about the special needs out there in the community and what their ministry means to them.”

She encourages invitations to those who have come through the catechumenate to form or join existing small Christian communities. “This gives continued support to the newly-received person and builds up the small communities,” she said.

In addition, she suggests that the parish pastoral council continue to develop the understanding of small communities as foundational to adult formation, through the parish mission statement, as part of their meeting style, and in the way they develop a parish participative structure.

Mercy Sister Susan McCarthy, director of synod implementation for the diocese and the office of evangelization, said Sister Ciangio was invited to give workshops in the diocese as a follow-up to the three-year Disciples in Mission program, in which many parishes participated, and in response to the Synod Pastoral Initiative focusing on evangelization.

She said the recent synod encourages the promotion of small Christian communities as “a means of supporting the faithful as they face the challenges of their Christian journey” and as a way “to build a sense of community and a spirit of inclusiveness.”

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