The creator of a catechetical plan that empowers parish families to live the Catholic faith by making faith formation a church community enterprise is making a return visit to the Sacramento Diocese this month.

Bill Huebsch, founder of the Whole Community Catechesis Project, will be the presenter at workshops in Redding and Sacramento.

Huebsch works as a coach to dioceses and parishes to develop pastoral plans that involve parishioners of all age groups in lifelong faith formation.

The workshops, sponsored by the Department of Evangelization and Catechesis, are planned in part in response to Synod Pastoral Initiative 1 on faith formation and evangelization, which calls for providing resources to parishes for programs such as family catechesis and whole community catechesis.

Kathy Conner, administrator of the Department of Evangelization and Catechesis, said the workshops “respond to people’s cry for a model to evangelize whole parishes.”

“Whole community catechesis does not replace age appropriate catechesis but rather supplements it,” she said. Huebsch has “some innovative ways to bring about whole community catechesis in midst of our busy lives.”

Titled “Lifelong Catechesis: A Dream or a Real Possibility?” the workshops echo the message contained in Huebsch’s most recent book, “Dreams and Visions: Pastoral Planning for Lifelong Faith Formation.”

“The dreams are doing the new evangelization the popes have been calling for in the church,” Huebsch said in a telephone interview with The Herald. “We want to retain the strong work we’re doing with children (in religious education) and build on that to move toward lifelong formation of adults in the church.”

A lay theologian and pastoral planner, Huebsch was involved for many years in religious education and parish administration in Minnesota.

Then in 1990, he established the Vatican II Project, contributing to the efforts to keep alive the spirit and energy of the Second Vatican Council, and went on to establish the Whole Community Catechesis Project in 2000.

When he spoke to The Herald in October 2005 during a workshop at the Diocesan Pastoral Center in Sacramento, Huebsch said that when Catholic churches provide strong religious education programs, the battle to enrich the faith lives of parish communities is only partially won.

“If we’re not figuring strategies to re-involve people in the Sunday liturgy, we can’t possibly succeed as Catholics,” he said. “Liturgy is the main show.”

The workshops will include a conversation facilitated by Huebsch on promising whole community catechesis practices adopted by parishes in the diocese, a discussion of the “nuts and bolts” of effective pastoral planning, and the secret to sustaining long-term change in faith formation.

Workshops will be held from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sept 27 at Our Lady of Mercy Parish, located at 2600 Shasta View Dr. in Redding, and 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 28 at the Diocesan Pastoral Center, located at 2110 Broadway in Sacramento.

The cost to attend is $20 per person and includes lunch. For more information, call Kathy Conner at (916) 733-0123.

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