Faith Sharing for All Women Of St. James Church

For more information about St. James Faith Sharing for Women, please call
Mary Duhaime at 908-766-8950 or e-mail maryduhaime@verizon.net

OUR OBJECTIVES

• Personal spiritual growth through the gift of the sacraments of the Mass and reconciliation, as well as daily reading of the Scriptures, devotions, retreats, spiritual direction, and participation in the sacramental life in the church, and Renew Programs
• Deepen personal relationship with God through the recognition of His influence in our daily lives
• Develop a deeper awareness of God's presence in our own spiritual lives, and in the lives of other sharing group members
• Mutually celebrate God's gifts and graces together
• Listen and learn from others' faith journeys
• An openness to new ways of experiencing the Holy Spirit in our lives through sharing and teachings
• Keep a journal of our spiritual journey, taking care to make appropriate adjustments along the way for personal spiritual growth
• Affirm and support members in their growth as strong Catholic holy women of God  
• Pray for the sick and other intentions on electronic prayer chain made up of 200 women

Structure of Meetings

• Opening Music and Prayer
• Group Sharing
• Response and Summation
• Concluding Prayer
• Socialization

Faith Sharing

Faith Sharing is a way of expressing to one another how we are encountering God in the Scripture and in daily life. The ideal is to listen reverently without commenting on one another's sharing. This way of listening guards against the temptation of trying to "fix" one another or give advice.

Sharing allows us to open up and share insights as they relate to our faith journey. A loving attentiveness is the finest gift that you have to offer the one who is sharing. As we listen to one another we are giving God freedom to meet us where we are. We are aware that we are together to share our selves and our faith experiences in order to manage our daily lives according to His will.

We share our faith with other women who may be in similar life situations -- women who are new to our parish, women with young children, or with teenagers, or empty-nesters, single women, divorced, widowed or grandmas! What we all have in common is a thirst for more of the Lord in our lives and a need to do His will, no matter what He asks of us. Therefore, an important benefit to realize is that Faith Sharing is a positive way of making us accountable to the Lord and to each other as we look forward to the next sharing time together.

Keeping a Faith Journal

If God gives us the grace to approach him in prayer, He will also give us the grace to write down what we learn through that prayer. It helps us to clarify our thoughts and to bring order to a myriad of ideas that come into our minds each day. Keeping a journal can also help us stay more focused on our spiritual growth. If we think more about the things above (Colossians 3:2), we become more observant of God's presence in and around us. Journaling allows us to go back and review what we have learned. We can begin to identify areas of growth, recognize our weariness, and respond to God's call to holiness. The notes can simply be used as an objective point of reference. Writings are also useful when preparing for the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or for witnessing about what God has done in our lives, where conversion and renewal need to happen.

Select the Leader for your Sharing Group

The first step for a new group and existing groups is to select a leader for the group. This can happen after your group is established for a few weeks and everyone knows each other. The leader of your group will facilitate the goal and objectives for faith sharing to strive for spiritual progress. From lessons learned, sharing groups that do not adhere to the objectives of the group will not be productive.

In order to keep track of the number of parishioners participating in faith sharing groups, the leader should provide the names and telephone numbers of the new women to the St. James Coordinator of Faith Sharing. To promote uniformity and ensure adherence to the guidelines, each new person or new group must attend a faith-sharing Orientation Session.

Be Open to Accepting New Members

We are called to be Fishers, encouraging other women to participate in a faith sharing group, and hopefully help them to grow in the Lord. We learn to be less private with our love for the Lord. A goal of faith sharing is to work at being more open in our prayer, our minds, our hearts and the hands we extend in love.

Sharing our faith and being open to show our faithfulness to others, as well as sharing the special gifts bestowed on us as Catholics is important to our growth as spiritual individuals. New members are always welcome into an existing group at any time unless the group is too large. We should always allow women to fill openings. Even the Disciples accepted new members when they allowed Matthias to replace Judas, (Acts I). While never easy, change can be good, and new members bring a fresh perspective to the experience.

Allow Him to be present, at the center of your sharing time. Leave an empty chair at your sharing table so that Jesus can join you, and always have an empty chair for the new woman who needs Him and needs us.

We all know women who could use more time with the Lord and with other Christian women. A new sharing group formed by the members of your sharing group is clearly an action of a group 'bearing fruit.'

Listening Without Interrupting

The Lord speaks through others. Clear your mind, do not be thinking of a response. Remember that this is not a conversation --there's time for that before or after sharing. What is being said is important -- listen for a message that may be just for you and learn from it.

Bridges to Effective Listening

• Direct eye contact
• Being truly present to the speaker and giving undivided attention
• Acknowledging the speaker's feelings, don't minimize, sermonize or negate
• Put aside your own needs for a few minutes and just try to identify with what is being said
• Keep focused on the person that is sharing
• Focus on listening

Confidentiality is critical to your group, because it builds a way to create and maintain trust with each other. Nothing is to be repeated outside of your faith sharing sessions. Very personal topics can be shared with an individual member of the group one-on-one and in a different setting.

Trusting each other must be allowed to progress to the point where you can be comfortable sharing your faith with the group and with each individual group member. If full trust is not present, honest, truthful sharing will not be there either.

Commitment of the heart means that you devote this small amount of time to the Lord, to yourself, and to the women in your group. We should do our best to be at every meeting on time. This time to share is just for you. It must be a priority in your busy schedules in order for it to work the way it should. One of the many benefits of making sharing time a priority is that you feel you have taken a little time for yourself to be spiritually lifted up. A key benefit, and an added bonus, to attending each and every sharing session is our changed attitude when we return home to our families. We are refreshed, peaceful, more patient, and grateful, helping us in our day-to-day vocations as single women, wives and mothers.

Meeting times may vary, but Groups should make a commitment to meet every other week. A longer span of time in between sharing sessions usually does not work because if a group meets once a month and some people can't attend, it is two or three months before you have a full sharing session.

We are grateful for our journey, for where we are right now in our walk with the Lord, praying to build on that gratitude for yesterday, today, and our tomorrows. We should plan what we will do for the Lord in our communities in Thanksgiving for the gift of those tomorrows, spending our days doing His will. Taking our joys and burdens to the Lord in prayer is always a precious privilege and a gift. Opening prayer in Faith Sharing should always begin with Thanksgiving.

Step by Step Information for New Groups

• Usually the structure of a session indicates that each person share, however, sharing resources by spending the hour teaching, viewing a video, a field trip, Renew time, or inviting an outside speaker, are all excellent ways to spiritual growth.
• Always bring your journal to sharing sessions to help you in sharing your faith and how the Lord is leading you.
• The hostess of a meeting begins the sharing, opens with music, a prayer of Thanksgiving, monitors the process and closes the meeting with prayer.
• Meetings usually take place in the home of the hostess.
• After meeting for a few sessions, select a leader for your faith sharing group.
• We find that groups with no more than eight women work best. Sharing should take place even if there are only two people present.
• One person volunteers to establish a typed schedule for the entire year. The schedule includes the agreed-upon day, date and time, along with the name of the hostess for each meeting.
• Each person takes a turn hosting in her home, if desired or possible. If it's necessary, on occasion, call Susan Lynch at the rectory to see if a meeting room is available in the Church Parish Center. Of course, if you use one of those rooms, make sure to leave it neat and clean.
• If a person cannot have sharing in her home, she can still have her turn by asking another member to volunteer her home.
• Actual sharing time is one hour, and would begin immediately so that everyone would have to be on time to begin the meeting.
• Each member shares for 5 minutes "How God has worked in my life this week"?
• Each person shares without interruption -- if they choose to share.
• Silence is an important part of sharing -- be comfortable with silence and listen for a word.
• Hostess summarizes the meeting and members can add to her comments.
• Hostess closes the sharing session with a closing prayer.
• Social time begins.

Please Do Your Best Not To:

• Judge others as they share
• Give advice
• Give instruction on changing the behavior of a group member or someone in her family
• Remember we are not counselors.

January 2007