Meeting Regularly
Members of the coordinating team gather on a regular schedule to prepare community meetings, assess what is being lived and experienced, discern the needs of individuals and groups, and spark creativity.
Everyone needs to know in advance how long the meeting will last. When meetings are irregular, when they drag on indefinitely, or when they are cut short without reason, people lose heart. Everyone must know the start time, and work must begin at that hour.
Three Moments
Every meeting should include three distinct moments, arranged in the order that seems most fitting.
Every Christian project must have a time of silence and prayer:
not formulas recited by obligation or habit, but listening to the Holy Spirit. We come before God as the poor do; otherwise, we will soon end up creating our own projects instead of God's projects.
There must also be a time of work, divided into two parts: a moment of dreaming and a moment of planning. In the first, everyone speaks freely about what could be done. Dream a little. Let God's folly enter us. Say whatever comes to mind. Then comes the moment of organization. You choose a project and ask concrete questions: when, where, who, how? Then you find precise answers.
A meeting also needs a time of relaxation. It is very important to share a meal together, sing, tell stories. Faces relax. They transform.
Every six months or so, it is good for a Fede e Luce team to spend a weekend together—to relax, pray as one, and know each other better.
If every meeting includes these moments—silence, prayer, work, and relaxation—if you gather regularly and on time, and if you spend a few weekends together, you can be certain that good projects will emerge, and at the right time.
Usually each community has an animation or coordinating team made up of several members (no more than ten for practical reasons), typically chosen or confirmed each year.
Usually each community has an animation or coordinating team made up of several members (no more than ten for practical reasons), typically chosen or confirmed each year.The Coordinator's Role
A meeting's coordinator should listen and encourage rather than direct and give orders. Certainly, at times the coordinator will need to insist on discipline to allow work to proceed. People must be on time. Everyone should not speak at once. Speaking time should be limited.
It falls to the coordinator to set a certain tone, establish rhythm, and suggest working methods. But above all, the coordinator must listen to the Holy Spirit as expressed through different groups and different people. The coordinator must also be alert to listen to the poorest among them. In every group, there is always someone who speaks little but perhaps has much to say—not necessarily in quantity, but in quality. The coordinator should invite people to speak, should perceive each person's needs, especially those of the poorest and quietest. Decisions should be made by consensus, by a shared sense of conscience. The coordinator is the one who sparks ideas, makes them concrete, and recognizes when an agreement has formed among the people.
Projects
For Fede e Luce, it is important that projects emerge without too much delay, because desires and needs are many, and because projects give strength to the group and give each person a chance to take on responsibility.
There are two errors to avoid when it comes to projects.
The first is postponing a project indefinitely out of fear and then doing nothing at all. We hesitate because we want a perfect result. In this case, team members lack confidence in themselves and, deep down, do not trust the Holy Spirit enough. They refuse to take risks. They do not move.
The other error is rushing ahead too quickly, without seeking what God expects of us, without listening to the Holy Spirit. Often people want to act simply to ease the anxiety of waiting.
Evaluation
It is important that a team know how to evaluate what has been done after a celebration, a weekend, or a Mass. The animation team gathers to ask: Did it go well? Was the welcome warm? What did the participants gain?
You can also ask everyone for their thoughts through a questionnaire.
This constant evaluation allows the group to keep growing and renewing itself.
Otherwise you risk becoming too easily satisfied or wearing yourselves out with too many mediocre efforts. You must always do better, respond better to the desires and needs of your community, so as to avoid taking directions that would harm it.
Trust
One final thought: sometimes a team consists of people who feel incapable of carrying a project through. There might be four or five willing people, but with little drive and no creativity. They do not know how or what to do. In this case, they must continue to meet regularly, at least to pray to the Lord, asking him to send his light and send other people into the community who can help discover and carry out a project. If you remain faithful to prayer, to weekly or monthly meetings, if you truly love one another, if you honor the three moments I spoke of earlier, a project will certainly emerge. For where two or three gather in Jesus's name, Jesus is present. But you must wait with trust, because when you ask Jesus to help you work for his kingdom, he never abandons you. A project will be born—according to his desires and not your own.
- Editorial Staff, 1990