There aren’t any tests or papers to turn in but make no mistake: Courses through Franciscan at Home’s Catechetical Institute are rigorous and designed to be both informative and transformational.
Dr. Mark Ginter, strategic partnership liaison fellow for the Franciscan, said the primary focus of the institute is to help form disciple-makers. That’s done through something he calls “true video workshops” in four languages.
“We say they’re true because they actually involve work, but the work that they involve is tasking, not testing,” Ginter said. Video workshops are broken into short bursts of 10-minute segments followed by a task.
“In psychology, we call it chunking,” Ginter said. “The way you retain information is by integrating it, by doing something immediately that is multidimensional.”
And while courses are directed toward intellectual development, they’re primarily aimed at the student’s spiritual formation. Tasks might include activities such as eucharistic adoration, mediating on the Beatitudes, or helping out in a soup kitchen,” Ginter said. “Basically, something that concretizes the content of what was just presented in that micro lecture or that segment.
“It’s an active formation and not just passive formation of watching videos.”
Catholic schoolteachers, those in ministry and parents are among those who take online courses through Franciscan at Home. Any Catholic in the Diocese of Phoenix can create a free account and enroll in courses.
There’s a plethora of tracks offered, including catechist, catechumenal ministry (OCIA), youth ministry, Catholic schools, pastoral accompaniment, and evangelization, parenting and culture of life, among others.
Formation through relationship
In the Diocese of Phoenix, Catholic schoolteachers are required to participate in 24 hours of continuing education every three years to stay certified. Many of them take courses through Franciscan at Home after completing a foundational course through Kino Catechetical Institute.
Corina Medhus is one of them. She teaches music and religion at St. John XXIII Catholic School in Scottsdale, Ariz., and she’s taken more than a dozen courses through Franciscan at Home.
“The thing I like about it is that I can do the classes on my own time,” Medhus said. “If I want to do part of a class or a whole class, I can do that and I can go back and get information.”
Medhus said she especially enjoyed the course on St. John Bosco. “I’m an educator and he was an educator. There were some really good suggestions for teachers.”
Ginter, who has a Ph.D. in theology and psychology, emphasized that it is through relationships that disciples are made, that the coursework is not simply the transfer of information.
“What is most sustainable for any kind of learning or formation is actually friendship,” Ginter said. “We have all these wonderful online resources, but it doesn’t stick unless it’s in the context of relationship. For us, the most important thing is to actually develop that relationship between mentor, mentee, between the disciple-maker and the disciple.”
That kind of formation that takes place in the context of relationship is akin to what Jesus Christ did through the Holy Spirit with the first disciples, Ginter noted.
Laura Gallant, coordinator of religious education at St. Joan of Arc Parish in Phoenix, is a graduate of Franciscan University. Before moving to Arizona to work at St. Joan of Arc, she was involved with the production of the videos available through Franciscan at Home as the workshop development manager. She spoke to the emphasis on formation in the context of relationships.
“You’re expected to not just watch these videos in isolation and then move forward, but actually to have somebody that you’re talking through different things with,” Gallant said. “The hope is that you’ll have a mentor, whether that’s online or in person.”
That person is known as a “formation companion” who talks through the tasks with the learner. An example of this can be seen in the workshop called “The Vocation of the Catechist.” One of the tasks following a video module asks learners to “speak to your formation companion about what you find striking about this recognition that it is Christ’s voice we echo and that it is the Holy Trinity who works through us.”
Ginter focused on the disciple-maker goal of formation through Franciscan at Home.
“Any adult who has been baptized and confirmed is a missionary disciple. So that means all of us are disciple-makers,” Ginter said. The courses Franciscan at Home are aimed at any Catholic who wants to deepen his relationship with Christ and then carry out the Great Commission of making disciples.
Information: https://franciscanathome.com
