Congress Conversation: Thriving in the New of Religious Life
1:30-3:00pm | Congress Plenary Hall
The Religious Formation Conference invites members, partners, and friends to join us for a new session, Congress Conversation, on Saturday, November 11th at the 2023 RFC Congress in Chicago.
Transformation of religious life is a reality – and it has been for centuries!
However, we are experiencing this more acutely in our current time. Through experimentation, changing structures, and diving into what is essential for living this vocation, we find the need to dialogue about and discern the Spirit’s invitation at this moment. New ways of relating and thinking about religious life are emerging. A focus on intercongregational, intercultural, and intergenerational aspects of our shared life continue to be fostered by a commitment to gospel values and Christ’s good news of justice, love, and peace.
As we explore the ways in which current practices and mindsets need to shift for new ways to take root, a question arises: what is essential and what needs transformation?
This session will attend to these shifts and changes, as well as the hope-filled curiosities and creativities. Board Co-Chairs, Nancy Gerth, SCN and Wayne Fitzpatrick, MM will welcome participants and provide an overview of our conversation. Executive Co-Director, Linda Buck, CSJ will situate the discussion with a reflection on where religious life finds itself today. Ryan Hoffmann, Executive Co-Director, will provide an exploration of the Leadership Collaborative-Religious Formation Conference pilot initiative as one way the Spirit continues to invite us to imagining new movements in our church and world.
After this brief input, participants will be invited to enter small group conversations on the new they’re seeing in religious life today and what it means for the larger system of consecrated life going forward. Insights and ideas will be harvested in the large group, giving participants the opportunity to identify and capture emerging wisdom as it shapes formation ministry and religious life.