Commentary
This approach involves short catechetical courses (e.g., 4-8 weeks, one evening per week, 1½ – 2½ hour sessions) dealing with targeted themes. For instance, a parish may choose to offer a 6-week mini-course on Wednesday evenings focusing on morality, take a month break, and then offer a 4-week mini-course on sexuality and dating.
Periodic assessments and surveys help to discern which faith themes are most likely to capture the attention of youth while addressing their developmental, spiritual and catechetical needs. Attention to the Diocesan recommendations regarding faith themes appropriate for younger and older adolescents can assist catechetical leaders in this discernment.
The mini-course model is usually part of a larger overall program of comprehensive youth ministry. Typically, community-building activities, parish activities and functions, service projects and spiritual programs are planned for the periods between one mini-course and the next.
Like the small faith community model, mini-courses can offer young people an opportunity to gather in small groups on a regular basis to share fellowship, support one another and grow in faith. Unlike that model, however, participation depends upon who signs up, thus young people could well find themselves in a whole new group with a new adult facilitator every four to eight weeks.
Advantages of the Mini-Course Model
- It allows for a greater integration of youth ministry and catechesis, since other youth ministry activities can be scheduled in the weeks between courses.
- It can create greater investment and ownership on the part of both youth and their parents, since their needs and values are given serious attention through the whole process of surveying and discussion that precedes the construction of the curriculum.
- Mini-courses typically include a thought-out scope and sequence.
- Since courses are time-limited, participants are less likely to become disinterested and bored. It’s also easier to make commitment to a mini-course than to an ongoing one.
- Young people enjoy the exercise of free choice as they select the mini-courses of most interest to them.
- This model is ideally suited to the parish context where attendance is voluntary and access to young people is not a foregone conclusion.
- Adult facilitators/catechists typically vary from mini-course to mini-course; in this way they can teach courses for which they already have the necessary education, training, skill or interest.
- Shorter courses allow for more time to do planning for creative programming.
- Mini-courses reinforce the notion that catechesis and religious education are life-long processes. Since mini-courses mirror the most frequent model of adult faith formation programming, young people will be formed by the process itself along with the content.
- High quality resources and texts are available (e.g., St. Mary’s Press Horizons Program) that are based on and support this approach.
- Expert guest presenters can be enlisted from outside the parish to conduct particular mini-courses.
Some Concerns about the Mini-Course Model
- It requires skillful marketing on an ongoing basis. Registration can be an ongoing challenge, since participants are constantly signing up for new classes.
- The format limits the amount of time available to cover any topic in depth.
- It calls for a variety of trained adult facilitators who have expertise in a broad range of theme areas.
- Participants may end up with major gaps in their religious knowledge if the mini-courses fail to cover a broad range of faith themes, or if attendance is sporadic.
- Lacking informed supervision and planning, mini-courses may target “fad” topics, thereby leaving very significant gaps in participants’ faith formation.
- With significant turnover in catechists and participants, young people may not experience the benefits of long-term, in-depth association with peers and adult facilitators;
- Other parish-wide activities and programs which complement the mini-course model must be offered and promoted, lest youth come to expect that their only involvement in parish life consists of class attendance.