Communion with the Sacred Heart of Jesus: A Pathway to Deeper Devotion to the Eucharist
Teachers and catechists, take your students on a journey to deepen their faith by drawing closer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This ancient devotion, intimately connected to the Eucharist, allows us to experience the boundless love Jesus pours out through His Body and Blood.In this webinar, Fr. Joe Laramie will guide you through practical steps to ignite this devotion in your students' hearts. You’ll receive a special monthly lesson plan designed to honor the Sacred Heart and align with the Holy Father's monthly intentions—ideal for 'First Fridays' or any day of the school year. Strengthen your students' love for the Eucharist as you bring this beautiful tradition to life in your classrooms and homes.
One Parish, One Book: An Old-Fashioned Tool for Unity and Catechesis
How do we unite parishioners around the Church's vision of lifelong faith formation when competing schedules, diverse needs, and differing interests get in the way?"One Parish, One Book" initiatives are a way to create a springboard during a particular liturgical season to attract new participants into adult faith formation, unite parishioners who may never see each other at Mass or other parish events, and create catechetical momentum to fuel continued parish faith formation efforts.In this webinar, Colleen Reiss Vermeulen, co-founder of CatholicBiblicalSchool.org and parish leader with decades of experience, will guide ministry leaders through practical tips for brainstorming and implementing "One Parish, One Book" initiatives. Learn how to select books, plan the initiative, communicate with parishioners, leverage ministry partners, and plan a wide range of supporting and follow-up touchpoints for ongoing catechesis in the life of the Church.
5 Ways to Ignite Imagination for Impactful Evangelization
They say you can lead deer to water but can't make them drink. Similarly, you can guide people to Jesus, but they won't embrace Him unless they can imagine that doing so will transform their lives. The key to effective evangelization lies in sparking the imagination.
In this webinar, author and evangelist Tanner Kalina shares five powerful practices rooted in the early Church that will help you inspire those you minister to. These time-tested approaches will sharpen your evangelization efforts and invite you into deeper intimacy with God—because you can only share what you’ve first experienced.
Revitalizing Parish Life: Bringing the Liturgical Year to Life in Your Community
Discover how to transform your parish into a vibrant center of Catholic culture by celebrating the Church’s liturgical year in dynamic, meaningful ways. In this webinar, Steffani Aquila, founder of Liturgy Culture & Kitchen by His Girl Sunday, will guide ministry leaders through practical steps to enrich parish life. Learn how to foster a deeper sense of belonging, strengthen the connection between parish life and the domestic church, and create a joyful, festive atmosphere that keeps parishioners engaged all year round. With actionable strategies and resources, this session equips you to breathe new life into your community’s liturgical experience.
How Mission-Driven Friendships Can Transform Lives
When we think of evangelization, images of street preachers and door-to-door conversations often come to mind—making many Catholics uncomfortable. But what if evangelization began simply by deepening our friendships?
In this engaging webinar for ministry leaders by Ave Maria Press, Jason J. Simon, president of Evangelical Catholic, will show how true evangelization flows from authentic relationships. By nurturing deeper, meaningful connections, we move beyond surface-level conversations, sharing our real joys, struggles, and experiences. This is where faith-sharing naturally finds its place—without feeling forced or awkward.
Join us as Simon reveals the key habits and mindsets for building mission-ready friendships, making evangelization not just more fruitful, but a natural extension of the relationships we value and the people to whom we minister.
What are Best Practices for the OCIA?
In this second webinar on the OCIA, we will build upon the successful practices that parishes have engaged in for decades. Fr. Daniel J. Mahan, director of the Institute on the Catechism for the USCCB, will discuss practical ways in which Truth, Beauty, and Goodness—the transcendentals—are key to a meaningful and transformative OCIA process.
What’s New about the OCIA?
There are many new things about the OCIA that will be covered in detail by the local (arch)diocesan Office of Divine Worship in the coming months.In this webinar, Fr. Daniel Mahan, director of the Institute on the Catechism for the USCCB, will address the deeper changes afoot that have the potential to renew the efforts of the Church to form in faith those who are entering the Church through the Sacraments of Initiation and those who are being received into the full communion of the Catholic Church. Fr. Mahan will address these four key OCIA themes: accompaniment, kerygma, catechumenal, and missionary. These four themes can and should shape our vision of OCIA.
The Spirit of Mentoring Ministry Helpers
Jesus could have done the sacred work of the Father without seeking others to join his efforts but he chose to have helpers. Whether you offer Seasons of Hope Catholic grief support or lead other ministries, join M. Donna MacLeod, a seasoned team developer, bereavement ministry specialist, and author, to explore how to guide, support, and inspire helpers to bring the Lord’s compassion and joy to all they do in ministry. Using examples from Seasons of Hope that put Jesus’ soulful model of leadership into action, we’ll offer insights on what it takes to be the best mentor you can be and consider ways to turn the challenges of mentoring into opportunities for spiritual growth.
Fostering Healthy Teen Sexuality in Your Church Community: A Guide for Ministers
Sexuality is a topic children and teens are exposed to much sooner than ever before through media, peers, and devices. Families and faith communities often struggle to engage with topics related to sexuality gradually and robustly. In this webinar, Julia Sadusky—a licensed clinical psychologist—will offer education and practical strategies for ministry leaders about how to shape a healthy environment for conversations around sexuality in your church context.
How to Respond When Someone Experiences a Miscarriage, Stillbirth, or Infant Loss
One in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss. Yet, many of us wonder how to react, what we should say, or what we should avoid saying when someone tells us they have experienced a perinatal loss. Further, when families come to us with questions, such as: "Where is my baby's soul?" or "Will I be with my baby again?", we may feel the pressure to make their grief disappear through our answers—though this is impossible to do. So, what are we to do? In this webinar, sociologist and bereavement doula Dr. Abby Jorgensen will provide insights from both research and practice on how we can respond when we are informed of a loss, especially in a ministerial capacity.
Making Faith Matter to the Next Generation
With research telling us that more than one million young people in America leave Christianity every year, it can feel like the Church has reached a tipping point. But Gen Z is also the most diverse, connected, and socially active in history and they are very open to the message of Jesus. Join Shannon Wimp Schmidt, Ave author and content director for TENx10 Youth Ministry Collaboration, to discuss how leaders across denominations are joining in a movement to accompany young people through relational discipleship radically focused on Jesus and research-based strategies that help us find new methods for sharing the gospel with a new generation.
Teach Like a Saint
Teaching comes with more than its fair share of challenges, but we need not despair! Many saints who worked as teachers and catechists have walked this road before us. In this webinar, seasoned teacher Amy J. Cattapan will demonstrate how we can learn from the examples of the Saints when it comes to handling disruptive, disinterested, and otherwise challenging students. Join us as we take a look at what educators like St. John Bosco, St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, and Servant of God Thea Bowman did to manage expectations in their schools and classrooms.
Recognize and Help Older Catholics Live with Faith, Hope, and Intentionality
Baby Boomer Catholics often came to the faith via a circuitous route as they served as the original test case generation for catechesis and liturgical reform around Vatican II. How are the memories of Catholics in the 55-plus generation a window into Catholic culture from the 1960s to the present? What meaning do these memories have for Catholics and catechumens of all ages today looking to be more immersed in the Church? How can older Catholics refine what they learned earlier in life to prepare themselves for experiences that are ahead, including the inevitable experience of their particular judgment?In this webinar, Baby Boomer Michael Amodei, a longtime catechist, book editor, and author of Reaching for Heaven: 14 Spiritual Goals as You Grow Older shares practical ways to tap into the memories and experiences of older Catholics in a simple program that would work well in a parish workshop, retreat, OCIA class, or in adult education.
Teaching Young People How to Pray
Young people today are constantly bombarded with more noise, more screens, and more anxiety. Would you believe that the result of this is that they desire more silence, prayer, and intimacy?Fr. Tim Anastos— a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago and the assistant chaplain at the St. John Paul II Newman Center at the University of Illinois–Chicago—has personally experienced this among the young people to whom he ministers. In this webinar, Fr. Tim will share practical insights on guiding young people to develop a personal prayer life and deepen their faith. He will address common roadblocks and lies in the spiritual development of young people while concentrating on the fruits of Lectio Divina, spiritual journaling, and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament as a font of life for high schoolers, college students, and young adults.
Time for a Change? Breaking Free from Ministry Monotony
It's easy to fall into the "trap" of doing things the same way year after year, but what would parish life look like if we shook things up a bit? How do we retain what's working but shift gears in other areas to reach even more souls more deeply? In this webinar, Mark Hart—Chief Innovation Officer of Life Teen—will introduce parish ministers to some practical processes and methods for them to become even more evangelistic and effective in their ministry efforts.
Spiritual Self Care to Serve Well
If we are to do God’s work of compassion with a joyful attitude, we need a healthy soul. Let’s face it, being with the sad and suffering can take its toll. Too often those of us who tend to the downhearted don’t take time to lift our own spirits. But there are ways to stay spiritually healthy. Join M. Donna MacLeod, bereavement ministry specialist, bereft mom, and author of Seasons of Hope Leader’s Guide: Bringing Comfort through Catholic Grief Support and Journals, for insights on sacred practices, traditions of faith, and spiritual habits that soothe the soul, plus everyday opportunities that reveal God’s benevolent presence.
Finding the Hidden Joy of Tending to Grieving Hearts
If we are to be bearers of hope, our sacred work of ongoing Catholic grief support calls for the spiritual gift of joy. For every work of love we do must come from a full heart that brings the brokenhearted closer to God. Join M. Donna Macleod, bereavement ministry specialist, bereft mom, and author of Seasons of Hope Leader’s Guide: Bringing Comfort through Catholic Grief Support and Journals, for a lively talk on the joy and happiness factor of sorrow, Jesus’ model of joy-filled serving, and the fruit of joyfully offering Seasons of Hope in our Church.
