Professional Development Webinar Recordings

Teens are watching, listening, and judging the way you respond to crisis, whether it's quarantine during Coronavirus, death, an error in judgment, or any time that life seems to stop. Our decisions at these moments can either build their trust in Christ and the Church or break it down. Join the student ministers from Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Maryland, in exploring how they're learning to leverage pivotal life moments. God is still good even when life isn't.

Join Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, the online Abbess of www.AbbeyoftheArts.com, as we explore the gifts and possibilities photography can offer parish communities. The lens of the camera will be our guide in learning how to engage folks in contemplative practices of prayer and new ways of seeing the world around them. Christine's special love is bringing together the gifts of monastic tradition with the power of the expressive arts, and offering tools and practices to cultivate one's inner monk and artist.

In this webinar, diocesan communications director Emily Mentock walks parish staff through a practical framework for digital mission—how to identify your audience, choose the right channels, and create content that evangelizes. Perfect for parish administrators, ministry coordinators, and anyone who has ever wondered if your parish's online presence is doing what it should.

Today's Church is seeking to serve an increasingly "wired" population. Join Lisa M. Hendey of CatholicMom.com and author of The Handbook for Catholic Moms for an overview of social media technologies, including social networking sites Facebook and Twitter, as well as tools for communicating through blogs, podcasts, and streaming video. Participants will learn about the basics of these tools, their prevalence in society, the Church's recommendations for employing social media, and best practices being used around the country by parishes, dioceses, and organizations to communicate, support, and evangelize.

Patty Breen, a lay minister who has worked in parish ministry for ten years and began ministering to divorced Catholics for the last three to four years, will address how the Church can better support and encourage divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, bust common myths about annulments, and explain the difference between civil divorce and annulment. She will also offer practical resources to use in your parish and share some helpful and not-so-helpful things to say to someone going through a divorce.