Engaging the whole family in Catholic faith formation
This article contains insights from the recent webinar Parents and Families at the Center of Faith Formation. The webinar offered strategies for Directors of Religious Education (DREs) and parishes to confidently and effectively involve parents in faith formation. Hosted by John Roberto, Director of The National Community of Catechetical Leaders (NCCL), and Steven Ellair, Director of Content at Saint Mary’s Press, attendees heard the latest research from NCCL’s project about parents and faith formation with insights into what practical steps parishes might take to implement a holistic faith formation framework.
For many DREs, this scenario sounds familiar: parents bring children for Catholic faith formation, yet often disappear until pick-up.
Busy schedules and competing priorities lead to families struggling to integrate faith into their daily lives. This results in the vital partnership between home and church falling out of reach.
The encouraging truth is many parents want to be more involved, but they don’t always know how to do it. This isn’t just about getting kids to class; it’s about DREs understanding what parenthood looks like today.
So, how can DREs rise to the challenge and truly engage the whole family?:
- What does the current landscape of Catholic family formation look like?
- How can DREs effectively engage parents and the entire family?
- What are those strategies and what does a holistic vision of this engagement look like?
From parish-centric to family-centric Catholic faith formation
Historically, Catholic faith formation took place within the parish. However, a new imperative is emerging: a balanced approach that emphasizes faith formation both at the parish and at home.
A key challenge for DREs is addressing this shift in a way that truly helps Catholic faith take root in children and families. Understanding this is central to meeting families and parents where they are.
It’s not just about the knowledge of the faith—which was often the case in a parish-centered model where the primary focus was on classroom instruction—it’s about creating an environment that’s family-centered and integrated with the parish.
Seeing parents as the first teachers of the faith
Parents are the most significant influence on their children’s religious and spiritual development. It’s important that parents are authentic examples of what they claim to believe. This authenticity includes faithful living as well as openly sharing their struggles and failings with their children.
To raise young people who deeply understand and embrace the Catholic faith, parents need to live their own personal faith — not just as a duty, but genuinely.
The parish community can support this process by remembering that parents are not teachers or catechists in the formal sense. This means their role is more about modeling faith than delivering structured lessons. Instead, parents are examples for their children, not facilitators of a formal curriculum.
Hear more on why parents are truly the first and most influential teachers of faith:
Practical strategies for DREs to engage parents in faith formation
In some parish ministry circles, it’s common to think of parents as “the problem.” Far from it! Parents deeply care about their children’s faith, and this is where engaging parents in faith formation becomes critical.
Layering requirement after requirement on parents is counterproductive. It leads to them doing the bare minimum to simply “check off” a to-do list. Expectations are fine but avoid creating an ever-growing list.
By meeting parents where they are, it opens the possibility for them to do the maximum because they feel engaged and heard, and that parish ministry genuinely benefits them. To achieve this, consider the following actionable ideas:
- Adjust sacramental preparation (First Eucharist, Confirmation) to be more family-centered. Actively involve parents in their child’s journey and simultaneously foster the spiritual growth of both parent and child. DREs can ask themselves, does their parish offer Home Guides as part of Sacramental preparation? Such guides are easy ways to engage the family at home.
- Ensure gatherings are designed for parents’ direct benefit, providing high-quality experiences that truly resonate with their needs.
- Prioritize discussion and practical takeaways for parents. Create opportunities for parents to talk to each other, share experiences, and learn new skills or practices they can directly apply at home to nurture faith within their family. When parents leave a gathering, they should leave with tangible ways to foster faith in their daily lives.
- Communicate informational requirements through alternative methods. Instead of using valuable in-person gathering time for administrative details, convey information via short videos, handouts, or other accessible formats, freeing up time for more impactful engagement.
Identifying parent needs & interests for Catholic family faith formation programs
NCCL research reveals that parents are interested in a wide range of topics that directly impact family life and faith formation. These topics include areas that resonate with the challenges they face every day:
- Navigating difficult conversations with their children and mastering the art of truly listening to what matters most to them.
- Managing screen time and social media.
- Fostering their children’s strengths.
- Balancing their own busy schedules.
Parents also show a strong desire to enrich their family’s spiritual lives. A substantial number are interested in:
- Building stronger, more loving family relationships.
- Creating an environment where their children feel safe to voice doubts and ask tough questions about faith.
- Guidance on providing moral instruction.
- Deepening their own relationship with Jesus Christ and growing in their understanding and practice of the Catholic faith.
- Learning how to pray together as a family.
These areas are ripe for engagement and support. Parents are eager for guidance; the key is knowing how to engage them with relevant discussion points. Different parents have different needs—some desiring support on general topics, others on spiritual ones. Understanding these varying engagement areas make parents feel heard, listened to, and supported.
Practical planning for family-focused faith formation
Long-term planning should consider the life stages of children from early childhood through high school, with continuity at its core—whether through consistent themes, engagement methods, or a consistent level of parent involvement. This approach prepares parents for each new stage, giving them room to learn and grow while forming the faith of both themselves and their children. It’s about ensuring parents are informed, prepared, and ready to willingly participate as their children grow.
Building community and support for parents
- Connecting parents at Baptism with mentors from the parish community to accompany them on their journey from Baptism to the start of school.
- Offering in-person or online support groups for parents (e.g., mom groups, dad groups) allowing them to build community with each other.
- Hosting a half-morning parent retreat, twice a year, just for parents to grow in their faith and spiritual life.
- Organizing a parish dinner for families who had a child baptized in the past to meet other parents with young children.
Tailoring engagement to life stages
This framework provides strategies to weave family life into parish activities across various age groups.
For early childhood and grade school
- Children’s Liturgy of the Word at Sunday Mass, where children learn about the same Scriptures as the rest of the community through prayers, songs, and readings.
- A “Welcome to Sunday Mass” experience for families with young children, including a video for parent preparation, an illustrated guide to the Mass for children to use, and age-appropriate activities on the lectionary readings.
- Seasonal creative arts festivals, like an Advent wreath-making activity at the parish, engaging families with young children and grade school children.
- Opportunities for family-involved Sunday worship and devotions.
Middle school and high school
For young people and their families, the vision builds on shared experiences and meaningful engagement:
- Sharing and hosting meals at the parish to model conversation, prayer, and community building.
- Shared prayer experiences with relatable and simple prayers to model what parents can do at home with their kids. Saint Mary’s Press’s The Catholic Youth Prayer Book is an excellent resource for prayers written for young people. Additionally, those with young children might love the beautiful art and prayers found in The Catholic Children’s Prayer Book.
- Experiential learning is appropriate for families with young people involving everyone through activities like art, theater, or music.
- In-depth and parallel learning with age-appropriate content for families where they all learn about the same topic. This gives them something to talk about when they go home and models how they can all participate.
- A Lent activity that focuses on praying, fasting, and almsgiving, allowing families to experience the liturgical season together.
The goal of this framework is to model activities at the parish that are easily transferable to the home. Programs that include family pages with simple activity ideas, encouraging weekly family engagement with faith, exemplify effective family catechesis.
Connecting parish programs with family life
Discover! Finding Faith in Life is a faith formation program that uses The Catholic Children’s Bible as its core text, putting the focus squarely on Scripture. It infuses joy into every lesson with meaningful activities that keep children engaged, curious, and actively learning.
Discover! builds on this initial engagement with ways to support families as the foundation of faith formation:
Included with each Discover! purchase, Gathered Family Sessions offer a solution to build family participation. Families participate together as a unit, with no age or family-size restrictions, fostering collaboration and shared learning.
Held from September through June and following the liturgical calendar, parishes have the flexibility to use as many or as few sessions as best suited to their specific needs and circumstances. Whether it’s parish-based, hybrid or home-based, these sessions feature flexible options to fit parish and family needs.
Championing the parent-parish partnership
This research should encourage Directors of Religious Education to remember this key point: Faith formation is a combined effort between both parent and parish. Parents desire to see their young people grow in faith and need a little encouragement in how to model these small practices.
By focusing on meaningful engagement and growth for every member, parishes can foster a faith that flourishes both within the home and throughout the broader parish community.
