copyright Favoring Brave LLC 2023
Give your parishioners the gift of clarity about where the Holy Spirit is calling them to serve and build the church in your parish.
Anyone in the parish who wants to be there. Grandparents and teenagers, daily-Mass regulars and the couple who slip out after Communion, people who have led ministries for thirty years and people still wondering whether the parish has a place for them. The room is open on purpose: the ones who most need this day are the ones no one has thought to ask personally.
This parish event is geared towards creating better balance in parish life -- making space for the most overworked and exhausted to step back and focus only on the things the Holy Spirit is asking them to do right now and inviting other members of the parish to step forward and be encouraged towards new roles and ministries.
When a parishioner can finally name what God gave them, something shifts. They stop waiting to be recruited and start watching for where it's needed. A parish where that is normal is a parish where the work no longer falls on the same twenty people — and where more people feel engaged in the life of the community.
Four sessions, with questions and a break after each. This is the spine of every day we run — the examples change with the room, the teaching doesn't.
We start with what we believe about ourselves, God, and the relationship between us. This then leads into a deeper conversation about how this identity impacts how we live service and mission in our lives, and why clarity in this area has to come first.
Then we'll get into the theology of grace, charisms, and how these gifts differ from talents and from the Gifts of the Spirit discussed in sacramental prep. Everything is grounded in Scripture, Vatican II, and the Catechism, with easy-to-understand framing.
A walk through each charism on our list — both hallmarks of the gift and what it looks like in daily life.
We end by breaking open how discernment works, starting with a most-likely list, not a definitive answer. We'll explain how to create test scenarios, the steps of the process, how long to take, and what commitment means.
The full day isn't the half day stretched out. It's the same four sessions with room to breathe, plus the pieces there is never time for in a half day.
A guided worksheet and time to pray before charisms are introduced, so people have processed where they are at personally in this aspect of their spiritual development.
Three discernment questions per charism — the things we always ask when we have someone in front of us discerning a certain charism. These questions are often very clarifying and have people smiling knowingly across the table at each other.
Everyone takes the assessment in the room on a personal device, with the presenter there to answer questions while they do.
Thirty to forty-five minutes of feedback from peers about what gifts they see in each other. At many events, this is what really changes things for people.
The full walkthrough — the work, the struggles, the virtues, and what discernment looks like at each stage. This foundational information is key to approaching discernment well, but it's too in-depth to make time for in the half-day workshop.
Discernment worksheet time built in, so everyone leaves with a plan to move into commitment.
Recommended for this room: half day. A half day — a Saturday morning, or a weeknight that runs into the evening — is the easiest thing to get a cross-section of the parish to say yes to, and it still covers all four sessions. Choose the full day when you're building this into a parish mission or a retreat: it adds the charism assessment time together and the small-group hour, where people name the gifts they see in each other, which is the part people truly remember.
| What | Cost |
|---|---|
| Half day — roughly three hoursRecommended | $1,500 |
| Full day | $1,800 |
| Travel | at cost |
| Charism assessment, per person | $6.99 |
Assessments are billed after the day for the people who actually took one — never a guess at attendance, and never a block you have to buy up front. If your parish has already taken the assessment, that line is simply zero.
Their own results, a most-likely list of three or four charisms to test, and a plan for finishing discernment — so nobody walks out with a good feeling and nowhere to put it.
A charism assessment is a starting point, not a verdict. It tells someone what they most likely carry; using it is how they find out.
The day names gifts — what a parish does with them is the next question, and there's a lot we can help with: small-group studies, books your parishioners can keep going with, and the Parish Program itself, which builds charism discernment into how the parish runs all year rather than for one workshop. Tell us where you'd like this to lead when we talk, and we'll help you get there.