Kildare Ministries Formation goes online!

Like many of our ministries, Kildare Ministries has adapted to the times and has transfers some of its formation courses on-line.  The first course was attempted by ‘new staff’ to KM on 1 September and part two will be conducted on the 15th September.  All participants were very patient with the initial glitches but those were soon resolved, and participants shared their experiences of their new ministry on the chat rooms.

Thanks and special recognition go to Renee Oberin and Padraig McCahey for their creative work and authorship of the content for this course. Like all good things that look simple and seamless, its development took many hours of work and ‘worrying-working-out-hours’ to construct. Feedback received tells us that our participants experienced a dynamic and interactive course with engaging and rigorous material. This foray into the world of on-line learning for adults in thirteen ministries have given us confidence to develop the model further. 

Day two of the New Leader’s Day also took place on-line and deep appreciation goes to Stephanie Smyth, Assistant Principal: Wellbeing and Engagement at Kilbreda College, for her excellent presentation. She generously produced an Activities Journal (the cover of which you see here) to guide our new leaders into reflective practice. Thank you Stephanie for the many hours of preparation and your dynamic presentation and to Principal Nicole Mangelsdorf for enabling Stephanie to help lead the day. 

The Conference committee are investigating how best to engage our broad community in conversation about Living Justice:  Go Out Joyfully, in keeping with this year’s theme, and how the experience might be flexible and agile to accommodate the various needs and interests. The decision has been taken to run the ‘virtual conference’ next year when our communities have had an opportunity to refresh after this stressful year of dealing with the pandemic and all its layers.

We anticipate that next year, most of our formation activities will remain on-line for at least the first six months and the Mission and Ministry Team is working now to develop the calendar for 2021. 

Since March, all our network meetings have continued on-line and we take this opportunity to thank all the leaders in our ministries for their participation and commitment and for their interest in keeping the agenda of KM alive.