It has been many months since I found the time to sit down and share discipleship-driven family formation ideas with our friends at The Mark 5:19 Project. During that time, I’ve had several people ask about our work, two of whom thought I work for The Mark 5:19 Project, so I thought it was probably time for a quick check in.
I don’t work for Mark 5:19, but our relationship with Mark 5:19 has challenged us to get clear about our own Mark 5:19 call. Remember, the verse is “Go home to your own people and tell them what the Lord has done for you.” Who are our people? What has the Lord in his goodness done for us? Are we telling our people about it?
My husband Tim and I developed The Designed for Discipleship System of Evangelical Catechesis to support catechetical leaders who want to nurture lifelong discipleship by pairing quality education with authentic faith. That’s the fancy way of putting together the different things we teach into a standalone phrase. Over time it has become clear to us, however, that our primary goal is to actually a return to discipleship for the entire family.
Families are our people.
Even before we started working exclusively in catechetical leadership circles, I was speaking and writing to support families in a variety of ways. From doing the works of mercy with your kids to supporting families following pregnancy and infant loss, I simply shared what we know. The work looks different now, but the people benefitting (hopefully) are the same.
In the coming months, our apostolate will expand to serve even more families through a new internship program for young adults interested in discipleship-driven formation, an expanded website with a growing article bank, consulting with Catholic parishes, supporting discipleship in Catholic schools, partnering with dioceses to train more leaders in The Designed for Discipleship System and whatever else God opens up for us. We will graduate our first class of cohort participants in June and can’t wait to share how they bring this into their ministry in new ways we’ve never even considered before!
The neurological process of memory and learning, and subsequently developmentally appropriate pedagogy, changes significantly as the brain grows. What are the implications of this in family-centered (multi-age), evangelical catechesis? How do we translate brain-based educational practice into formation learning environments?
How do we help entire families return to being friends of Jesus?
We are still asking and attempting to answer these questions and more every single day in our ongoing development of The Designed for Discipleship System. Tim and I are inviting you to please join us in praying deeply for the families in our community, in your community, and in the communities we will serve in the coming year(s). We would love to hear from you if you’ve experimented or implemented any of the ideas we’ve shared in past posts for Mark 5:19 to help guide future articles. We may not be able to write every month at this time, but we do want to continue providing relevant and timely articles to support the Mark 5:19 community in serving their people and sharing the good work God is doing.
Heidi and Tim Indahl are the cofounders of Designed for Discipleship.
