Blog

The meeting reconvened with a prayer by Pastor G. Karl Gaston. The election process was reviewed again.  Jerry Gray was elected by acclamation on Thursday as Treasurer and Pastor G. Karl Gaston was elected by acclamation on Thursday as Spiritual Director.  The election of the Vice President of Administration commenced.  The nominees were Carolyn Witham, Sue Bathe and Randy Poisel. The budget was also included on the delegates’ ballots.  While the votes were being counted...

What do a group of techies talk about when they meet? Amanda Hunter, led this discussion which entered into the areas of webpage usage, making parts accessible to team while limiting parts for the prospective pilgrims who are researching the VDC movement. We learned about licensing requirements when using songs in churches, weekends, and ultreyas, and using Spotify for team to learn songs for the weekend. She then talked about the advantages and disadvantages of...

Reverend G. Carl Gaston began with his story of seminary education leading to his becoming ordained. HIs jouney gave him insights into several denominations and an understanding of the definition of Ecumenical. Definitions of “Ecumenical” include: Reverend Gaston provided a handout which gives helpful information on the concept of VdC as an ecumenical movement. The Mission Statement of Via de Cristo (National) reads: “By grace, with the Holy Spirit, we challenge leaders to discover and...

Presenter Marty Harpster discussed the qualities that make an impactful sponsor, and how it is key to grow the VDC community. He explained the impact of good sponsorship, based on relationships. A “good” sponsor being someone who “adopts” their pilgrim for the entire process, before, during, and after their weekend. He stressed the importance of bringing clergy into VDC, not just having them recruit but also attend a weekend of their own. Submitted by Temple...

Pastor Katie of New Promise Lutheran in St. George, Utah opened us with prayer of gratitude asking for guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead us forward in our understanding and connection with our youth. She outlined a framework of historic change in our own history that mirrors the changes and challenges we see today. Historically, it was the change from a church/state structure to a voluntary structure. That change brought insecurity, fear, and uncertainty...

Lead by-Father Steven Kalas Father Steven Kalas opened up the talk with a skit performed by two participants. The point of the skit was to introduce the meaning of reconciliation. To move towards reconciliation there must be confession, suffering, accountability and forgiveness. The process can breakdown at any point and steps might have to be repeated. A person can go through all of the steps and never reach reconciliation. In true reconciliation, the most potent...

Jeff began by summarizing points from prior forums/worship services. He emphasized that our human distinctions (race, color, etc.) do not matter to God, who sees us as a person. It is God, one and the same, that loves us all. Two “wolves” are “at war” within us -a good one and a bad one. The one who wins is the one we feed. Jeff pointed out that all U.S. currency contains the phrase, “In God...

Pastor Karl Gaston, Tracy Schmidlin, Ken Larson, and Sara Jones talked aboutspiritual direction and what a spiritual director does. Spiritual direction, which began in300 AD, is concerned with a person’s real experience of their relationship with God, theart of contemplative listening carried out in the context of a 1 to 1 trusting relationship.A spiritual director guides people in that journey in their lives. There are Episcopal andCatholic options to be trained as a spiritual director,...

A beautiful greeting Col. 1:2-6 from the Apostle Paul is a great use for Palanca. The Palanca “wall letters” or “community letters will be downloaded onto the national website ViadeCristo.org. Please encourage all Palanca chairs to download their secretariats letters onto the website. Some secretariats are struggling to get community letters for their weekend. Talk to your palanca person to make sure they get sent out. There was discussion on how the different secretariats use...

Led by John & Jeanette Jensen. John & Jeanette spoke of their experience creating a new VdC secretariat in Las Vegas, NV. Their inspiration was that God created the VdC ministry with the Holy Spirit working through men and women like us. The timeframe for them was in 1997. They moved from NY to Bakersfield, CA and became active with a Cursillo movement there and worked several 3-day weekends. In 2001 they moved to Las...

The communications director for the VdC National Lutheran Secretariat, Amanda Hunter, moderated discussion of ways to use technology to improve information sharing both inside and outside your organization. Topics were initiated by several of the 16 attendees and included websites, livestreaming, copyright licensing, and social media. Several websites were shared on screen for discussion, including the national VdC website and those of several chapters, such as www.inkyvdc.org. Various features were discussed, including use of photos...

According to Eric Nicholaus, team meetings for weekends are done in a variety of ways across this country. There are different infra-structures in all secretariates. Time was spent sharing those ways and structures. One of the hot topics was, “Should team members hear the practice rollos?” There are many different ways teams do that. A reoccurring thought was, “We get so busy listening to talks that we don’t have time to do other training.” Some...