Strengthening the foundations of the Small Christian Communities [SCC] in the Archdiocese of Calcutta

SCC WORKSHOP AT ARCHBISHOP’S HOUSE

Fr. Dominic Gomes

Kolkata, November 12 2020 - In line with the present strategy to foster qualitative and quantitative growth of the Small Christian Communities (SCC) in the Archdiocese, a workshop was held 12 November 2020, at Archbishop’s House, for a gathering of 72 SCC members from the existing units from 24 Parishes. Besides the laity, a number of priests and religious associated with the SCC formation were also present.The purpose of the workshop was to inform participants and build an understanding of the challenges, and involve them in the training and growth process. One input session, revisited the vision, mission and goals of the SCC as a ‘New Way of Being Church’ in the third millennium. The SCC has to be a Community of Communities firmly based on the Word of God, with genuine fellowship and concern for those in need. The main objective of the SCCs is to be agents of evangelisation… nurturing and increasing the faith in our day-to-day lives. SCCs are considered a gift of the present times to live our faith and to build Christian communities based on the model of the early Christian Communities of Apostolic time.

The five goals are: 1) SCC in every Parish – Build small faith forming communities by making SCCs mandatory in all Parishes; 2) Vibrant Faith Communities – Formation of SCC leaders, who in turn will catechize their Parish communities; 3) A network of Community of Communities – a diocese-wide network of Parish cells & their area units both online groups and zone clusters; 4) Perpetual self-reliant Communities – as agents of transformation, SCC cells/units have to be financially independent to ensure continuity and be an example of responsibility to the larger Parish community; 5) SCC Day celebrated – SCC Day (6 June) to be celebrated in all Parishes throughout the Archdiocese.The input session continued with a presentation of a statistical overview of the present status of the SCC in the Archdiocese and the challenges ahead. In numbers, this means increasing the number of Resource Persons from 6 to 40; increasing the number of Animators from 44 to 150; increasing the number of Units from 447 to 3,500. It is planned to achieve this with the formation of 12 Zonal and Deanery Service Teams from amongst those undergoing the training-formation process.The second part of the input session provided a look at the training content or syllabus to get an idea of the breadth and depth of areas of learning to get into and imbibe the spirit, knowledge and technique of SCC building and formation. The basic knowledge of SCC origin & development, stages of maturity, the four marks of SCC, techniques to start and maintain units, etc. Besides these basics,there are a host of other in-depth modules developed by the National Service Team (NST) and National Resource Team (NRT) for SCC under the CBCI.This was followed by an animated group discussion session from which a number of creative suggestions for effective growth and functioning emerged. Of equal importance was the fact that 38 participants volunteered to be members of Zonal Teams in 13 Zones to undergo the training process. Also, 10 members volunteered to be on the resource generation and creative team to prepare the training materials in English, Bengali and Hindi. In fact, it was an extremely fruitful and exciting day that concluded with a fellowship meal.