Belonging, Believing and Becoming: Aquinas College's discipleship class
WRITTEN BY:
Susan Van Zyl
READ TIME:
6 mins
Aquinas College began our “Belong, Believe, Become” journey in 2019 when we were invited to attend the Oceania Equipping School as the New Zealand representatives. The vision of the Equipping School is to inspire and equip Catholic schools to become centres of evangelisation with new ardour, expressions, connections, and experiences to develop a sense of belonging, believing and becoming. The school is operated by Catholic Schools Youth Ministry International (CSYMI), in Canberra. Mrs Monique Harris (the then Leader of Learning - RE), Laura Smith (then deputy head girl - Special Character) and I attended.
The Great Commissioning in Matthew 28:19 calls us to “Go and make disciples of all nations”. This resonates with our college as we seek to accompany our students on their journey of faith and to develop an intentional discipleship pathway providing spiritual nourishment and empowering students to be witnesses and to share their testimony with others, while also strengthening our connections to our parish communities.
Pope Francis has spoken about now as a time of a new Pentecost for our youth, as many have been “sacramentalised but not evangelised” (Fr. Ken Barker). We are being called to reach out to our youth and to invite them back through reigniting in them the fire of the Holy Spirit. We must call on the Holy Spirit to move and speak in new ways to our youth and the Equipping School was a living example of this. It operates under the premise of three youth ministry goals: to foster the total personal and spiritual growth of each young person; to draw young people into responsible participation in the life and mission of the Catholic faith community; and to empower young people to live as disciples of Jesus Christ in today’s world. (These goals are laid out in the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference’s document Anointed and Sent.)
These three goals are also outlined in the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference’s Tu Kahikatea – Standing Tall (2006) and 2014’s The Catholic Education of School-Age Children also reiterates that facilitating an encounter with Christ is essential to the function of a Catholic school.
Another fruit of our visit to Canberra was securing a mission team to visit our college and diocese in November 2019. We saw great potential in a youth ministry pathway and wanted to pursue our involvement to build capacity and establish a sustainable model for peer-to-peer ministry. The team ran our Year 10 retreats and students opted into a newly constructed Year 11 Discipleship class for 2020. This class was very successful with opportunities to reflect on their living relationship with Christ while still completing an academic NCEA course. These students refined their testimonies to present on retreats, learned how to run small groups and practised drama to share ideas on our Year Seven Retreats.
In 2020, we sent another member of our Religious Education faculty to attend the Equipping School. We have also been blessed with regular visits from our NET Team, who have accompanied this class in this process, and these students became our Youth Ministry Team in 2021. Recently, we organised a Youth Night which focussed on connecting these students back into the parish.
We have taken the “Belong, Believe and Become” philosophy to develop what we call a “graduate profile”, which encapsulates the essence of what we desire our Year 13 students to leave Aquinas College with. The profile – Te Tauira Torowhānui - consists of aspirational outcomes and progressions for holistic education, encompassing the key ideas of: Belonging (whanaungatanga) to a faith community; Believing (whakapono) with reason; and Becoming (whakawhanake) through actions.
At the end of 2020 we had sixty students apply to be in our discipleship class and of those we were able to offer 32 students a place. This was to ensure that the quality of the programme was maintained during its infancy. This class has just finished focusing on the idea of evangelisation as a key belief of Catholicism. NET will commence working alongside them in the new term, and here they will have opportunities to grow in their prayer life and begin to learn retreat skills.
This year, we have established a Year 12 Youth Ministry Team of students, who were largely part of the discipleship class in 2020. These students took a lead role in the prayer aspect of the retreat by giving their testimony, running activities and leading different kinds of input, reflecting on their own living relationship with Christ. These students are growing in their confidence to share their faith with others and are authentically engaging in peer-to-peer ministry. The team’s focus in term two is to run a youth night at our local parish for our young people to connect with one another and with Christ.
These ideas of “Belong, Believe, Become” are key to the youth ministry premise and provide an on-going invitation to explore the kerygma and encourage a conversion of heart through community, seeking to understand and exploring faith in action. We believe these are key for being a witness for others, for the mission of the Church and for the future of Catholic education.
Here are some comments from members of last year’s class:
“My experience with the class has been nothing but positive this year. It has been an incredible way to further explore my faith with the resources and guidance needed. I have enjoyed all the hands-on learning, especially the NET Team retreats and learning how to lead retreats. I have loved exploring my faith in a safe and welcoming environment.” Riley Elliott-Lowe
“I love being in the discipleship class because everyone accepts you. This was an opt-in class and that means people want to be there. I am looking forward to running the year 7 retreats in Term 4.” Caprice Basile
“At the start of the year, I was unsure about my relationship with God. Joining the discipleship class meant that throughout the year I strengthened my faith in ways I could never have imagined. I attended reconciliation, Mass and my first ever adoration! I was able to learn more in-depth ways to experience God and how to connect further with him through prayer, scripture and Mass.” Josh Pinto
Susan Van Zyl is Deputy Principal (Special Character) at Aquinas College, Tauranga. This article, in a different form, was first published in New Zealand Catholic Education Office’s newsletter Lighting New Fires in November 2020.
