3 minute read
Xavier Kids Gearing Up for Another Year of Faith Formation Fun
It’s hard to believe that summer is quickly coming to a close. While our youngest parishioners prepare to say farewell to lazy days at the pool, family road trips, and school break, it’s the perfect time to look ahead to another fun-filled year of our Xavier Kids faith formation program!
This past spring, Children’s Minister Jacob Farni brought a new and exciting way of presenting children’s catechesis to St. Francis Xavier by moving away from the traditional classroom setting and implementing a more dynamic and interactive program.
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“What we wanted to do was take a new approach to how we teach our kids our faith, and one of the big things was to get back to the basics,” Jacob says. “Our basic foundation is that God loves you, so our goal is to help the children have a deep conviction and belief that they are loved by God. With masks and social distancing, kids in kindergarten through fifth grade met for praise and worship, Bible lessons, and related skits and games. We really had a blast.”
Group meetings — called Xavier Kids Live — take place on Sunday mornings about once or twice a month. These in-person gatherings are supplemented by Xavier Kids at Home videos made available on the parish YouTube channel. These videos mirror the topics and themes of the meetings, assisting parents in their role as first catechists in the home.
Reflecting on the first few months of the new Xavier Kids model, Jacob is thankful for the many blessings he has already seen poured out in this ministry.
“One of the beautiful things is how much the Holy Spirit has worked some of these things out,” he says. “God has provided. We looked at Nativity Church in Maryland that does something similar and we use a program from New Spring, and both of those have helped me venture into this new form of catechesis. It has been great being able to take some good things from these other churches and take God’s love to these kids and see how much they are enjoying it. Seeing them together in community — COVID had broken everyone up and isolated families, so seeing them together again was amazing.”
As with all of our ministries here at St. Francis Xavier, Xavier Kids wouldn’t be possible without the wonderful group of parishioners who have helped Jacob make this vision for faith formation a reality. The Xavier Kids ministry consists of three distinct teams. The technical team handles setup for the Xavier Kids Live events and ensures that the Xavier Kids at Home videos run smoothly. Small-group leaders help with the teaching portion of the morning when the children break into sections by age. Finally, the wellness team — or as Jacob likes to call it, the “Hype Squad” — checks kids in to the large-group meetings, monitors their needs throughout the event, and joins in all the fun!
Children’s Minister Jacob Farni leads the fun at an Xavier Kids gathering.
We hope all parishioners in Pre-K through fifth grade will come be a part of Xavier Kids this year. We look forward to coming together once more to learn about our Catholic faith and — most importantly — the deep and abiding love our Lord has for each and every one of us!
“You’re not getting just the rules and what we believe,” says Jacob of the Xavier Kids program. “It’s also, ‘Here is how God loves you, and here is how God asks you to love Him.’ It’s amazing because it’s joyful. It’s not just, ‘Do this, say this, pray this.’ It’s about how Jesus loves you and how you say you love Him back by how you live your life.”
