Tarah Hazard sat in a neighborhood park last year as her 2-year-old son played by himself in the sand. Hazard yearned for friendship — for herself and her son — but as was so often the case, no other families or children were to be seen in the park that day.
Then she saw a young woman pedaling a bike past the park with a 3-year-old strapped behind. “I remember — hoping upon hope — that they would stop at the park,” Hazard recalled. Anna Severson, the mother on the bike, did stop. Like Hazard, she had been searching, without success, for playmates for her child. “My son and I had made up a song that we used to sing as we rode through the neighborhoods,” she recalled. “Its refrain was: ‘Where are the kids? Where are the kids?’”
As the boys began to play happily together, the two women struck up a conversation about their children and the beauty of the day. Before long, Severson confided that she shared Hazard’s concern about a mother’s isolation and search for meaning. “But I told her I had found a key that had transformed my loneliness,” Severson said. That key would ultimately transform Hazard’s life as well.
Severson explained that she confronted her challenges as a mother through her Catholic faith and her mothers’ small group at St. Peter in North St. Paul. She invited Hazard to visit one of the group’s gatherings. “I’m not Catholic,” explained Hazard, “but I was so drawn to Anna’s joy, I accepted her invitation to visit her group.”
A year after that park encounter, Hazard and Severson still regularly attend meetings of the mothers’ small group. The moms meet twice a month in the home of Krysten Fulcher, a group leader, and in summer they gather twice a month in a nearby park. Severson credits participation in the group for building her confidence to refer to faith in conversations with strangers such as Hazard.
The moms’ group is one of many thriving St. Peter small groups and the number of participants is growing steadily, said Patti Teachout, St. Peter’s director of liturgy and coordinator of its small group program. St. Peter, with a parishioner base of about 1,200 families, has adopted the Parish Evangelization Cells System (PECS) approach to small groups that grew out of Archbishop Bernard Hebda’s pastoral letter, “You Will Be My Witnesses: Gathered and Sent From the Upper Room.”
Small group meetings under the PECS model include praise through song and prayer, sharing recent experiences with God, teaching and discussion of a religious text or concept, parish announcements, intercessory prayer for people in and outside the group, and prayers for one another’s petitions. Non-parishioners, both Catholics and non-Catholics, are invited to attend.
Fulcher said she believes the content and sequence of the PECS model are key to her group’s remarkable success, both for building a solid Catholic faith among its members and arming them for evangelization. “We begin by reflecting on God’s involvement in our lives,” she explained. “When we take time to stop and look for the Lord, we always find him.” She added that “sharing deeply about our faith and our lives has created a culture of authenticity that is really attractive and makes it easy for us to invite other women to join us.”
Teachout agreed that evangelism is a central component of the PECS model. While the groups are designed to create personal bonds among members, she pointed out, “we also emphasize that Christian fellowship should create a launching pad for spreading the word of Christ beyond the group.”
St. Peter’s mothers’ group is an intriguing mix of profound religious reflection and a cacophony of joyful, family-centered noise. Father José Cortes, pastor of St. Peter, who has visited all the church’s small groups, said he was astounded at the scene in Fulcher’s living room when he attended the mothers’ group. “I could hardly believe what I was witnessing — children exuberantly running and playing everywhere, babies crying, and the moms sitting together — some with tears in their eyes, too — in deep conversation and prayer, as though nothing was going on around them.”
Some might think that singing together could provoke discomfort, but Fulcher said she believes it’s critical to the PECS model. “To sing praises to God at the beginning of the meeting — acapella in front of others — requires each member to acknowledge the possibility for vulnerability, a key aspect of the group’s success,” she noted. It also serves a utilitarian purpose, she added with a laugh. “Whenever we start singing, all the babies stop crying.”
The St. Peter mothers’ small group has grown to about 15 members, both Catholic and non-Catholic. Recently Hazard invited a woman from Red Wing, about 50 miles away, who is now a regular member.
Many other PECS-based small groups at St. Peter are building on the evangelism theme.
One is the Renew and Refresh group, whose focus is helping its members learn about evangelization for the purpose of communicating effectively with relatives and friends who no longer practice or lack understanding of Catholicism. Co-chairs Mike Nash and Nancy Tuerk pointed out that, to do so effectively, members must first deepen their own knowledge of the Catholic faith — the goal of the PECS teaching element. “I have been a Catholic all my life, but I can’t believe all I’ve learned about the pillars of the faith through our small group reading and discussions,” Nash said.
Tyler Scheidt, who chairs St. Peter’s men’s small group, sees a pressing need for evangelization right next to him in the pews at St. Peter. “Many men at Mass are just a few steps away from building strong, lasting friendships and living their Catholic faith more fully,” he said. “These are the men our small group tries to reach.” Like Fulcher, Scheidt said he believes the PECS structure is essential to his group’s success. “Men’s groups, without the PECS focus and structure, can quickly become no more than buddy clubs,” he concluded.
Perhaps no small group has such high-stakes evangelism goals as the group Those Affected by Addiction, which focuses on the impact of substance abuse on the relatives and friends of group members. “Many other approaches to this problem avoid the essential tools of our Catholic faith,” said the group’s chair, Mike Stahlmann. He emphasized that the PECS model enhances members’ ability to positively impact others through deepening their understanding of that faith and through prayer.
St. Peter’s small groups are bearing rich fruit for members and for others. What is the key to their evangelization success? Fulcher put it this way: “We do not walk up to a stranger and tell her, ‘Here is what I believe; you should believe the same,’” Instead, she said with a smile, “we invite the person into our home, offer them a piece of coffee cake, invite their children to play with ours, give them a place to relax on the couch, and then enter into a Christ-centered conversation.”
