Tips for Beginning a Local Response
To begin, we recommend framing your response with the fourfold model used by YArespond: prayer, education, dialogue, and action. This model helps to ensure that you have a balanced and holistic approach to these issues. Taking the time to respond in these four ways ensures that you don't forget the need for silence, or formation, or action. And it helps to remind us how all of these are meant to be overlapping works. As Pope Francis has said, "You pray for the hungry, and then you feed them. That's how prayer works."
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Start with a group of friends. Our responses to these issues began with groups of five to ten people meeting to talk about these issues over wine in a living room. You could also meet at a brewery, or a coffee shop, or over dinner. We just shared our diverse thoughts and experiences. There was no agenda. We just needed to talk.
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When planning events, have a plan that can be successful with a small group or a large group. Remember that events aren't about the number of people. They are about providing an opportunity for genuine encounter with others. If one person leaves with a greater sense of hope, or a new way of thinking, or even with just having met someone they didn't know before, you have been successful.
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When writing a letter and asking for change, be as informed as possible about your local Church. We offer some tips for writing your letter here.
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