Ever since the Franciscan beginnings of St. Francis of Assisi Parish, under the leadership of David McBriar, we have been committed to service; service directed toward the entire Raleigh community. Many years ago, when the Friars took over and held the first meeting of the Social Concerns Committee, Father David, then pastor, asked, “What does the city need, and how can we help?” At that meeting, the committee decided to tithe 10% of the weekly offertory for those in need in the area.
That effort continues today through the Office of Justice and Peace, providing opportunities to live out the corporal works of mercy, go on missions in solidarity and service, and advocate for the most vulnerable. Mary Ellen McGuire is the Director of Justice and Peace at St. Francis, joining the parish staff in 2025, and she is launching a new program to continue the parish’s outreach while showing how that outreach impacts our faith. It is called ‘Franciscan Values in Action’, or VIA.
“The idea of the Franciscan VIA, or Values in Action program, is a parish-wide initiative to bring people of faith together to have fellowship and community, to get to know each other, and to look at our experiences of God in our ministries and in our world. We hope the outcome for all of us will be to learn together, to highlight different ministries in the parish, to learn a little bit more about what various Justice & Peace groups or ministries are doing, and to send us all forth with a suggested action,” says Mary Ellen. Part of this effort is for people to discover and feel comfortable about how faith plays a role in our everyday lives.
Faith isn’t the ‘Sunday Mass’, and the rest of the week is ‘the world.’ It’s all intertwined: “I think Catholics don’t always have words around our faith, because that’s not really modeled for us,” points out Mary Ellen. “We don’t always have a vocabulary for the spiritual experiences that we have. So I think it’s really important to provide avenues for us to come together and hear how other people experience faith. All of a sudden, you have some language that maybe you never thought about using for yourself.” She has found that someone else may explain a faith experience in a way that clicks and resonates. “I think that’s an important piece of this, too,” she explains, ”just doing the ‘God talk’ with each other. We don’t always have a chance to do that, especially when it comes to issues in the world and social justice.”
What is her vision for the program? The format of the evening will have fellowship and food, an opening prayer, and then a teaching, spiritual and theological, around the Franciscan Value or the theme of the night. Mary Ellen says, “Sometimes that would be a lay ‘Teacher’ talking for a few minutes about what the theme is, and then the Witness Speaker will be able to consult with a spiritual director for coaching if they would like help.”
Food would then be a way for everyone to consider the initial presentation and think about what was said. One important part of this effort is for people to come together around food and then have table conversation, maybe with some planted questions, around the theme. “The idea would be,” says Mary Ellen, “at the start to use a potluck-type of model to create a Eucharistic experience; to come together around food and allow people to relax. It becomes a safer place to talk about deeper things once you’ve shared a meal with someone. So we’re really committed to having some kind of food experience. The faith-sharing time around the meal would be a time for people to open up about things, in the safe, sacred space at our church, that they don’t normally share with other people.”
One key thing that she is doing is asking for ‘skin in the game’ from some ministries from the start. “I’m asking a bunch of ministries to commit to have two, three, four people at every one of these gatherings. If we get several ministries doing that from the get-go, we’re already going to have a core group of people there, and then we just grow from there.” She is hoping to draw a small, intergenerational core team, including teens intentionally, and to have people from the schools and from faith formation, both old and young.
When does this all begin? “The first one’s in September, and maybe one in November before we get too busy with Advent and everything else,” says Mary Ellen. “The goal with all of this, though, is to deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. I hope that when people come together and have an opportunity to talk about their faith, a faith they’ve been living out in all of these ministries, that people will hear the experiences of others and think, ‘I never thought about encountering God in that way, and maybe I’ll think about that perspective for myself too.’ That’s really the end goal: to draw people into closer relationship with Christ through this program.”
“Hopefully,” she adds, “this will be a safe and interesting place for anybody and everybody. The neat thing is you can just come to one. The presentations don’t build on each other, and no lesson plan goes throughout the year. If you’re free, come; if you’re not free, come to the next one.” Her enthusiasm about the program is clearly evident: “I’m excited about it. I think the energy I’m feeling around it is really positive. I’m starting to talk to some of the ministries, let them know about it, and tweak things along the way. It’s going to grow as it goes from September to June. We’re just starting, and we will improve upon the program as we go along because the Holy Spirit does all kinds of neat things!”
“We’re going to talk about our personal experience in our own personal words, how we can best express it for ourselves. Some people will be more comfortable with this than others, but that’s the way it should be; every experience is important and revealing of their, and our, faith experiences,” emphasized Mary Ellen. “The best measure of success for me,” she says, “is to have somebody come to me and say, ‘I discovered something about my spiritual life that I never thought about before.’ This is an exciting intergenerational initiative that we hope will engage everyone from teens to our seniors. All are welcome to come, meet some new people, and reflect individually and together on how we experience God.”
To find out more, see the Franciscan Values in Action website page here or contact Mary Ellen McGuire at Maryellen.Mcguire@stfrancisraleigh.org.
