Join NAPRC

Join The NAPRC
Come Join With Us:

Breathing new life into the Church

NAPRC is an organization offering training, support, resources, networking, an annual national conference, and a model to parishes, like yours, attempting to integrate into their everyday life a vision of parish that sees itself as a community of communities. Our vision calls for the transformation of parish life by way of two primary goals –
1) Doing the things we do differently
2) Forming small church communities
within the parish.

We provide:
- A one-day introduction to the model
- A three-day training workshop for leaders and Core Teams
- A one-day follow–up workshop
- An annual national conference
- Numerous resources for creating SCC’s, and for restructuring the parish

Along with NAFSCC (the North American Forum for Small Church Communities), SCCC (Small Christian Community Connection), MACC (the Mex.-Amer. Cultural Center), and others, we seek to deepen, strengthen and breathe new life into the Church.

N	ational-We are parishes from across the country. This gives us a much greater impact on the larger church and provides a forum for us to support one another more readily.
A	lliance-We are allies, not simply an organization of individual parishes with a common interest. We help one another.
of P	arishes- Parish renewal is our focus, not simply individual growth.
R	estructuring- We are deliberate about changing the way we are Parish.
into C	ommunities- The parish is a community of communities. We seek to form Parishes into Small Church Communities. This gives the Parish a specific focus. Small Church Communities are more than prayer, scripture-study, support or mission groups. Each is all of these because each is church in miniature.

BENEFITS OF MEMBERSHIP:
- 10% Discount on Annual Conference Fees
- 50% discount on shipping fees for materials
- Internet Newsletter 3 times a year (filled with information, stories of practical experience of putting the vision of NAPRC into effect, etc.)
- Periodic information on our conferences, new resources, etc. - through emails, etc.

CALLED TO BE CHURCH

In faith, we are all called individually, but we are also called to community. Whether towards a more conscious formation of the basic parish structure into a community of communities, or the formation of Small Church Communities (SCC) within the parish structure, community is a natural outgrowth of faith development in our Catholic Christian heritage. It is a grace-filled, empowering, and nurturing support for all.

While specifics of the formation of any group (be it an SCC, or the parish itself) often vary, as they are framed in each local experience and needs, the basic need to form community calls us to gather together, to share our story, to connect to the larger church story, and to go out to all the world.

The formation of community involves a three-phase process. In the first phase a group bonds and begins to experience its identity as a community united by God. The second phase seeks to bond the group into a community rooted in prayer. The third phase seeks to bring the group to experience what it is to be Church - to learn to live this out together in the context of the larger Church. Indeed, a small group becomes a true small church community when it fulfills the four basic elements of being church: koinonia (support and sharing), kerygma (connecting our story with the Great Story of Jesus), diakonia (service) and leiturgia (prayer).