Share Your Story
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We Want To Hear From You!Share your story about why the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress matters to you! Select stories will be featured on our website and social media pages. -
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Step 1:Choose Your Prompt
Consider the following prompts, or choose one of your own.
- What aspect of RECongress do you most look forward to and why?
- How has participating in RECongress positively impacted your faith, ministry, or community?
- Share why you continue to prioritize participation in RECongress year after year.
- What would you say to others attending for the first time?
- If you are a volunteer, speaker, or exhibitor, what has been the most rewarding part of serving RECongress?
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Step 2:Tell Your Story
Your submission should be approximately 400 - 1,000 words and read like a short personal essay. Stories that are featured may be edited for length, content, or grammar.
Select stories may be featured in future RECongress marketing efforts.
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Step 3:Choose A Picture
Choose a picture that compliments your story. We'd love to see RECongress through your eyes!
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COMMUNITY STORIES
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Steve Picard
"For literally decades RECongress has provided me new ways to think about my faith and my relationship to Jesus as well as new levels of enthusiasm for that relationship. The speakers sharing of their insights, expertise, and experience on a variety of theological topics and perspectives help me to expand my faith horizons intellectually, to know more about my faith. But RECongress is more than a cerebral experience for me. The liturgies and the opportunities for conversation with other participants touch my heart--they uplift me and provide encouragement in my pursuit of a deeper relationship with Jesus. I look forward to attending every year."
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Dennis Ehling
"Attending RECongress is like a retreat each year, but one where we get to see some of our favorite friends too. As Fr. Fragomeni has said, we get "dipped and dunked" in the enlivening experience of Congress each year, and it carries us through the year. We get to breathe in the Spirit that fills the place, the time to take away and remember what is important, and the opportunity to participate in amazing, spirited liturgies that seem to only happen at RECongress. "
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Anita Herrera
"Hooray! The family is re-uniting. As the time for Congress nears, I began to let my students see and share in my enthusiasm and excitement. They would learn about all the friends from around the world that I would see again in person and how I would learn from and enjoy some of the "Rock Stars" of our faith family. I assured them that while they enjoyed a Friday off, I would return renewed, refreshed, and rested with knowledge from these amazing friends and storytellers. Students anticipated the weekend's events. My excitement in anticipation of this year’s Congress is greater exponentially and I look forward to the amazing gifts I can carry back to my community from this Family Reunion."
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Suzan Larroquette
"When I think of RECongress, the following words and phrases immediately come to mind: communally dynamic, impactful, professional, motivational, prayerful, liturgically rich, culturally diverse, spiritually and theologically inspiring, an opportunity to grow in ministry through personal connection, an invitation to ongoing conversion, a fertile landscape in which to learn and be formed no matter one's experience or age, a call to revitalize and energize one's own ministry, an opportunity to hear God's voice resound in your heart, a powerful challenge to critically and creatively reflect as church,... and simply put, a community masterpiece! This is why I choose to continually support and prioritize RECongress year after year! This Spirit-filled Catholic catechetical event, arguably the largest catechetical event in the country and possibly the world, is so dynamic, so professionally organized, and so thoughtful in its creation, that I would struggle NOT to attend!!"
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Mike CarottaThere are about eight of us having dinner at the hotel restaurant. Each one a national speaker or author with an active ministry. Like pioneers at the birth of the new nation making their way across the mountains, lakes, forest, and plains, to share stories, break bread, and get some support at the annual Fur Traders Rendezvous. We are colleagues who have waited all year to gather at RECongress. We have come for the laughter and joy. We have come to see each other’s face and feel each other’s Spirit. But we have come even more so for the conversation:
“What are you seeing out there? “What’s the challenges ministers are facing?”“And how are you?”
Candid discussions about approaches, theory, theology, and methods. Conversations in crowded hotel rooms that went so long into the night that you stepped over the morning paper on your way to your own room. You got challenged, stretched, affirmed. You learned. And you were cared for.
That was at RECongress around 1985, over 35 years ago. And it still continues at every RECongress: ministers of the Church gather to celebrate, connect, and reassure themselves that this noble work is worth it. Each has been burning the candle at both ends.
My wife looks at me funny when I get overjoyed about going to RECongress or genuinely crushed when I am not able to go. She says I have issues. At RECongress I touch home, celebrating the catechetical community I belong to while remembering all the colleagues who have moved on or passed away. I walk past the cultural community displays on the second floor of the convention center and give thanks at the way they represent their Catholicism with such pride. I soak up the sunshine on the walk to and from good workshops. See familiar faces.
Celebrate this ministry. Making time for soulful conversations. Keeping Company. RECongress is a pilgrimage more than a conference.
I come for The Grace.
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