Called and Gifted for
Small Groups
By Sherry Weddell
When, in the summer of 1993, I was asked to create a process to help lay Catholic leaders discern their spiritual gifts (or charisms), I had only limited experience with their discernment. I did know, however, that it required more than a one-day workshop could afford—that real discernment required community support over time. I also recognized that Catholic parishes had little or no experience offering such support to their parishioners.
The process I outlined that summer, which is now known as the Called & Gifted Workshop and the Extended Discernment Program, has remained fundamentally the same to this day. There are three essential parts: 1) a workshop which introduces participants to the basics of discernment, and then has them take an inventory, 2) one-on-one sessions where a person selects a single gift to experiment with two hours a week for 8 weeks, and 3) bi-weekly small-group discussions with other discerners during these 8 weeks of experimentation.
In the beginning, I proceeded by prayer and instinct. I sometimes wonder if I helped anyone much during my first 40 interviews since I had only a vague idea of what to listen for. Slowly, it became clear what was important and what wasn’t. And while my knowledge grew of the Church’s teaching about, and experience of, charisms over the centuries, I created and repeatedly revised most of the material and resources that today make up the Called & Gifted process. I grasped that having the support of the Church as they discerned their gifts and call was changing the lives of ordinary Catholics (and that I was having way too much fun facilitating), but only gradually realized that this discernment process I had developed was unique in the Catholic world.
After founding the Catherine of Siena Institute in 1997, Fr. Michael Sweeney, O.P. and I soon started teaching Called & Gifted Workshops around the world. We wrestled with many issues, but especially with the problem of how Catholics could access community support during their extended discernment. How could we provide for them the second and third parts of the process when we were only in town for a single weekend?
The Discerning Charisms Workbook has partially filled the gap. This book, in combination with audio recordings of the workshop, has served hundreds of individuals and small Christian communities worldwide who have no access to trained facilitators, interviewers, or teachers.
But with time, the need for more extensive support materials has sharpened. As of 2005, 20,000 lay, religious, and ordained Catholics, along with other Christians, have attended live Called & Gifted Workshops in 61 different dioceses. Energetic as our growing team of teachers is, they are hard-pressed to meet the demand for live events and facilitator-interviewer trainings. All the while, I have been asked time and again to offer a small-group version of the Called & Gifted process that parishes and small communities could undertake on a regular basis. And so at last, here it is!
Small group materials are available from the Institute
office in