The greatest gift we have to offer one another is ourselves, our stories, our experiences and our ideas. While we attempt to facilitate the global sharing of information and experience through newsletters and the like, we are also attentive to the fact that our ministries are becoming more contextualized and specifically local. Unlike many other areas of ministry, young adult ministry is not organized provincially. We have moted that the needs and patterns of association for young adults don't follow the neat patterns of our organizational structure. Nonetheless, the need has arisen for greater regional communication. This is an attempt to facilitate the organic gathering of proximate and similarly motivated individuals by offering one possible pattern for conversation and collaboration.

The idea is simple: a few diocesan leaders with some fire gather and decide they'd like to collaborate. They invite a few nearby diceses to join in the conversation. Together they aproach our office to facilitate some teleconference conversations. In the first conversation introductions are made; we see where folks are standing andwhat they're doing. Then we brainstorm a list of possible conversation topics, areas of concern, areas of interest and areas for identified growth. The group selects one of these topics for a conversation a month later.

During that month our office selects and provides resources for the group to look over, think about and come up with questions concerning. The next meeting we wrestle with these questions and thoughts and come up with a series of action items. Then we do it again. Both the resources and the conversation notes are posted to the web for others to use. Pretty simple really. We'll see how it goes.