Regional Youth Council Conference 2008

The Mindanao-Sulu Pastoral Conference Youth Secretariate (MSPC-YS), together with the Regional Youth Council, will convene the 6th Regional Youth Council Conference on August 25-29, 2008 at the Teresian Daughter's of Mary Retreat House, Matina, Davao City.

The Regional Youth Council Conference (RYCC) is convened annually by the Mindanao-Sulu Pastoral Conference-Youth. Its nature is Formative and, if necessary, deliberative when there are issues and concerns raised in its duration.

Participants to this conference are the diocesan youth directors, coordinators and leaders in every ecclesiastical territory of MSPC.

This year’s RYCC aims at strengthening our MSPC Youth Ministers and Youth Leaders by the Word of God in and through Basic Ecclesial Communities.

Basic Ecclesial Community (BEC): a New Way of Being a Church

BEC as generic term for small faith communities emerging at the grassroots (BCCs, SCCs, GKKs, MSKs, KrisKa, Damayan, Pamayanan, Gimong & other local names)

They are communities, not organizations, prayer groups, societies or associations. They are not specialized groups but stable environment. The members often live in close proximity and interact with each other regularly.

They are referred to as a new way of being Church. They are the Church at the microcosm, the church at the grassroots-in the neighborhood & the village.

It is indeed, a vibrant and dynamic community of believers, mainly among the poor, striving to be authentic disciples, participatory and struggling to transform their own situation in the light of the Kingdom of God.

BEC Formation and the Word of God

This new way of being Church is not possible without proper faith formation. This is why BEC members undergo a lot of formation sessions in integral faith, i.e. in faith that can respond to the daily material or temporal problems of life, to problems of poverty and sickness, injustice and perhaps lack of peace in the community.

In the light of the Word of God – in the Scriptures and in the Church, the catechetical part of BEC formation is explicitly related to the Word of God and to the realities of life. It is a way of investing daily life with the dimension of faith. BEC members thus learn the meaning of God’s Word by the light of their experience and at the same time learn the meaning of their experience by the light of God’s Word.

RYCC 2008 Schedule:

Day 1:	Whole day	Arrival
August 25	5pm	Holy Mass
	630pm	Dinner / Welcome Program/Orientation
Day 2	8am	Bible Enthronement & Preliminaries
August 26	830	Input: Word of God / Reflection
	12nn	Lunch
	2pm	Workshop / Sharing
	330pm	Reporting
	430pm	Deepening
	6pm	Holy Mass
	7pm	Dinner
	8pm	Business Meeting
Day 3	8am	Preliminaries
August 27	830am	BEC Historical Background
	9am	The BEC: Mindanao Experience
	12nn	Lunch
	2pm	The BEC: Present Challenges, Opportunities and Threats (DADITAMA Experience)
	7pm	Dinner
	8pm	Solidarity Night
Day 4	8am	Preliminaries /Processing of experience
August 28	12nn	Lunch
	2pm	Business Meeting
	7pm	Dinner
Day 5	August 29	Departure

The Conference's general objective is for the MSPC Youth Ministers and Youth Leaders be strengthened by the Word of God in and through Basic Ecclesial Communities.

The following are the specific objectives:

That the Youth Ministers and Leaders shall have:

1. articulated the importance of the Word of God in their lives;

2. appreciated their role in and through BEC; and

3. manifested their commitment and become catalysts of change.

The Regional Youth Council Conference 2008 is hosted by the Archdiocese of Davao thanks to the generosity of the Most Rev. Fernando R. Capalla, DD and the support of Davao youth director, Fr. Leif Simbajon.