By Thea Jarvis

The day before Fran Drummond was to give her workshops on base communities at the Archdiocesan Conference on Evangelization, she couldn’t pronounce the word “evangelization.”

“I knew what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t say it,” the friendly coordinator of Transfiguration Church’s Base Community Program recalled with delight.

“I told a friend that I was having a terrible time saying that word, and she assured me that if I was doing God’s work, He would put the right words into my mouth.”

At the conference, Fran’s workshops were enthusiastically attended, and she sailed through “evangelization” like a Ph.D. in speech therapy. But when she rushed home to share her success with her husband, she found she couldn’t say “evangelization” if her life depended on it.

Fortunately, the Base Community Program at the Church of the Transfiguration in Marietta has not depended on the mere pronunciation of a word. Rather, through the interest, commitment and cooperation of Fran Drummond, her co-workers Sharon Rhodes and Pat Easterwood, and their pastor, Father Ray Horan, the program is off to a worthy – if not wordy – start.

Base communities are Transfiguration’s answer to a problem faced by many churches in north Georgia – too much growth too soon.

After years spent in a “borrowed” storefront and a local Protestant church, the Transfiguration community was finally housed in a place it could really call home – an expansive, hangar-like facility that is a monument to Transfiguration’s emphasis on people rather than physical surroundings.

In spite of its new home, the parish, long an innovator in outreach and community-building, was growing too large to sustain the spirit of closeness and friendship that had been its hallmark. From a small group of 30 families, the church had blossomed into a stadium crowd of 650 units.

Enter base communities.

“In November of 1980, Father Horan asked me if I’d like to plan some neighborhood coffees, getting Catholics together for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon,” said Fran Drummond, noting that the model derived from the women’s guild tradition of suing neighborhood groups to provide for church functions and parish emergencies.

Through February and March of 1981, Fran contacted hosts and hostesses for 71 Cobb County subdivisions. She advised her neighborhood coordinators to “keep it simple” and make it an opportunity to meet old and new members of the parish.” Father Horan would appear at none of the coffees, sensing that talk would flow more freely without benefit of clergy.

Flow it did.

“One coffee lasted three hours,” said Fran. “They aired their gripes and their praises. They were so interested in talking about the church!”

Attendance ranged from three to ten couples, with some groups including whole families and others choosing to invite children to a later gathering.

As the coffees progressed through March, it was clear that they provided a valuable source of feedback. Transfiguration parish council formed a committee to investigate issues that surfaced as a result of the coffees, ranging from one person’s feeling of being unwelcome in the community to another’s expectation of a “real” church for worship services.

“Everyone thought that the coffees were a great idea,” Fran said. “After the first coffee, many wanted to plan more get-togethers, possibly on a quarterly basis. Some subdivisions are already making plans for a summer barbecue.”

For future gatherings, the parish registration list will be used to contact people, just as it has been used for the initial coffees.

“The parish sends me a new list each week with additions to the parish roster, as well as names of people who have left the parish,” explained Fran. “I give an updated list to the neighborhood hostess. In turn, she tells me about the next door neighbor who is Catholic but doesn’t go to church or the lady down the street who hasn’t been to church in years. We can then reach out and invite them to the neighborhood gatherings.”

Father Horan views the neighborhood coffees as “the beginning of what we are to call ‘base communities’ or ‘little churches’…a way for us to know our fellow Catholic Christians…as more than neighbors because we share together at the Eucharistic table of the Lord.”

For the Marietta pastor, the model for Transfiguration’s base communities is “the early church, which met in homes and supported one another in faith, in learning, and in all the needs that are a part of the growing of the people of God in Christ Jesus.”

The success of the Base Communities Program, he feels, is the fact that it is “something growing out of the parish itself, not something imposed from outside.”

As the program grows and people can comfortably reach out to one another, Father Horan foresees shared prayer, religious education, prayer support and ministering to each other’s needs happening within “little churches.”

“Our comprehensive family ministry will become part of the ‘neighborhood church’ so that particular needs or some particular ministry – for example – kids in trouble – can be shared without having to go too far,” he said.

In a world challenged by complexity and shadowed by isolation, base communities offer hope of simply sharing in real ways that can effectively meet people’s needs.

And that, Fran Drummond will tell you, is what “evangelization” is all about.