Unpacking the Mid-Atlantic Congress

Last updated on: March 12, 2015 at 4:50 pm by Lisa M. Hendey

Unpacking the Mid-Atlantic Congress 2015-03-12T16:50:32-07:00 Lisa M. Hendey

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been — like most of you — in a whirlwind of Catholic news and my own busyness. While the eyes of the world were on the Conclave, election and installation of Pope Francis, I wanted to concentrate most of my blogging here on keeping up with that news.

But now it’s time to share with you a very special experience I had attending the Mid-Atlantic Congress in Baltimore from March 7th through the 9th. It was my great honor to not only attend, but also to “live tweet” the events both on my personal account and for the official Mid-Atlantic Congress Twitter account.

Lisa with Mid-Atlantic Congress MC and Speaker Sarah Hart

Now that I’ve returned home, I want to compliment my live tweets (centered here at the #MACongress hashtag) with a series of blog posts on the event. Over the next week, I will share a post for each of the sessions I attended to introduce you to the amazing speakers in attendance and to the themes they shared at this event for Catholic leaders.

Before we jump into those, I wanted to share some basic information about the scope of the event — for this purpose I’m going to share the official recap from the Association of Catholic Publishers, the organizing force behind the Mid-Atlantic Congress:

BALTIMORE, MD (March 15, 2013)—The 2013 Mid-Atlantic Congress (MAC) was hailed a success by its organizers and co-sponsors, the Association of Catholic Publishers (ACP) and the Department of Evangelization of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Despite weather that shut down airports in Chicago and Baltimore as participants, speakers, and exhibitors were making their way to MAC, numbers were strong and registrants reaped the benefits of their diligent journey to the Baltimore Hilton.

“Though the predictions were ominous, we saw nothing but smiles of joy and heard sighs of relief as attendees were greeted by the hotel staff and MAC volunteers once they arrived,” noted Therese Brown, executive director of the ACP and general coordinator of the MAC. “Those who persevered and made seemed very energized and renewed by the speakers, exhibitors, networking, and sessions.”

One of the new elements of the MAC was a day-long session for bishops only led by new partner, Leadership Roundtable. Through a consultative process, the bishops identified those leadership and management topics that were of most interest to them. Facilitators from Roundtable led large and small group sessions. The bishops also had the opportunity to interact with the Congress participants during lunch and the afternoon’s resource and networking time.

In the end, there were 1,300 people participating, representing 23 states and 55 dioceses.

The detailed final statistics (those who registered and showed up) are as follows.

Attendees Number Registrants

941

Volunteers

53

Exhibitors

229

Speakers

77

TOTAL

1,300

Type of Attendees Number Parish leader

645

School leader

91

Diocesan leader

120

Organizational leader

58

Did not select a type

194

Registration by state and diocese is as follows.

State

Number

California

1

Connecticut

7

Delaware

14

District of Columbia

38

Florida

7

Illinois

6

Indiana

3

Kentucky

1

Manitoba

1

Maryland

623

Massachusetts

6

New Hampshire

1

New Jersey

120

New York

74

North Carolina

22

Ohio

10

Oklahoma

2

Ontario

1

Pennsylvania

45

South Carolina

4

Tennessee

1

Texas

4

Virginia

103

Washington

1

West Virginia

47

Wisconsin

2

Mid-Atlantic Congress

Speaking

Previous Post

March 18, 2013

Pope Francis on the Priesthood and the Eucharist

Next Post

March 20, 2013 Building Intercultural Competence for Ministers - Unpacking #MACongress

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category @Pontifex Books Catholic Geek Stuff Catholic Moments Family Life Good Measures Liturgical Calendar New Evangelization News Reviews Rwanda Saints Speaking Tanzania Journal Top Catholic Tweets Travel Uncategorized Vocations Yes

Select a Month August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: Luke records that Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his ministry.

Select your answer to see how you score.

FALSE TRUE