Elegido

This is great. I wish I had it sooner. I will be using it next confirmation season and pass on to our director of adult faith for OCIA.

My husband and I have been teaching our parish's confirmation class for the past 6 years and we can't say enough great things about this program. Even though I'm a cradle catholic (my husband is the best convert), we both learn so much each time we teach this course. All the presenters in the videos and workbooks are so gifted and talented at explaining the faith. What a blessing this program has been to us and to our parish.

Five stars I started 3 years ago and will continue with every breath God gives me to Thanks Father Mike!

I am an adult leader for our parish's Confirmation class this year. I have appreciated the Chosen course curriculum greatly! Even though I'm a cradle Catholic, and a product of an excellent Catholic (grade) school education, I feel like I've learned so much about the Church and Catholicism. What a great way to teach kids, but also their adult teachers, sponsors and parents. Excellent!

This program was great teaching 7th and 8th graders who were catching up on their sacraments of confession, first communion and confirmation. Loved it. After using this program for the past 8 months, I have the following recommendations:
1. Move the opening prayer to the first agenda item.
2. Move the review game from the last of the prior session to the second agenda item of the current session.
3. Move the “It’s all in the word” to the third agenda item so that there is an understanding of key words and phrases that will be taught in the current session.
That’s it! Chosen was one of the best programs I have used to teach our Catholic faith to young adults.

The Chosen program for teenagers and their Confirmation was great! It is updated to reach teens where they currently are - wasn't just old people lecturing. The program also did a great job explaining concepts in a way that made sense and practical. I would definitely recommend this program.

A great course that really does cover everything. The videos and books are a nice supplement to the classes, and the resources that come with the program give you everything you need to facilitate and guide. It was also good to have today's modern Catholic faces for the confirmands to relate to.

We have used Chosen since it came out and have never been disappointed. We were happy to see the updated videos, and hope the next update will be an improvement on the tracking capabilities. It would be nice to see which lesson they viewed, and when.

We use Chosen for Confirmation as part of a two year
confirmation Preparation program. The video segments create interest between reading and lecturing.

I like the program, content, videos etc! We are not able to get through all of it but over all the program is good. The part I am having problems with is the tracking of each students progress in our program. The excel spreadsheet is little hard to read and not very user friendly especially with the size of the group we have. Trying to get some students to go back in and bring up the program is also another issue for us when they forget their password or what email address they used. There has got to be somewhere that we can go as coordinators to reset is for them instead of having to call Ascension every time.

Having been involved in the confirmation program in our parish for many years, I can say that Chosen is the best purchase we ever made! Just as the grumbles began with students that it was dated- the new edition came out! I see so much growth in our students over the course of the 24 lessons. My only regret is that there isn’t enough time to cover all of the material in each class.
( we only have 1 1/2 hour)

Sadly we too had high hopes for this program but didn't work for us. Tracking the on line component was not user friendly for us to manage a large group. No other on line activities have been developed. The books themselves are very wordy. Practically speaking we were using the videos to engage and we did not experience anything different than using a regular text book.

We used Chosen for the first time this year with our Confirmation candidates who are in a two-year program. We took the advice of the program and instituted a small group format, using our Parish Center to seat all Year 1 & 2 candidates together. Our leaders facilitated discussion after each video session and sometimes we rotated students to other groups so they would get to know each other. Even though our Year 2 students only got to complete about 9 lessons we know that the Holy Spirit was activated in this group - as we saw 100% participation in our retreat and also during our special Confession session at 10 am on a Saturday morning (remember these are teenagers!) we had 95% participation - last year we had zero attendees at that special session. Those fourty-eight Year 2 candidates were Confirmed this weekend and I am confident that the Holy Spirit set some hearts on fire thanks to Chosen. Our Year 1 candidates are having a "Chosen" retreat in February and will go through the first half of the lessons and complete the rest in Year 2. I am confident we will continue to see the presence of the Holy Spirit and our program will continue to be transformed as we incorporate the Chosen materials into our preparation program.

I recently bought the Chosen program but have been very disappointed. I had high hopes because I usually enjoy Ascension products. After just a few weeks of class I was sensing the youth were not engaged nor were they enjoying the program. I asked them for an honest assessment and was told unanimously (and reluctantly because they didn't want to hurt my feelings or be disrespectful ) that the videos were boring and cheesy. :(

I like the themes and the videos which are pertinent for children of this age. However, the spreadsheet that is available for participants in a group only provides a percentage completed rather than providing "Lesson 5 complete" or "Lessons 1-5 complete". This makes it difficult to track the progress of a large group. I've called customer service about this several times with no help or results.

I have used the Chosen program since it came out for our confirmation preparation effort in our multi-parish consortium. I like the series as it keeps the program on track and the information is good. They have excellent speakers. The short videos can hold attention and still allow discussions and activities.

It has a very traditional format of building knowledge from 'Why believe in God to Why be Catholic' to the sacraments, prayer and morals (like the catechism). It is much like a mini-RCIA course. Young Catholics today, especially those outside of the Catholic School system, often lack the basic foundation on which to build their faith knowledge. This attempts to fill that gap.

I find that having the parents attend also greatly enhances the success of keeping the students involved in church. Unfortunately, too many parents lack this information in their own faith development. If they come, there is both shared activities/experiences and the possibility of the parents being able to reenforce what was taught.

The updated version of the series has several pluses but a few minuses. Some of the music is more distracting. The animation is jerky (meant to hold attention) but can trigger migraines (at least in me.) I have never been particularly fond of cartoonish images of God, and they have some where they animate painted images.

I highly recommend this program.

Ascension has done a great job with Chosen. The videos are top notch and really grab the attention of teenagers, which is hard to do! They break down each lesson into prayers, videos, discussion points, quizzes, a saint, and a quiz. The modern approach and even the look of the workbooks make the series easy to navigate. I'm only three lessons in with my confirmation candidates, but I am sure it was the right choice to get through to today's kids.

We have used Chosen as our Confirmation Program for several years, and we love it.
Recently I was asked by our pastor to evaluate other programs to see if we could benefit by changing something. So, I did, and I confirmed that Chosen is the best and perfect fit for us. One of a kind Program.
We have weekly classes with the teens, and we need a program that is complete enough for them. Other programs have only 8 or 10 lessons, and do not have the videos and resources Ascension Press has. So not only we stayed with Chosen, but now I am implementing the "Venture," Bible timeline for teens for our 2nd year students and looking at "Connected" Social Teaching to improve their understanding of active discipleship.

Other great benefit is that Chosen is bilingual and has resources for teachers, parents and sponsors. It is very complete, and the new edition has improved the videos.
I want to thank all who work in creating and developing these programs for teens. We need them more than ever in today's world. Keep the Spirit flowing and may God bless you all.

Maria Elena Burgos
Confirmation Coordinator
Christ the King Church, Hollywood, CA

I’ve been using Chosen for Confirmation for about a decade. It addresses the many challenges emerging adults have to face today. The new program with online access materials is even better. I’ll be able to keep my confirmandi up to date even through absences. Tried many other programs but they lacked effort connecting the mind to the heart.

This past year was the first time we used Chosen for our Confirmation class. I thought it was a great program, user friendly, engaging videos and thought provoking discussion questions. This new edition looks even better, more variety and added graphics to keep the attention of teenagers! Excited to use it again this year!

The upgraded videos are definitely an improvement over the older ones. We will continue to use Chosen in our Confirmation Program again this year! Great program!!