Tag Archives: evangelization

Telling the Story

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Dear Folks,

Story telling is one of the most basic human activities. We take tidbits of experience and weave it into a narrative. We don’t see directly into people’s minds, but we see their actions and hear their words, and put them together like puzzle pieces to get a picture of what they are like. We decide some people are our friends and others are not. Sometimes we can be mistaken, and someone who had acted friendly had been trying to take advantage of us.

In detective movies we see events, details and conversations, and in the end, the detective typically calls everyone together, weaves those tidbits into a narrative describing what happened, and reveals the killer. If the movie is well done, we say to ourselves that we remember those things, why didn’t we put them together?

In the Easter readings, we see people’s experience of the risen Jesus. Jesus explained how the Old Testament led up to the Gospel (Luke 24:27, 45-47). Earlier, Jesus suggested to scholars that the Old Testament pointed to His story, but they didn’t get it (John 5:39).

All creation was made through Jesus and for Jesus (Colossians 1:16), so all stories lead to Jesus. It is a matter of putting together the puzzle pieces. We have to start where people are at. We remember that St. Paul told the Gospel story one way to Greek philosophers in Athens (Acts 17:22-34) and another way to the Jews in Jerusalem (Acts 22).

If we want to tell the Gospel story, or a part of it, to someone, it really helps to hear their story first. It would be useful to know what experiences they’ve had with religion in general and Christianity specifically. Were they taught anything? Were they taught so poorly that they couldn’t recognize any goodness, beauty, or truth in it? Did they find it silly or trivial? Were they hurt or disillusioned? What do they believe strongly? What is important to them?

Sharing our knowledge of the Faith and our personal experience in a way that might be meaningful to others is more art than science. Most of us are not practiced in it, but we can learn, and that will be helpful to fulfill Jesus’ mandate to be his witnesses (Luke 24:48; Matthew 28:19-20). We can start by asking ourselves: Why is the faith precious to us? What strikes our hearts most powerfully? How are our lives different because of it? What have been our good experiences? What have been our bad experiences? What

have they taught us?

We are an Easter people. Let us rejoice!

Blessings,

Fr. Jim

We are All Called to Sow Seeds

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Dear Folks,

One of the things that really drains our energy is the feeling that we are working and not accomplishing anything. Ever feel like you are talking to a wall or nailing jello to a tree?

When we try to make things better, and things just get worse, when you put out your best effort and people seem not to care, when you keep speaking the truth but people still believe falsehoods, there is a temptation to give up and say, “What’s the use?”

God seems to have no problem putting us in situations where we are frustrated.

Ezekiel heard God say “Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have been in revolt against me to this very day. Their children are bold of face and stubborn of heart—to them I am sending you. You shall say to them: Thus says the Lord God. And whether they hear or resist—they are a rebellious house—they shall know that a prophet has been among them Ezekiel 2:1-5).” Jesus had many people walk away from Him, and many just refused to consider what He was saying. We are not going to do better than Jesus.

That said, this is not license to neglect learning how to share well. I have been on the receiving end of a great many extended talks that not only did nothing to persuade me but convinced me how clueless this person was. They seemed to go on and on, believing that they will be heard because of their many words (reminds me of Matt 6:7) and all this time I was getting further and further away from their thinking. Learning how to connect to other people requires empathy for how they think (that does not mean agreeing but does mean recognizing what makes sense to them. St. Paul did a great job of this in Athens in Acts 17, though people were not converted right away and many laughed. Part of the image of seed

is something that doesn’t sprout instantly; it takes time to grow. Changing the way we have thought for years and years is usually not done overnight. It can take years and several different experiences to shift our perspective.

Sometimes people are afraid of the term “evangelization” because they think that means they need to take someone from unbeliever to catechumen all by themselves. We remember God is in charge, and we are a small part of His much larger plan. Jesus’ image of seeds reminds us that very little things can make a big difference. There are some simple ways to cast seeds:

1. Learn something new about your faith and share it (it’s like sharing that we have found a new recipe or a new app for our phone, just simple conversation not a sermon).

2. Tell someone one good thing about your faith community (think of how you share how good the burgers are at a particular restaurant or how nice a certain park is).

3. Introduce yourself to someone you don’t know at church (relationships can strengthen people’s connection to the church. Some don’t want to talk, but they at least know that people care.

4. Create a holy moment (Michael Kelly’s term. It refers to a moment in which God’s love is more visible. If people know you are a Christian, and they are impressed by how well you treat people, that is being an ambassador for Christ).

An evangelist can simply be someone who looks for opportunities to cast seeds. One good encounter, however tiny, might predispose someone to be a bit more open to the next person that God sends them. Imagine the fun of seeing in heaven how seeds you have sown have borne fruit.

Blessings,

Fr. Jim

Watching the “Jesus Revolution”

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Dear Folks,

I recently saw the movie “Jesus Revolution.” It’s a fictionalized documentary of a real event, a Christian revival in the 1960s. It involved a Baptist Church that has grown stagnant, and then some hippies showed up. The pastor embraced their presence and sought to connect with them and involve them. This upset some of the long-standing members of the Church who liked things the way they had been. The pastor chose to keep connecting with the newcomers and working with a hip young preacher (played by Jonathan Roumie, the guy who plays Jesus on “The Chosen”), and some of the long-standing parishioners left. They chose their comfort zone over evangelization. The Church gradually grew

enormously, though not without difficulty (of course).

The movie makes the point that the young people had been lied to. They were told that casual sex would bring them love and that LSD would connect them to transcendence (LSD, Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, was a powerful and dangerous hallucinogenic, and we were all amazed that one drop would be a dose. We had no idea that fentanyl would be coming). When some found that it didn’t work, they were open to another message. Many were brought to embrace Jesus.

Now comes the question, what should we do today. We know that young people have been lied to, being told that casual sex and drugs will make them happy, that feelings are the highest measure of reality, and the meaning of life is something they make up for

themselves. Many are depressed, many are lost, and there are an alarming number of suicides. It sure would be nice to bring more of them to Jesus.

An important thing to note is that modern young people are not hippies. They are children and grandchildren of hippies, and they have very different perspectives. It would be a terrible mistake to assume that we can attract them by doing what we think we would have wanted when we were their age.

A lot of young families are drawn to more traditional, more reverent liturgies. If you go to where the Old Latin Mass in celebrated, you will find lots of young people. I don’t suggest

that the solution is that we all go back to the Missal of 1962 (I don’t know how to do it, and I never studied Latin in the seminary), but I suggest that what we were taught in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s could stand to be questioned, and that being willing to move out of our

comfort zone for the sake of the mission of the Church.

I’m not arrogant enough to say I’ve figured out exactly what will bring in droves of young people (and why should you believe me anyway?). I am bold enough, however, to suggest some principles:

• We accept that being a parishioner does not mean being a customer, but a coworker in mission.

• Therefore, it is not about our preferences, at least not primarily.

• Programs and gimmicks have not succeeded in making deep change. We need to examine our own behavior, and how we act as ambassadors of Jesus.

• As I’ve said before, we can all work on doing a better job of telling the Gospel story (learning in practice what is effective in connecting to people), working together as community (welcoming, inviting, and reconciling), worshipping God (yes, we can get better), and helping people in need.

• We can start small. We can learn something new about our faith and share it. We can tell someone something good about our faith community. We can introduce ourselves to someone in church that we don’t know. We can create a holy moment (show someone a bit of the love of God).

• Laughing at the pastor’s jokes is encouraged but not required.

If we do what we can, God will use us.

Blessings,

Fr. Jim

Sharing

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Hands Holding Share

Dear Folks,
Jesus calls some fishermen and tells them “From now on you will be catching
men.” Notice that He did not start with a promise of saving from sin, talk of healing, but of being fishers for souls. The Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church teaches that the “obligation of spreading the faith is imposed on every disciple of Christ, according to his ability (LG #17).” The question “are we dedicated to following Jesus?” cannot be answered without asking “are we dedicated to spreading the Gospel to all people (Matthew 28: 18-20; Mark 16:15-16; Luke 24:46-38)?” Our Church has been going through some serious challenges lately. What if God is allowing us to be tested, that we may show if we take Him seriously? What if part of the answer is how we respond to the call to share our faith with the world? The future of our faith communities could very well depend on how we respond to God’s call now.
The problem, of course, is that we were not taught how to do it, and it seems that most
Catholics have not been taught that they should. Even in the seminary, they did not teach us how to share the Gospel with people who did not already accept it.
We shall need to work on this for some time, but I would share some ideas to stimulate
thought and conversation.
United State Conference of Catholic Bishops put out a document “Go and Make
Disciples.” They described three tasks to spreading the Gospel:

  1. Grow in enthusiasm for the Gospel ourselves until it spills out of us. This is essentially a call to continue to be evangelized. As long as our love is imperfect and we do not see things the same way God does, we are incompletely evangelized. That task will not be finished until we are in heaven (1 Corinthians 13:9-12).
  2. Invite everyone, everywhere to share the fullness of the Catholic faith. This suggests if they are outside, invite them inside. If they are inside, invite them further inside.
    Everyone can come closer (see #1). This is evangelizing other people. Note the word
    “invite.” How do we invite people to something wonderful?
  3. Transform the world according to the love of God. Our society should be structured in a way that serves the life, the dignity, the flourishing of all people. This is essentially evangelizing society itself. This should keep us busy for a while.
    I would suggest the best book on evangelization is Acts of the Apostles. It shows the early Church growing like a grease fire despite determined opposition. It seems to me it describes the early Church doing four things: Telling the Gospel story, working together as community, worshipping God, and helping people in need. I say that if we get good enough at those four things, no one on earth can stop us.
    If you want a very simple way to start, I suggest some very basic actions: Tell someone one good thing about your faith community, learn something new about the faith and share it, Introduce yourself to someone you don’t know at church, create a holy moment (a moment in which our actions show the love of Jesus). Anyone can do this. Once we start, who knows where it will lead?
    The second reading for today is 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. St. Paul gives the most basic form of the Christian message, that Jesus died for our sins, rose from the dead and now offers us salvation. This is called the “kerygma,” and everything else follows from it. Part of telling the Gospel story is presenting the kerygma and doing it in a way that is compelling and persuasive. Simply repeating formulas that people have already heard is not going to make much of an impression, or at least not a good one. One might ask how we can talk about salvation to people who don’t think they need saving, and how can we talk about salvation from sin to people who don’t think sin is an issue? That, folks, is the subject of next week’s
    column.
    Blessings,
    Fr. Jim

Parable of Two Armies

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flint ak47

Imagine if you will two armies meeting in battle.  One is armed with flintlock rifles and swords and they are highly skilled with them.  They have had extensive training and practice.  The other army is armed with M-16’s, AK-47’s and rocket propelled grenade launchers, but haven’t a clue how to use them. They don’t know how to load or cock them, never mind how to clean them.  Which army is going to win?  I suggest the Catholic faith and its principles are not doing better in the marketplace of ideas is similar: we have the better message, but the world is marketing theirs better. Many people have a very negative understanding of Catholicism, and of Christianity in general, because those who say only the negative, and often distort the reality, are so much more effective that we have been getting the word out.

When the Church began, a small handful of people with no resources but the Gospel story and the grace of God were able to change the world forever.  The surrounding culture was extremely hostile; they thought following someone who had been crucified was the dumbest thing they had ever heard, and they held to highly decadent values.  Nonetheless, the mightiest empire that the world had ever seen was helpless to stop the Church from growing.  We have all the resources that the early Church had and more.

When most Catholics are taught the faith, we not been taught to be evangelists.  We have been prepared to be customers in the Church.  Even in the seminary, we were not really taught how to spread the faith to others, but rather how to deal with people who already believed. Much of the way we are taught to talk about the faith only makes sense to those who already accept its basic premises.  Furthermore, many, many Catholics stop learning about the faith after twelfth, eighth or even second grade, so they never learn the faith on an adult level.  But, they keep learning in other areas, so that faith falls behind.

We know that Jesus, the Son of God, became man and died on the cross to save us from our sins.  Okay, but what does it mean that He is the “Son of God”?  What does dying on a cross have to do with saving us from our sins?  Why do we need saving? What does it mean to save us? What is “sin” anyway and why does it matter?  When if we can’t explain that in language that they can understand, it is not going to make sense to them.  We are so used to our religious language, we have not learned to talk about this stuff without it.

Many people were raised Catholic and have left because they think it doesn’t make a lot of sense, or doesn’t make a lot of difference.  I’ve talked to a lot of them, and if I understood Catholicism the way they did, I wouldn’t be Catholic either. I wouldn’t be Christian at all.  They can have some strange ideas, and say terrible things about the faith (like, “so you believe that God put us here to guess the right religion, and if we guess wrong he will burn us in fire forever and ever, but he loves us.”). Whatever they were taught growing up, this is what they absorbed. It is futile to get mad at them for saying such things.  We need to focus our energy on getting the faith out more effectively.

We have work to do.  We need to understand our faith story better, and we need to learn to express it in ways that the world can find compelling.  If what we claim to believe is true, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the most powerful transformative force in the universe.  We just need the will and the skill to do it, and the world can be transformed.  Our weapons are the Word of Truth and loving action. God wants us to succeed.