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A future for Catholic evangelization: effort builds on what parishes are already doing
National Catholic Reporter, Sept 25, 1998 by Beth Dotson
Despite Pope John Paul's repeated Call for a "New Evangelization," many Catholics still cringe at the term. It brings to mind images of television preachers and door-to-door missionaries who exude overpowering personal charisma.
But there are kinder, gentler form's of evangelizing -- a point driven home recently by the Paulist National Catholic Evangelization Association, which has led parishioners in six dioceses to see that they were already evangelizing without knocking on doors or preaching on TV. When they mailed out church bulletins, took the Eucharist to the sick or organized a youth picnic, they were sharing the faith.
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And in that realization, the program's organizers hope, may lie the future of Catholic evangelizing efforts in the United States.
"Disciples in Mission" is the program designed by the Paulist association to transform ordinary Catholics into evangelizers. The effort is styled as a response to "Go and Make Disciples," the pastoral on evangelization written by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1992.
Six dioceses -- Lexington and Covington, Ky., Nashville, Tenn., Raleigh, N.C., Ogdensburg, N.Y., and Worcester, Mass., -- launched the program this year after beginning with training in 1997. The association worked first with diocesan leaders who then trained local parish teams to organize parishes. The goal was to think about what kind of evangelization the parishes already do and to strengthen their capacity through small prayer groups that met throughout the Lenten season.
In many of the participating parishes, the experience brought about two results after its first year: A new understanding of evangelization and a stronger parish community from which to evangelize.
"I had very negative ideas about evangelization because I'm a very a private person and couldn't see myself going out and grabbing people," said Pat Scully, a team member from St. Paul Church in Lexington. "Since learning about it, I am much more positive about it. I feel like it's something I want to do in the format [the Paulist association] gave me.
"I still don't want to go knock on' doors or grab people on the street, but the format of sharing our faith by example and by talking about the joy of faith [is something] I'm much more willing to do," Scully said.
It is such individual sharing that Disciples in Mission encourages. The parish materials include prayer booklets that preview the Sunday readings and prompt small group discussion with questions. Many who participated had never been involved with this kind of faith-sharing before.
In the Raleigh diocese, diocesan coordinator Terry Jackson said he found that converts to the Catholic faith are often more eager to participate than lifelong Catholics because they're comfortable with the idea of evangelization. He also found that small, rural parishes have a stronger sense of evangelization because Catholics are often in the minority and typically rub shoulders with people from other denominations who are evangelizers.
Mary Ann Pezzullo of the Outer Banks Catholic Parish in North Carolina had been involved in an evangelization committee in her former parish in New Jersey, but she had no idea what "sharing the faith" meant in practical terms. Pezzullo went through the training for Disciples in Mission and led the parish effort.
Of their approach, she said, "We're evangelizing ourselves first. ... First you have to get people comfortable talking about their faith."
Brenda Thompson, like Scully a member of St. Paul's in Lexington, said she thought Disciples in Mission would be good for their church community because it is undergoing a change. Rather than having its own priest, the parish now shares two priests with the other two parishes in downtown Lexington. "We're trying to do new things to bring the parish into a new era," Scully said.
With the many parishes across the country facing similar changes because of the priest shortage, Disciples in Mission sees the formation of small faith groups as one key to building the supportive communities that will nurture evangelizing efforts.
Franciscan Sr. Christen Shukwit is the diocesan director for Disciples in Mission in Lexington. She said that in larger parishes where it is difficult to establish a feeling of community, people will find a sense of belonging in small faith-sharing groups. "I think that's Our future," she said.
Though the ultimate goat of evangelization may be to introduce Christianity to those outside the church, an equally compelling purpose seems to be to strengthen the faith of those already connected to the church in varying degrees of commitment.
The team at St. Paul's, for example, formed small faith groups organized around scripture study. Promotional efforts included flyers, posters, sign-up days and personal invitations, along with a six-week prayer campaign and encouragement from the pulpit.
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