As we enter the Year of Mercy, declared by Pope Francis, dioceses and parishes are putting out resources to assist lay people to develop a lived response to Pope Francis’ call to a closer relationship with Christ and to acceptance of the tender forgiveness of the Father. We hope this year will animate our people to engage in reaching out through corporal and spiritual works of mercy to serve and evangelize others in a variety of ways.
 
Our publishing partners in evangelization and catechesis, have aptly created web pages, prayer cards, bulletin stuffers, group resources and more to help accomplish this. Of course, we want parish leaders to make use of these items, created by professionals. However, in our diocese, we also believe that there is much creative wisdom among our parish leaders, who are engaging in evangelizing catechesis on the ground level.
 
Here, we have begun to solicit from our catechetical leaders the ideas and practices that are starting to spring up in parishes around the diocese, so they can be shared with other leaders - sort of a digital exchange webpage where Year of Mercy resources are given and “borrowed.”  We’ll see how it goes but our catechetical leaders are excited about it and say they plan to use it.  Perhaps your diocese might want to create something of this sort for your leaders to share their best, most evangelizing Year of Mercy ideas and practices. Talk to your diocesan leaders about this.
 
Check out our page here. The responses are just starting to come in. We hope to build a good collection of sharable resources on the page. Stay tuned and check back soon! ​

Click her for the Diocese of Joliet - Year of Mercy Resource List.

It can be difficult to reach inactive Catholics in our parish. What if we re-envision our efforts as a journey together toward and with them, where we take the first step, the next one, and then the next? We have learned over decades that there are at least 10 steps to starting effective inactive Catholic outreach programs:

1. Choose and study the materials (print/online) about the program you want to propose. How much money and effort it will take to do this program?
2. Get extra materials for sharing with parish staff and interested parish members.
3. Make an appointment with a parish staff member to talk about the program. Was the same program tried before and failed in the recent past? What happened? Why?
4. Share materials with the staff member and explain how the program may fill a felt need in the parish. (For example: to reach people on parish lists who seldom come to Mass, to reach the inactive Catholic parents of children in catechetical or school classes, to help parents whose young adult children have stopped going to church, to help families suffering because of broken relationships, etc.)
5. Set a second meeting in two or three weeks with the staff member to find out what they think of the program.
6. If there is an openness to discuss doing the program, offer to go with him or her to parish staff meetings or other groups in the parish to explain and discuss implementing it.
7. If the pastor approves the program, develop a simple plan to implement it. Start small but always include three parts: preparation (what needs to be done to start?), the event or series (how the public part of the project happen?), follow-up (what  will  your invite participants to as the program ends?.
8. Form a team of 5-6 people to implement the plan. Seek pastor’s approval of each member.
9. Study the program materials with your team and do a dry run through it, using participant materials. Then start the program.
10.  If the proposed program is rejected, ask the parish staff member to help you understand why. Explore together what other program or approach might help the parish evangelize inactive Catholics. Begin again at Step 1.

 
John J. Boucher is a Catholic evangelization consultant and trainer. He served for many years as the director of evangelization in the Diocese of Trenton. He has authored/co-authored over 300 religious articles and many books including, Sharing the Faith that You Love: Four Simple Ways to Be Part of the New Evangelization and Mending Broken Relationships, Building Strong Ones: Eight Ways to Love as Jesus Loves Us.

This is a follow-up post to my broad reflection on Pope Francis’ trip to the United States last week.  The following is an email message I sent to catechetical leaders in our diocese, offering a strategy and a tactic for a narrow slice of parish life.  While the focus is on child and youth formation ministry, I would assert that there is a strong evangelizing element here, as we reach out to marginal parishioner families and non-parishioners.

In the light of Pope Francis’ visit to the United States last week, I would like to invite you to consider the following action steps. I offer them knowing that these weeks are some of the busiest of our catechetical year. Nonetheless, please take a moment to ponder them prayerfully and what they might mean for your ministry.

• We have, in this moment, a unique opportunity. It has been handed to us by Pope Francis (in his visit to our country last week). There is greater openness to Catholic faith and the Church than any time in recent memory. I believe it is up to us (indeed, not just catechetical leaders but all parish leaders) to seize this opportunity to both renew our Church from the inside…and also to be particularly outreaching. For us as catechetical leaders this can mean, among other things, that we conduct a plan of intentional outreach that invites families into our parish faith formation programs…now and throughout the fall. Please consider how you might wish to do this in your role in your parish. Yes, this might complicate things. However, every family that your outreach brings into the program will be pleasing to God and a blessing to the Church. This October might be the best time EVER to get word out in your community about faith formation and youth ministry in your parish!  Thanks, Pope Francis!
• Outreach doesn’t only mean to folks who have never been connected to us before. It can also mean taking extra-generous steps with our formerly registered families. A catechetical leader this week started calling her families who were registered last year but have not returned for this year. Here are the responses she’s been getting:
  • Thanks so much!  Your call is a wake-up call to get the kids in.  Thanks!
  • We can’t make our schedule work for RE this year.  We feel bad.  Home-schooling?  We can do that with our kids here at home?  Great!  Let’s do it!
  • Thanks so much for calling.  We appreciate you thinking of us.
  • (No answer.  Leave a message…or not, if you prefer connecting live with the parent.)

Please consider what you can do to help families in your parish (and in the broader community) plug into the life of parish faith formation…and, hopefully, the parish itself. Pope Francis poured himself out for us in his time here. What can we each now do in response to our Pope’s generosity and inspiration to turn “good will” into good outcomes for marginal and disconnected families in our midst?
 
Please comment below with your suggestions for turning the Pope Francis momentum into concrete action steps for evangelization and renewal. The sharing is so valuable.  (The first comment here in the diocese was from an RCIA director who has reached out to her list of former candidates and catechumens who didn’t complete the process previously.  Already, one woman is coming back…along with her sister!)

What does the momentous visit of Pope Francis to the United States mean for the Church going forward?  How can parishes leverage this powerful pastoral visit into a furtherance of our common missional agenda to evangelize? Having followed his words and actions carefully, and also listening closely to some of the cultural reaction (religious and secular), I’d like to offer the following insights. (I imagine these applying primarily in the parish setting, though they could be just as apt in diocesan systems.) 

1.  Every parish in the nation should engage immediately in two actions:  #1. Proactively consider how to incarnate the model and exhortations of Pope Francis into action; and #2. Consider how the parish will intentionally ready itself when, not if, the “Francis effect” comes to its door, in whatever form. I suggest that parish leadership gather as soon as possible to begin to discuss these two pastoral considerations with an eye on the remarkable evangelizing opportunity the Pope has handed us. 

In the Church these days, we worry about evangelization. We design programs, we train our people, we read and write and talk about it, we pray about it, we form e-teams. But there are very small, simple but important changes we can make in our churches that can take away the obstacles that may have been erected over time, that block our evangelization efforts. For instance: When visitors walk in the doors to your church, what do they see?

I recently visited a church where, upon walking in the main door, I was met by the backs of the liturgical ministers. They were huddled in the entryway, chatting about the business of who would serve at each station for Communion. I had to wind my way through the group of them to reach the cart with the missalettes on it, and then swim back between them to find a seat in the sanctuary. I caught myself apologizing to the people as I walked in front of them.

For me, as a "churchy" person, this is annoying but not a deal-breaker. I wouldn’t turn and walk out if I came into this setting, nor would I turn and slink into the sanctuary bookless, hoping I’d be able to keep up without it. But this would be a very discouraging start if I were new in town, or I was feeling some embarrassment about being there after a long absence, or I was thinking of joining a new parish. 

In our city the stoplights have signs hanging on them that remind drivers “don’t block the box!” They are there to remind drivers that the intersections should be kept clear to allow for free through-travel of emergency vehicles. I think it’s a good rule in our churches too. Don’t be an obstacle between worshipers and the sanctuary. Don’t block the path between the doors and the books, or the books and the sanctuary. Make it physically and emotionally easy for people to enter the worship space.

Indeed, the entryway is the natural place for ministers to gather before the procession. But anyone in that space should be facing the doors, smiling and saying hello to each person. Hospitality must be considered part of the responsibilities of all liturgical ministers. If a conversation needs to happen about the Mass plans, be sure it happens to the side or in the sacristy. No Mass "business" is as crucial as the business of welcoming people to the table.  

At the NCCL conference in Buffalo, Dr. Tim Hogan presented a keynote, Encountering Who? The Gift of the Cultural Hurricane:  How to build Bridges that Empower Parents and Transform Catholic Families.  A facilitated conversation with evangelization leaders followed asking the question, “What are the gifts in the cultural hurricane and how can we respond?”  

The conversation began with leaders from Texas and Florida, those who live in areas where hurricanes occur. They recalled their experience of hurricanes, sharing it is not the destruction of the hurricane remembered, but the gift of gathering, the communal aspect resulting that is life-giving, significant and remembered before during and after the hurricane. 

From this starting point, the group reflected on and began answering the following question:  “If a real hurricane can bring about communal gifts, can a cultural hurricane bring about similar gifts?” Collectively hospitality, hope and healing were discovered to be the gifts of the cultural hurricane.  

The following is a synopsis of our discussion on the cultural hurricane and some suggestions on how we might respond in our faith communities.

Beginning evangelization in a diocese or parish requires taking one little step at a time. I believe that the New Evangelization will truly occur when all the members of the Church come to understand that it is their mission to evangelize, not just the clergy or people who work in ministry for the parish/diocese. It has been a year and a half since I began to do parish Evangelization Team training in the Diocese of Beaumont, and it is truly going along “step by little step”.