Where can a Seeker find belonging in typical American parish life? In Seeker Small Groups: Engaging Spiritual Seekers in Life Changing Discussions (2003) Garry Poole proposes small groups led by ordinary Christians as the best way to engage and evangelize seekers….
Genuine Places for Seekers in Your Parish
Paul in Athens: Pre-Evangelization Primer
I love the account of Paul speaking at Mars Hill in Athens in Acts 17. While pre-evangelization includes witness without words, we’re often called to converse or speak in the midst of pre-evangelization, and Paul’s speech is verbal pre-evangelization at…
What’s a Visioning Homily?
So your parish has a vision, and maybe even a catchy vision statement–now what? Vision that’s not communicated broadly falls flat. Because the point of vision is that it guides everyone. Not just the elite. Not just leaders. Everyone. How…
Learning in the Vineyard
We’re in the midst of the Octave Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Now, I don’t think this can ever be a happy, celebratory week–as this time of prayer and reflection exists due to our human sinfulness, our giving in…
Driving the Good News
A few weeks ago I pondered some images for what some of the distortions of the Good News look like for many adult Catholics–including those who are the special love of the New Evangelization, those who have lost a living…
Ponder the Theologies of the “Lost” Baptized
Mission to places “where entire groups of the baptized have lost a living sense of the faith, or even no longer consider themselves members of the Church, and live a life far removed from Christ and his Gospel” is a…
Talk About Heaven
As human beings, we seem hard wired toward sharing news when it’s great news. We enthusiastically communicate with others all the time when we have really good news to share. It doesn’t take any special training or programmatic preparation. So…
Book Review: Divine Renovation Guidebook
Our last book review covered a great “jump start” book, The Rebuilt Field Guide, one “that anyone can make it through, that any team can use to avoid becoming paralyzed by the myriad of (great!) ideas for evangelizing, and instead…
Book Review: The Rebuilt Field Guide
Are you a parish that just can’t seem to get started on moving from maintenance to mission? A place where money, staffing, your community (and more) have been viewed as insurmountable barriers to evangelizing? A parish that gets (or has…