Start here.
I have written here since 2010 on evangelization, parish life, Scripture, apologetics, and the moral life. These six are the best place to begin.
Go Home and Live as Missionary Disciples
If your faith feels humdrum, you may not have entered the mission yet. A talk to men on what that asks of you.
Formed By Distraction
Eliot described minds pulled from one distraction to the next. We now carry that in our pockets. What is it forming in us?
What Is a Catholic?
A plain answer: who belongs to the Church Christ founded on the Apostles, and what holds that Church together.
Why You Need Your Men’s Group
Before asking whether men’s groups work, ask what problem they are meant to solve.
Why Protestants Are Becoming Catholic at My Parish
What draws evangelicals and mainline Protestants into the Catholic Church, as they told me in class.
How God Speaks in Human Words
The first of four articles on how the Bible is at once a human book and the Word of God.
The Professional Church: Introduction
Introduction: An Unprofessional Story
A few years ago a parish ministry leader asked me to be in one of her big events as an Emcee. The event was just not my cup of tea, at all. I did not want to be in it, and so, politely, I told her just that, which should have been enough. A few days later, however, I was greeted with an email saying that, oops! she went ahead and wrote me into their official program and printed off 1,000 of them with my name in there. "So," she said "I guess you're stuck!"
I was furious and astonished that someone would do that.
In my reply I told her how unprofessional it was to try and paint me in a corner to do something I already made clear I did not want to do. Her reply told me volumes about parish work: "Professional? It's not like we work at Exxon or something! This is a church. You don't have to be professional."
Wow. Just wow.
So with that lead in, I would like to bring up some questions and draw upon the wisdom of the private sector to find answers to some pressing parish worker questions, like:
- Where is the line between being pastoral and being professional?
- How much should your local parish reflect the life and culture of a successful business?
- What practices, if any, should a parish incorporate from the business sector?
- What is the role of numbers in terms of audiences reached and money budgeted?
What I learned at Lunch about the Love of Jesus Christ
The protestors were united against a brutal regime, and they achieved solidarity in and through their faith, not in spite of it. Learn that lesson!He even got to speak on contemporary issues, especially what's going on in Egypt right now. He showed us a picture of an Egyptian Coptic Orthodox man holding up a cross next to a Muslim holding up the Koran, and how they are holding each other's hands. It was a gesture of solidarity.
Something fascinating and under-reported: in the midst of the protest, the Muslims cleared a path for the Christians to gather and to celebrate Mass and the Christians made room so that the Muslims could pray.
I don't evangelize. I'm Catholic.
Intro: I got it all wrong
Evangelization, evangelism and evangelical are all pretty much Protestant words for most American Catholics today. I considered myself one of those Catholics for a while. Catholics did not preach on street corners, did not pass out pamphlets, and did not knock on doors to spread the Gospel. If we did anything, the most we did was toss in the collection plate a few bucks on Mission Sunday in order to donate to those religious orders who were taking the Gospel to strange lands on the otherside of the world. Not the average pew-sitter's vocation.
Evangelization Before Catechesis
I talk a lot about the new evangelization and approaches that we take here at LayEvangelist.com that are based upon the new evangelization, but it occurred to me that some people might not understand what is so different about this approach than others.
In typical parish-based catechesis in the past it was safe to assume that parents knew the faith and were communicating it to their children and that, at least to some point, the culture was by-and-large supporting the Church's moral vision, and things like the Rosary and mass attendance were just another part of the average Catholic's life.
These assumptions can no longer be made, yet it seems that so much of our theology curricula come from this perspective.