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.
Your Next Talk Needs a Simple Narrative Structure
Is Your Next Talk Already Boring?
Testimonies are powerful because of their narrative structure. They have a flow to them that most talks, which are not based directly on human experience, simply do not have. And yes, most talks that you will hear (and maybe give) do not seem to bother with even a basic beginning, middle, or end narrative flow.
That is to say, most talks are usually a list of main ideas, coupled with supporting details, that have no sense of an overall, unified message. They are a mere grouping of individual, isolated elements connected to a topic. Some speakers, or certain occasions, may be fitting to use this approach. But, for the rest of the time, we evangelists and catechists should use testimonies, stories, and a simple narrative structure applied to the whole talk to help create the sense of drama, of meaning, and of flow.
How Not to Give a Witness
Last post I talked about the importance of giving a witness talk or testimony on a retreat or as part of your presentation because it is a change-oriented approach. The purpose of a testimony is to model what conversion to Christ looks like in the real world so your hearers can be assured that change is possible and real.
But there are bad ways to give a testimony, and some of them are pretty subtle. I wanted to address these right now before we move on to another aspect of teaching for conversion. Of course, I don't really do "subtle", but I do sarcastic really, really well.
And so here it is, if you want to give a bad testimony, follow these rules:
Bearing False Witness
- Talk mostly about your horrible (and exciting) sinful life. Out of an hour talk take 55 minutes to go on and on about how crazy-awesome-destructive your life was without Christ. Glorify the sin. Talk it up a lot. Make sure everyone is drawn into how depraved your life was and then, at the very end, mention how you met so-and-so who talked to you about Jesus and you stopped all that.