Religious educators learned new tips for energizing parish communities at a conference, “From Flame to Mission,” sponsored by the diocesan Office of Evangelization and Faith Formation June 4.
More than 45 attendees gathered at the Army Navy Country Club in Fairfax for the conference, which featured speakers from religious education nonprofits throughout the country. Msgr. William P. Saunders, episcopal vicar for faith formation and pastor of St. Agnes Church in Arlington, opened the conference with a warm welcome to participants and speakers, and announced that in the weeks following the conference, parish staff would have the opportunity to attend follow-up workshops, titled “Evangelization and Adult Faith Formation Initiatives Workshop.” The workshops will be held at St. William of York Church in Stafford, St. Mary of Sorrows Church in Fairfax and St. Francis de Sales Church in Purcellville throughout July.
Deacon John Green, a mission officer with The Evangelical Catholic, opened the conference with his personal testimony of faith. After a dynamic spiritual experience during his confirmation, he said he felt called to evangelize in the public sphere, starting first in his high school. He went to Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., in 1983 — often considered a hub of Protestant evangelical activity — but then dropped out and began work in ministry in New York City, serving homeless youths.
During his time ministering to the homeless, he encountered young male prostitutes, and their stories touched him: “It just broke my heart.” He returned to Wheaton to finish his degree and began a Chicago-based nonprofit, EMMAUS, which ministers to men exploited through the sex trade. Wearing small crosses attached to their shirts, the EMMAUS ministers “would go into a bar as male-female teams, and we would sit at a bar and just kind of wait for people to come to us and start talking,” Deacon Green said. The teams often would encounter male prostitutes, with whom they would strike up a conversation, listen to their life stories, and offer words of hope.
Not everyone may be called to evangelize to those on the streets, but everyone is called to evangelization in some way, Deacon Green said. “I feel like the Catholic laity are a sleeping giant, waiting to be awoken, waiting to set the world on fire,” he said.
The need is great, Deacon Green said, noting that permanent deacons and the clergy, “represent 0.09% of the Catholic Church … 99.91% are the lay faithful.”
Deacon Green walked participants through a brief workshop of The Evangelical Catholic’s resources. One resource included the “Baseball Diamond,” a flow chart shaped like a baseball field, detailing how to connect with those who are not religious and then how to move those individuals from merely sitting in the pew to become evangelizers themselves.
Deacon Green was not afraid to use the occasional odd acronym to make a point. “So, when we call people into formation, we look for people who are FAT: faithful, available, teachable,” he said, as laughs resounded around the room.
As part of the workshop, participants engaged in small group discussions at their tables. Suzanne Reinhardt-Johnson of St. Leo the Great Church in Fairfax said that faith formation staff at her table came to a consensus on a problem common to many parishes. “You get that same small percentage that does a lot of the ministries, a lot of the volunteering,” she said. If more parishioners in the pews engage with parish ministries, “then you have a bigger pool to become evangelists.”
After a lunch and lively conversations, participants listened to speakers from nonprofit Christ Life: Founder Dave Nodar and Assistant Director Pete Accosi. Like Deacon Green, Nodar began with a personal testimony, describing his involvement in the seedy lifestyle of rock ’n’ roll culture in the 1960s, before he had a reversion to the faith.
Nodar described a simple model, the “Three Necessary Levels of Conversion”: conversion to Jesus Christ as Lord, to a daily lifestyle of discipleship, and to enter Christ’s mission of evangelization. But in order to live a lifestyle of discipleship and evangelize, fellowship and small group discipleship are necessary, Nodar said. “We need brothers and sisters in Christ who we can really share our lives with, not only for (restoration) and holiness, but to be our mission. Mission has to be the basis of small groups.”
Msgr. Saunders said the impact of evangelization programs such as Christ Life and The Evangelical Catholic is not to be taken lightly, having seen tangible results of both programs at St. Agnes. In the local community outside of the parish grounds, “We have so many people, not just those who don’t know anything about God, but so many lapsed Catholics,” he said.
Father Ignatius Agure, parochial vicar of Holy Spirit Church in Annandale, said that the programs’ emphases on investing in small groups of people resonated with him. “Working with the small sphere of influence that you have to reach out and the group can go a long way — for me, is one of the enriching aspects of the first session,” he said. “We get our vision, we get our direction, and we see how we can reach out.”
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For more info on the evangelization and faith formation workshop, contact [email protected].
