Ministry Through the Lens of Evangelization

The following excerpts are used with permission from Father Jim Clarke’s, presentation at the LA Congress.Fr Jim Clark is the former director of the office of evangelization for the diocese of Los Angeles and presently director of Spiritual Formation and Chairman of the Spiritual Theology Department at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, CA.

Evangelization is sharing the good news with all peoples. The general scripture that we emulate to be a good evangelizer of the Lord is found in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John; the Woman at the Well. In this gospel, we find a woman alone, in a time when life depended upon relationships. She goes to the well to draw water at noontime to avoid the people who have rejected her. There, she meets Jesus and her life is changed. Jesus meets her where she’s at. The conversation starts with a common interest, a drink of water and then shifts to religion. She is so touched by the living encounter of the one who gives life that she goes to the very people who rejected her. She tells them, “He told me everything I have done. Could this not be the messiah?” Because of her testimony, the whole town went to see Jesus. In the ministry of evangelization, we emulate the woman at the well by using similar words; “This is what he did for me, could he not do the same for you?”

Pope John Paul II has given us a two step process for evangelization:
1) We evangelize by the way we live our life.
2) We need to explicitly invite people into the faith.
Meet people where they are at and listen to them. Invite them into the human struggle to find answers for themselves, engage the person to take a step further. Leave them with a question. Don’t feed them answers, engage adults by offering them food. Give them a question to reflect upon. Jesus gave children answers, he gave adults questions.
Some good questions to ask are: “How do you deal with mystery? “How do you deal with the unexplainable? How do you respond when everything goes your way, when you are in the groove, when everything comes together?” Use language that can be heard in the secular environment. Share with them an experience of God working in your life. Reflect on a time in your life that you were afraid, dejected, “it can’t get worse than this,” and share, using the framework, “Once I was…, then God did…, and now I am….”
The primarily reason, why Catholics leave an active practice of the faith is because they have moved. The average American moves once every five years. Finding a church is not on the top of peoples’ list of things to do when they move. People who have moved get out of the normal routine of going to church on Sunday. They don’t know which church to go to. A simple invitation from a neighbor “why don’t you come to our church with us,” could make all the difference. When was the last time you have invited someone to come to church with you for mass, scripture study or a social event? The primary reason people choose to practice a faith is because of a relationship. A person celebrating the sacrament of baptism at 80 was asked, “Why did it take you so long to become a Catholic? He responded, “no one invited me until recently.”

Luke 24, the Road to Emmaus, gives us the themes of evangelization.
1) Start with a question “What are you talking about? Listen to their story. How did it start? What do you think God is saying to your through this? What brought you to this point in your life? What led you here?
2) Help people see their experience in the midst of whole plan of God. Where have you experienced God in your story? Reframe the story to help the integration process of body and soul. Help unpack the lesson to see clearly, listen to their real needs and speak to their real needs. Help them to pay attention to what they have learned.
3) Ritualize it for them, (breaking of bread) honor the sacredness of what is. Ritual helps people see through whatever they are going through and feel God’s presence in it.

Remember that your faith is something you can’t keep to yourself, show the good news through how you live your life, smile and pass it on! We are to live our faith passionately and invite others into the full practice of their faith or joining us as Catholics.