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September 29, 2021Monsignor Timothy Perkins, Vicar General of North America's Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, in his chapter “The Evangelizing Mission of the Ordinariates” from The Anglican Patrimony in Catholic Communion, has written that the Ordinariates’ core mission of evangelization is “only beginning to come into the corporate consciousness of the clergy and laity.” Monsignor Perkins added that Ordinariate parishes should look beyond simply realizing ecumenism with Anglicans and also aim toward evangelizing other groups including lapsed Catholics, Christians baptized in other communities, and those without any religious affiliation.
In this article, I present four keys to successful evangelization and recommend six proven actions Ordinariate parishes can take to meet the challenge of evangelizing their communities.Key 1: Evangelize by Building Community Awareness
The first step in evangelism is to build community awareness of your parish and what you have to offer. There are at least three actions parishes can take to achieve this objective.A good way to enter the community’s awareness is to have a rich and vibrant social media presence. Almost everyone today interacts with social media in some way, so being online is essential. Many parishes establish their social media presence with a beautiful, up-to-date, and mobile-friendly website, with an attractive Facebook page, and perhaps with an informative Twitter feed.
Action 1: Build a rich and vibrant social media presence.Action 2: Offer beautiful liturgical events to the public.Another way your parish can stand out in the community is by offering a beautiful chorale Evensong or Compline service to which the public is invited. Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, for example, offers Chorale Evensong to the public on the first Sunday of each month. A well-known Anglican parish in Seattle offers Compline every Sunday night, and people come from all over the Seattle area to listen to the beautiful Gregorian chant and soak in the liturgical atmosphere.Action 3: Increase community involvement.Let your community know that your parish is alive and thriving by getting involved with local service organizations. Ascension Catholic Church in my community provides volunteers to help distribute fresh produce to needy families at the county food bank, sends volunteers to help at the local maternity support center, and helps to provide wheelchairs to individuals who are otherwise unable to obtain one.Key 2: Evangelize by Cultivating a Parish Family
Evangelism is not a one-person show. The parish priest, for example, can’t evangelize an entire community by himself. Successful evangelism is a group effort by people who like working and worshipping together. This means parishes should cultivate a strong sense of belonging to a parish family. Visitors can often sense the resulting spirit of love that permeates the parish and will want to be a part of it.Action 4: Organize your growing parish into small groups.To counter the feeling of isolation that a larger parish may engender, growing parishes should organize themselves into small groups that meet frequently for meal fellowship, prayer, and other activities such as Catholic Bible studies. Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston, for example, has organized parishioners into small groups of eight or ten who meet monthly for potluck dinners with no agenda other than to enjoy a meal together. At the end of each liturgical year, the groups are reshuffled so that overtime everyone forms many friendships throughout the parish.
Saint Monica Catholic Church, a growing parish to which I once belonged in Converse, Texas, conducted small group Catholic Bible studies both at the church and in people’s homes. Some of our non-Catholic neighbors who would have never entered a Catholic church came to our home Bible study and discovered that the Catholic faith is deeply grounded in Scripture.Key 3: Evangelize by Fostering Spiritual Growth
Evangelizers are at root witnesses to the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Recall Jesus’ words to his disciples just prior to his ascension: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8).
This insight means that an evangelizing parish should foster the spiritual growth of its members. While there are many ways to do this, conducting parish-sponsored retreats is one of the most effective.Action 5: Conduct Parish Retreats for Both Parishioners and non-Catholics.Many Catholic parishes now offer ACTS retreats, where ACTS stands for Adoration, Community, Theology, and Service. These retreats, which originated at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Schertz, Texas, are designed both to promote the spiritual growth of parishioners and to evangelize those outside the Church. There are many stories of people who have found Christ at an ACTS retreat and then afterwards registered for RCIA. One young woman I know put it this way, “I didn’t find Jesus, He found me!” She subsequently added a Master of Theology degree from Saint Mary’s University in San Antonio to her business degree and today is the Director of Development at a Catholic retreat center in California.Key 4: Train to Evangelize
At some point, evangelization becomes person-to-person, two people communicating heart-to-heart as Saint John Henry Newman once said. ( Read the Chapter “Seedtime: St John Henry Newman, Personal Influence and the Evangelizing Mission of the Ordinariates,” in The Anglican Patrimony in Catholic Communion). Opportunities for personal evangelism can happen anywhere at almost any time: at church before or after Mass, in small group settings, in the grocery store, or while visiting people in their homes, for just a few examples. Therefore, parishes should help their members to develop personal evangelization skills.Action 6: Train to evangelize person-to-person.The Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine has implemented one approach to parish training by offering twelve tips to help parishioners be successful evangelizers. These tips could be organized into a series of three or four workshops spread out over as many weeks. For example:
Workshop 1
- Witness by your life.
- Include God in your vocabulary.
- Become a person of welcome.
- Develop relationships of care and trust.
- Establish a common interest.
- Arouse their interest.
- Share your faith story.
- Present the “Christ-event” with love and humility.
- Extend an invitation.
- Facilitate incorporation into the Body of Christ.
- Do not condemn.
- Know when to stop.
Summary
Any pastor will tell you there is no simple cookbook guide to growing a parish. While the road to growth will be different for each parish, these four keys to successful evangelism, and the six recommended actions to implement them, provide a useful roadmap for continuing the journey:- Evangelize by growing community awareness.
- Evangelize by cultivating a parish family.
- Evangelize by fostering spiritual growth.
- Train to evangelize.
In this way, Ordinariate parishes and communities can truly meet the challenge of evangelization set down by the Catholic Church today.
Martin Fracker is a Catholic of the Anglican tradition and involved with the Ordinariate Members & Friends of Austin, Texas. The author's views are his own.More posts by this author:
Parish Movable Feasts: How Meal Fellowship Can Build Up the Kingdom of God
The Anglican Patrimony in Catholic Communion: The Gift of the Ordinariates (Book Review)
How a Baptist Fell in Love with the Catholic Church