Forming Intentional Disciples by Sherry Weddell

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This book is for those of us who wish to evangelize like we are called to do. The best way to get non Catholics to join is to tell them about Christ otherwise they wouldn’t understand why Catholics do what we do at mass. This tactic is bringing people back to the church and bringing new people to the catholic faith.
 
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yankeesouth said:
From what I understand it is about bringing people to Jesus but without the Church.
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Not at all. The book is about Church, all about Church. How dying parishes can come back, how great parishes can reach even more souls for Christ!
 
The book may very well be about that but so far two advocates of the book that I have talked to espouse protestant theology in explaining it… Jesus Christ and His Church, the Catholic Church are inseparable.
 
Great. That is what I was looking for. There is no such thing as bringing people to Jesus or getting to know Jesus THEN we bring them to the Catholic Church. In fact, the more I think about it when we evangelize we should start off with CCC 795 and John 6, especially verse 53…

Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
 
yankeesouth: “Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

If I told someone this who did not know who Jesus was, they would think I’m crazy and not want to hear anything else about my church. How can you explain how awesome the church is, and it is awesome, without first telling who Jesus is?

If I had never heard of Jesus and someone told me I had to eat his flesh and drink his blood, I would run for the door. Therefore, it is essential that we tell people who Jesus is before we introduce the church. The book doesn’t say they need to have a personal relationship with Jesus before we introduce them to the church. The church is the church of Jesus so it makes sense that while we are discussion Jesus we would mention the importance of being part of his church. The book really is all about reviving the parishes, not about just Jesus alone. I would suggest reading it and discern it for yourself.
 
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Another factor is the Holy Spirit, who is the Light and Guide of the Catholic Church. The Spirit would not be sent until Jesus ascended from the earth back to the Father. Then, after Jesus left, the Spirit would be the life of the Church:

Jn 16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
Jn 16:14 He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Thus apart from the Holy Spirit, we cannot really know Jesus, nor have an authentic “relationship” with Him.

Holy Spirit + Church => possibility of authentic communion with Jesus the Son, and in Him the Father.
 
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SolaceSoul said:
If I told someone this who did not know who Jesus was, they would think I’m crazy and not want to hear anything else about my church.
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And yet it didn’t stop Jesus from proclaiming the Truth. They thought he was crazy and even those who claimed they knew Jesus walked away from him. It is better to feed Catholic Truth than it is to feed protestant pablum.
 
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I highly recommend reading the book. It sounds like you already have your mind made up and nothing anyone says will change it. I will not argue. If you have read the book and don’t like, fine. To each his own. However, I was hoping to reach out to others who have read the book and was encouraged by it. Peace.
 
I searched for certain words in Forming Intentional Disciples and these are the results.
Catholic (mentioned 500 times), Sacrament (110), Eucharist (33), Personal Relationship (28)
Also mentioned numerous times throughout the book were the words, Mary, Rosary, Confession, Communion, and Adoration.Just thought that was interesting.
 
I have read the book twice now. I have also went through a Called and Gifted 2 day conference and small group meetings that followed discerning charisms. I think of this book like a class or seminar that one might take on a subject; look for the one or two take aways that you can glean something profound or useful from and incorporate it into what you already know and have. If you are a strong catholic you can get a couple of useful insights from this book. If you are a weak catholic and it excites you it likely will get you going to the more full catholiic sources and help you grow. In the end I think it will do good.

Here are my more in depth thoughts…

It didn’t feel quite “on”. Not that it was “off” but not quite complete. I think there is an incompleteness in understanding charisms in the Church. I found very little when researching them due to the feeling it was not quite “on” and looking to see if it was “off”. I would like to see more sholarly work on charisms and how they can be discerned and understood better by the laity. This book is trying to teach something that I do not think it well formulated by Church authority but is just there without being flesshed out well.

I think there is differing “Thresholds of Conversion” and this book does give some definition to the different stages that Catholics fall into. Are these the best ways to understand these “thresholds”? I do not know that. It does provide more definition and awareness that not all catcholics are on the same page. Many do not know that God is a person in a sense that they can have a relationship with Him. But, the protestant way of boiling it down to “do you have a personal relationship with Jesus” is very pronounced in the book. I get that understanding this is vitally important but understanding it fully, in a Eucharistic sense, is the only way to understand it correctly. I am not saying that this book misses that, I think it is understated though.

I read it twice to better understand how to help someone move from a stage of believing in Jesus to actually being a disciple of Jesus. Not that this book gives that answer but that it helped me to better understand that this need is there and how to define the need.
 
To gain more solid insight into the charisms that are stressed in the “Intentional Disciples” school of discipleship, I suggest go to St. John of the Cross, his book The Ascent of Mt Carmel, Book three, Chapters XXX to XXXIII. (The chapters are all brief - don’t worry.). St. John is a Doctor of the Church. [Joint founder of the Discalced Carmelites along with St. Theresa of Avila. Doctor of Mystical Theology]

This link will take you straight to Ch 30 of this book of his: LINK
  • in Ch XXX - the following will deal with these graces known as gratis datae - or charisms (as in I Cor. 12:4-11; Rom. 12:6-8, and other passages).
  • in Ch XXXI - “Of the evils which come to the soul when it sets the rejoicing of the will upon this kind of good.” [namely, rejoicing in the charisms that the soul either has, or thinks it has, or wants to have.]. This chapter is very cautionary!
 
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Thank you for the link. I will definitely read this with great interest.
 
EXdrinker said:
It didn’t feel quite “on”. Not that it was “off” but not quite complete.
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That is certainly my impression I got but it didn’t seem a little off. The protestant notion that you can come to know Jesus apart from His Church is not just a little off.

795 Christ and his Church thus together make up the “whole Christ” ( Christus totus ). The Church is one with Christ. The saints are acutely aware of this unity:

A reply of St. Joan of Arc to her judges sums up the faith of the holy doctors and the good sense of the believer: “About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they’re just one thing, and we shouldn’t complicate the matter.”

I don’t know why we continue to complicate the matter. I think it’s a bad idea to water down the Faith in order to make the Catholic Church more attractive.

Another thing that made me skeptical was when the first person I talked to about the book brought up cradle Catholics and derisively called them ‘pray, pay and obey’ Catholics that did not have this personal relationship with Jesus. Pray, pay and obey…sounds like a pretty good relationship to me…we are commanded to do all three in Scripture!
 
I enjoyed the book and so have other members of my parish. It has really helped each of us grow spiritually. It has prompted us to learn more about ourselves such as our Spirituality Styles (mine is Augustinian) and now we will be going through the Called & Gifted workshop. Forming Intentional Disciples is the perfect wake-up call. If you allow the Holy Spirit to guide you, He will lead you to so many wonderful places! So much spiritual growth has transpired in just a few months since we started reading this book. I’m excited for what the future holds and can hardly wait for our next meeting.
 
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