P
PeterJohn
Guest
I have been working with my priest since lent on starting an evangelization program with its sights set on re-evangelizing our parishners, strengthening or parish family bonds, and evangelizing non Catholics as well as lapsed catholic. We have a small parish in the country side of northern PA that is spread out over 3 small towns. This area is seeing a new Pentecostal church that’s booming and we may loose a few kids to it when they graduate high school. My concerns started when I read about catholic mass participation statistics and statistics on what Catholics realy believe in terms of church teachings. I then read the literature on “The New Evangelization” and I realized the call to work with my parish on these matters, because in a realistic term, I am the church. I am not saying this in a self righteous way, what I mean is, that we are responsible for each other. The bishops can institute programs till there blue in the face but in the end our priests can’t do this alone. What is needed is someone to be first, someone to stand up and say “ok father so-and-so Ill take action.” So I hatched a little plan and passed it by my priest and he gave it a thumbs up. My plan was to start small, and over the period of maybe 2-3 years create clubs, groups, and activities based on a few categories: Men, Women, youth, children, Familiy and all of thee above. By creating such extensions of our church, we can have so many more instances where evangelization of new people can take place, and more possibilities where lapsed Catholics are welcomed back into the fold. These groups would be open to Catholics and their friends and would offer non-secular fellowship consisting of peers that believe the same faith, thus strengthening our resolve to be unchanged from the secular influence.
Ok, with that explained I’m proud to say we had roughly 10% of our combined parish attend the very first event we planned, which we named, Parish family fun day. It is basicly a parish picnic, but with our youth group kids meeting built in. After playing volleyball with fellow parishners I realized I will now see them out and about and have things to talk to them about, besides just Mass. We made bonds with one another in extra-ecclisial ways. We have funny things we can talk about with one another when we see each other at Walmart, besides just the normal wave hello and “how are you?”. I am now, after months of waiting for this day, reinvigorated in my determination to heed the call of the New Evangelization and I feel blessed to have tasted the fruits of it. Thank you Lord, thank you PJPI, PJPII, and BenedictXVI. I am thankfully happy that God has inspired our beloved popes for suggesting the New Evangelization. I welcome it and look forward to the fruits of a parish family that is gaining strength in faith as well as sense of family. I never even knew I had such awesome friends just waiting for me on the other end of the pew.
Ok, with that explained I’m proud to say we had roughly 10% of our combined parish attend the very first event we planned, which we named, Parish family fun day. It is basicly a parish picnic, but with our youth group kids meeting built in. After playing volleyball with fellow parishners I realized I will now see them out and about and have things to talk to them about, besides just Mass. We made bonds with one another in extra-ecclisial ways. We have funny things we can talk about with one another when we see each other at Walmart, besides just the normal wave hello and “how are you?”. I am now, after months of waiting for this day, reinvigorated in my determination to heed the call of the New Evangelization and I feel blessed to have tasted the fruits of it. Thank you Lord, thank you PJPI, PJPII, and BenedictXVI. I am thankfully happy that God has inspired our beloved popes for suggesting the New Evangelization. I welcome it and look forward to the fruits of a parish family that is gaining strength in faith as well as sense of family. I never even knew I had such awesome friends just waiting for me on the other end of the pew.