The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Catholic Evangelization: A Target Without a Bullseye?

Episode Date: July 5, 2019

Ministry programs and apologetics are great, but there’s one area that parishes can often neglect: evangelization. Christians have a mandate to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” But so many Catholics seem to opt out of this and prefer to build programs that service the inner circle instead of welcoming in the larger community. We’re hitting the target, but not the bullseye. Jeff references Scripture passages and the seven parts of the kerygma to inspire outreach and evangelization in your parish and greater community. Snippet from the Show “We have a mandate to go and make disciples … but do the people in our parish know what the RCIA program even is?” To get the shownotes, email Jeff at [e-mail] or visit the website at ascensionpress.com/thejeffcavinsshow

You're listening to the Jeff Kaven Show, episode 123, Catholic Evangelization, a target without a bullseye. Hey, I'm Jeff Kavans. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven Show. Hey, thanks for joining me. We're talking this week. about evangelization on the show, and I'm glad that you could join me, and this is going to be a little bit different this week. I'm going to be sharing some things with you that I have been thinking long and hard about and making some observations, not only about Catholic evangelization

in general, but even my own walk with the Lord and asking myself the serious questions, am I really, really a disciple of the Lord who's out there sharing Christ with people, or am I more into just studying the faith. And so we're going to talk about Catholic evangelization, kind of the state of Catholic evangelization, and one thing that I have noticed that is missing big time, and that is that we seem to have a target without a bullseye. And I'm going to get into that a little bit later, and I think it's going to make sense to you, and it's really a call to a new level of evangelization and involvement in sharing Christ with other people. I think it's time and, you know, we're losing people in the church today, but I'm going to make some observations

about how we can stop this and bring more people to Christ and all the beautiful gifts that await them in the Catholic Church. Got a couple of emails, got a lot, a lot of feedback from one particular show, episode 119, parents write in your Bible. Got a lot, a lot. And Tom from the UK writes, and he says, I have three young kids and three godchildren. I bought six TGA, that's Great Adventure Bibles from Amazon, one for each, and six notebooks. The plan is for each child to have a day of the week on which I read and mark a few chapters of their Bible and write a short, dated note to them in the notebook, perhaps a prayer or just a chat about what's going on in our lives. what Tom is referring to here is that in episode 119, I challenge people to start to write in a Bible that they could give to their grandchildren or to their children when they're older that would be kind of a diary of your prayers for them and your hopes and dreams for them and some notes to them. And this really caught on. It really did. He goes on, Tom goes on, and he says in 15 years or so when they start leaving home for college or university or to get a job. I hope to have a personally annotated Bible in a library of notebooks for each of them.

Way to go, Tom. That's a great idea. Joanne from Texas writes, and she says, I love your podcast and listen each week. I was especially moved by your talk about writing in our Bibles for our grandchildren. I have already bought my third Bible, this one from you. I bought, or she says, I want to dedicate this new one to my grandson, who's only years old. And that's a beautiful thing. She says, unfortunately, since my college days many years ago, I cannot bring myself to write in books. I guess my college highlighting of textbooks just plain warm me out. I really do want to do this for my precious grandson, though. So I have a very specific question. She asks, I've already bought the pens, those as zebra brand that I recommended. No stock in

the company. She says, I also have the color, I want to get some colored pencils. My question, my question question is what brand? And it's an easy answer, Joanne, any brand. There is one called prism. I think it is prism, prisman, prismatic, prism, something like that. But any good colored pencil will work. There isn't really a special brand. But the colored pencils are really good to highlight certain verses. You can even highlight in yellow and then you can use another color and underline a certain word in the in the verse. And it'll cause that verse and that word to pop out. A lot of questions on that, actually, and I do appreciate that people asking questions about how to mark their Bible. And I believe I do have a show on that.

And the show notes, we'll put that in a past show on marking your Bible. So, appreciate you asking questions. And if you have a question or you have something you would like to add to the show, please email me, The Jeffcaven Show at ascensionpress.com. Ascensionpress.com. And by the way, the Great Adventure Bible really is doing quite well. We're coming off of a couple of weeks here where it was number one. And it says to me the Catholics are studying the Bible a lot. And they're getting into Bible studies and they're taking a scripture study very, very seriously. What I'm going to talk about today is going even a step further. It's good that we have been involved in apologetics. It is wonderful that we're in great

Bible studies. But we have, I think, a little problem. And that problem is in the area of evangelization, and that is bringing the good news of Jesus Christ out to the world, learning to talk to people at the coffee shop, at the ballgame, wherever it might be, there seems to be a target without a bullseye when it comes to Catholic evangelization. Now, before I get into this, let me preface this by saying that I do know that there are some fine ministries out there. St. Paul Street evangelization is one of them, doing a great job. And I know that many of the focus missionaries are being taught how to share Christ on campuses. And I think that that is amazing. St. Paul's outreach, another one. But by and large, what I'm seeing in ministries out there

is a lot of really, really good efforts at trying to get people involved in parish life, whether it's men's groups or women's groups and whatever it might be. But we are bringing people into the church, not at fantastic numbers, by the way, but we are really, I think, dropping the ball when it comes to teaching people how to be disciples and how to evangelize. And people ask me, what do we do about people leaving the church? You know, what is our response to that? And my response to that is that we, as faithful Catholics, as people who are Uber Catholics, if you will, if we don't learn to duplicate, make spiritual babies, if you will, lead people to Christ, bring them into the RCI program in our parishes, we're going to continue this downward spiral. And the only way that

we can really turn this around is for people to really develop that intimate relationship with the Lord to the point where they cannot help but share Christ with other people. And I'm realizing lately that we are, and I don't mean this to sound harsh, as I said, there's a lot of good work out there. But I think you'll agree with me that when you have a parish of 2,800 families and the Easter vigil, three people are coming into the church, we got a problem. And we've got to address that problem. We do. Our priests do. Deacons, religious, our bishops, the church, our dioceses, our archdiocese. We need to address this problem. And I'm realizing that we're cultivating in some ways a brand of Catholicism that is not growing. It's not growing the church, at least in America. I'm not as familiar with Africa

in some places, you know, around the world. So I don't want to speak, you know, about the universal, you know, worldwide church, but I can tell you from an American perspective, or maybe a Canadian, a North American perspective, that we're not doing really well in evangelization. We know there's a problem, but we also know that there's a solution in becoming disciples, and I think it's a matter of acting like that and learning how to share Christ with others. I studied quite a few apostolets and found one thing lacking, and that was this, that while they were doing, many, many, many good, good things. Don't get me wrong. The one thing that most of the apostolates that I took a look at, the one thing that they were missing was they literally were not

touching on how do we duplicate. How do we actually share the good news of Jesus Christ with other people? And so what I'm starting to see in some ways, and I would love to hear from you, If you're seeing this too, give me an email, The Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. But what I'm kind of seeing in my mind's eye, and I'll describe it to you, is I'm seeing a target. And if you've ever been to a target store, you know what I'm talking about, just a basic white and red target. But at the very center of that target, there's no bullseye. There's nothing to hit. But there's a lot of area in the target to hit.

But the one thing that seems to be missing is the bullseye. Now, what would the bull's eye be? Well, the entire target could be, it could be wonderful studies on prayer. It could be wonderful studies on a saint. It could be a study about a book of the Bible. It could be something about Vatican 2 or about a pope or the life of a saint. And all these things are on the target for sure. Don't get me wrong. They're on the target. But what is missing, it seems, is the bullseye, which is the basic the basic proclamation of the gospel. And I'm going to get into that here in just a little bit. So what I'm seeing is that we're creating a lot of ministry and getting the faithful to come to church,

and the numbers are going up a little bit as far as the faithful getting involved in programs of the church or Bible studies, whatever it might be. But it doesn't seem to be going out to new people and bringing them in as evidenced by the numbers of people at the Easter Vigil. Now, again, don't write me and say, well, you weren't at our church, because I'll tell you what, there are some really good churches out there that are doing a fantastic job. Let me tell you this little parable. A parable about a power plant. There was a power plant that was so unique and so powerful and so innovative that people

from around the world were coming to try to understand you know, how this power plant operated. So a group of people from Europe came over to the states and they got a special tour of the power plant and they showed them all of the facilities and it took about four hours to go through the entire power plant. And they were dazzled and amazed at what these American innovators had come up with in terms of developing power. And at the end of the tour, the tour leader said, are there any questions? And one of the guys from Europe, he raised his hand and he said, he said, yes, I have a question. He said, this is all fantastic. This is really, really amazing. But let me ask you, how do you get the power out to the people

in the city, in the suburbs? And the tour guide of the power plant said, excuse me? He said, can you ask that again? Yeah, sure. How do you get the power from the power plant out to the suburbs and out to the city, out to the people. And the tour guide leader said, oh, I'm sorry. There must have been a misunderstanding. Maybe I didn't say something very clearly. You see, all of the power that we generate here at this power plant, we use it to operate the power plant. And the visitor said, what? He said, yeah. Everything that we generate as far as energy here and power is used to keep the power plant going. Now, I think you know where I'm going with that. It's a fictitious story, but in some ways it's very true, isn't it, in that the energy and the power that we generate within the church, whether it's

the Office of Evangelization in your parish or discipleship or adult faith formation or young adults, whatever it might be. Oftentimes, the energy, power that we generate in our programs is used exclusively for our programs. It's just for us. You know what I'm saying? And therein lies the problem in that if we are simply coming up with ministries that create power and energy for the ministries, then what about the lost? What about the great mandate on our lives to go out to the world and to make disciples. Just like it says in Matthew 28, listen to this. Matthew 28, I'll put it in the show notes for you. If you don't get show notes, just send me an email in the subject line put, I want show notes, the Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. Matthew 28,

verses 19 through 20, says, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. You see, we have a mandate to go and make disciples. Yes, the power that we have received from the Holy Spirit. Yes, the good and wonderful things that we have received in our parishes, they are great, but they are for something greater than simply keeping the boat going, keeping the house lights on. It is to go out into the world. and so I'm kind of issuing a challenge to Catholic Apostolates, and you can share this show with them if you want to, and I've had an opportunity to speak to a number lately, and there's, I think,

a consensus, is that we need to start teaching our people at whatever level to make disciples and to go out and to be bold and kind and gentle and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with others. Now, the basic message that we have been given, and I've done shows on this, it's called the churigma. And the churigma is the basic proclamation of the gospel. And it is, oh, let me tell you, the shows, we did a whole show about, you know, brewing up a cup of churigma. A lot of people won't remember that, that word, but if they remember a curig machine and put a ma at the end, then you've got curigma. That's the basic proclamation. Show 48, show 73, show 89. We've got a lot of shows that we've been talking in the past about how to

proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. So the corigma is the basic proclamation, and that very simply put is, number one, and this is what we share with people, is that God loves you, number one, and he has an amazing plan for your life. That's number one. Number two, sin has interrupted this. It's disrupted. It has torn our lives from this plan. Number three, there's a solution, and that is Jesus Christ has died for the sins of the world. Now, I've said this on shows in the past. You may say, well, that just sounds so old-fashioned. I could never imagine myself saying that, my friend, and your ministry, we don't have another message. We can be clever and do all kinds of things. But if we don't have this message as the

target of evangelization, then we are a power plant that develops power for the power plant. So, number one, God loves you and has a plan for your life. Number two, sin has really, you know, broken this plan in our lives, and number three, Jesus died for our sins. Number four, we need now to repent, that is, to totally reorient our lives, radically reorient our lives to Jesus, get baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. join his marvelous family, the church, and we need to go out and make disciples ourselves. This is the basic message in the book of Acts. This is what we've been given, but this is the

bullseye, I believe, that is missing from parish life, from ministry life. It's not being taught from the pulpit. It is not being taught in adult faith formations by and large, and even people that are running ministries I have found in many cases, including my own at times, I'm not sharing with anyone, the good news of Jesus Christ. We've got to turn this around. I believe you're a part of that. I really, really do. And so the beautiful thing about the corigma is that it says in Scripture that the Holy Spirit

in Jesus confirms the message, and the message is the corigma. The message is that God loves you and has an amazing plan for your life. And this is what we share. We don't sugarcoat it. We don't put it in clever packages. This is the message. This is the message. And so the question I have is, is your ministry, is your parish?

Is your office of adult faith formation? Is your office of evangelization? is your director of adult fourth formation in your parish, are you giving the Holy Spirit something to confirm? Are you giving the Holy Spirit something to confirm? And this is an important question. I think a lot of times we have offices in diocesan levels that are kind of glorified event offices. as they put on events, but do they actually teach people how to share Christ with others? Again, there are some ministries out there. They're doing it like St. Paul Street evangelization.

They're doing a great, great job. I like what Peter says, 1st Peter chapter 3 in verse 15. It says, Peter says, but in your hearts honor Christ, the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect. Do it with gentleness and respect. I'm going to take a break when I come back. I want to go further with this,

and I want to give you some suggestions in your parish and your ministry that might contribute to turning this around, to where an Easter vigil wouldn't be great to say, see 40, 50 people. I know of a church in Texas that has over 50 that come into the church every year. Wouldn't it be fantastic and exciting to know that 100 different families were coming into the church because you're a church that evangelizes? That's what we're going to continue to talk about. You're listening to the Jeff Kaven show. 2,000 years ago,

Jesus Christ chose corrupt, broken, imperfect, sinful men to be the foundation of his church. And because these broken and perfect men chose to remain in relationship with Jesus, they became saints. And they were used by Jesus to transform hearts and minds. 2,000 years later, I invite you to check out my book, Broken and Blessed, where you'll find practical tools to overcome habitual sin, to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and to walk with an imperfect church toward a perfect God who is calling all of us to perfection over time. To order the paperback book or audiobook broken and blessed, visit ascensionpress.com

or Amazon. All right, we're continuing on to talk about evangelization. The title for this particular show is Catholic evangelization, a target without a bullseye. We want to make sure that we're providing a bullseye when it comes to evangelization, and that bullseye is the basic proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's something that we want to begin to share with others. Paul put it this way when he spoke to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 520. He said, therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. God making his appeal through us. We implore you on

behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. In other words, we as individuals, we as ministry innovators, pioneers, we as directors of offices in the a diocesan level, we're ambassadors. We are the ones who share. We are the ones who implore the world on behalf of Christ. Be reconciled to God. And so we've got to ask ourselves, do I do that myself? Do I do that in ministry? Do I do that as a director at a diocesan level? Do I do that as a parish leader? Or do I fall back on that common, common excuse? Well, it's not my gift. Evangelization is the vocation of every baptized person. So I want to ask this question and have you ponder it. And as I am in my own life, again, I'm thinking about these things too.

And I want to do something about it. And I'm trying to share Christ with more and more people on a day-by-day basis. But let me ask you this. What is success in church ministry? What is church success? What is the definition of success? How do we know if we've been successful? Well, our numbers, simply the evidence of success? Well, not necessarily. Fellowship, programs, having more coming this year than came last year. Are these the measures of success? Or is success defined by Jesus Christ, and that is that if we love him, we'll do what he said to do, and that we will be ambassadors going out to the world, and we will bring people into his marvelous family. Is that success? I think that is what success is. I really do. And do we need

a lot of the church programs that are being developed today? I think we do. But we have to put the bullseye in there, and that is evangelization and proclaiming the good news. You see, a target without a bullseye is a target that has nothing at the center, and so we go around the edges with everything else. So let me talk a little bit about your parish and about your ministry. I think if we're going to be effective in bringing people into the church and bringing people to Jesus Christ and then into the church, we have to become a very attractive group of people. We have to be welcoming. We have to have parishes that are welcoming people. Parishes where the staff loves one another and works with one another. Parishes where we're not divided by political guidelines of liberal and conservative and moderate. We're about Jesus. We're about a bridal spousal relationship. We're about faithfulness to Christ. And so, number one, we need to be a welcoming parish, a welcoming ministry. You know, if we want people to believe that we have been redeemed, we might want to

look a little more redeemed. You know what I'm saying? Instead of being baptized and in lemon juice, we need to be happy, welcoming, joyful people who are not afraid of the gospel and proclaiming it. We can't be. Number two, we need to really learn about the RCIA program. And the RCIA program in the Catholic Church, I can put something in the notes for you on that just to look this up. This is the right for Christian initiation. This is how we come into the church. It's a process. It is a process. And in my new book, The Activated disciple, I have a whole chapter on this about how do we bring people into the church. But the big question that I think ministries have to address, and parishes and diocese have

to address, is that do the people in our parishes, in our ministries, do they even know what the purpose of the RCIA program is? This season of of learning, this season of discerning, this season of growing in our understanding of Christ in his church. Do most of the people in our churches and ministries know anything about it? Or do they know what the Easter vigil is about? One of the things I've been asking people recently is about the RCIA program. And I ask them, do you know in your parish when that begins? Do you know what the process is? Do you know what a sponsor is? and I am, I guess I'm not surprised, but it is bothersome to know how many people are not even aware of that.

They're not even aware of it. And so has your pastor ever explained how people come into the church? Pastors who are listening, take some time a few times a year in your homily. Just give a quick announcement of this is the way people come into the church. here's the date where they're going to be enrolled and encourage them. Do you know anybody in your life? Do you have relatives? Do you know anyone who hasn't received confirmation, for example? I think this needs to be proclaimed from the pulpit more, certainly, and pastors should be explaining to their people the process of becoming Catholic. So if you don't proclaim Christ,

who will? And if not now, when? When is a it going to happen? When do we begin to focus on that target, the bullseye on that target? Paul said it this way. He said, in Romans 116, he said, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek. And this is what needs to belong to be put into every ministry and every diocese and every parish is we must know the basic proclamation of the gospel. We must not be ashamed of proclaiming it, and we must get used to talking to people about Jesus Christ. If we don't do this, we will have a target with no bullseye. We will have a power plant with power only to operate the plant.

We have to start learning how to make disciples. I feel very strongly about this, and I'd like to hear what you're thinking about this as well. You might be thinking, well, man, I agree, but I need to be trained myself. I need to be disciples myself. Well, I'm going to be focusing on this a lot going forward. Maybe I'll show up at your church. I'm going to be speaking about this around the country. If you want me to come to your diocese, your men's conference, whatever kind of conference you have, I'm going to be talking about evangelization and discipleship and hope to share some of these things with you. You can find that information on my website, how to get me to your event, jeffcavens.com, or you can go to Israel with me. We talk about it a lot. Still have some openings

for this coming January. And Father Mike Schmitz and I next June are going to be talking a lot about this as we bring hundreds of young adults to the Holy Land in June of 2020. You can go to my website and find out about that as well. Let me leave you with this scripture, shall I? Matthew chapter 9, verses 37 through 38, then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Evangelization, discipleship, these are very, very important. And again, I'm saying all of this today, not to put any minute. down or any diocese, anything, nothing. But it is to encourage you, to exhort you, to think about the

target and to think about the bullseye, and to ask yourself, is the ministry that you've developed, is the ministry that you're a part of? Does it have any room in there for the Holy Spirit to confirm the basic proclamation and grow the church? Or does it not? That's what I'm asking. It's something to think about. It's a challenge for all of us, but I really believe that the Holy Spirit in going forward is starting to put this on people's hearts and minds more and more, and it's not going to become, it's not going to be uncommon to hear people on a weekly basis telling stories of how they have shared Christ with others, and those people have come to a saving faith, a faith that that redeems their soul and a faith that will feed and nurture them all the way to the end.

Remember, I was saved, I'm being saved, and I hope to be saved all the way to the very end. And that's what we want to offer people out there in the world. Well, that's what I wanted to share with you this week. I just just been burning in my heart that we've got to put the bullseye back in the target and grow this beautiful family. the Catholic Church. Let's pray, shall we? In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Lord, I thank you for my brother, I thank you for my sister, and I pray that we, as people who do listen to Catholic podcasts and scripture, that we would be the people that begin to turn this around,

that we would be the people who set the example on how to proclaim you, O Lord, in the public square, at the coffee shop, during family events and at our parish. Lord, help us with courage and focus and gentleness and mercy as we proclaim you. And I pray, Lord, that there will be a day where sharing Christ will be something that is simply synonymous with the modern-day Catholic. Lord, we pray this in your mighty name, in Jesus' name. Amen. My friend, I love you, and I love spending this time with you. Pray for me, and I will continue to pray.

for you. God bless.