We are all afraid of going adrift because we don’t know where it will take us. I can totally understand that fear. I also appreciate the integrity of the bishops and pastors who genuinely fear that they will not be fulfilling the task given to them by Christ. However, if we are brutally honest, we can’t really say that we are fulfilling that task now. So why not try something new?

In my last parish, I was hired as the Faith Formation Director.  I was in charge of all education, from cradle to grave.  We had the typical problems every parish is experiencing today. There was a group of parents who were struggling to deal with the total absence of parent participation and engagement.

I began to pray and ask the Holy Spirit for guidance on how to best reach the parents and get them involved. We didn’t just want involvement; we realized that many of the parents didn’t really know Jesus or their faith. They needed to be evangelized. But how? Parents didn’t come to Mass and they didn’t participate in any activities where they might learn about him.

It wasn’t the method, it was the leap.

The Lord led me to a new method of catechesis. It was an “all generations” catechetical program. My reason for sharing this with you is not to point out the method as much as the leap of faith it took to try it. (The Spirit is the one who opened the hearts.)

I was going to mess around with one of the sacred cows of any parish. We were about to radically change the religious education landscape. During that time, I had a pastor who was willing to make that leap of faith and allowed me to give it a try. He earned his stripes that year as people began to complain and two dozen of the five hundred and fifty families left the Church.

Within a year, we had gained three dozen new families and had just over of 35% of the parish participating. I had to establish five new adult education studies because the adults of this sleepy little church woke up and found Jesus. They were hungry.

We Have Lost Our Way

As I reflected on the message we have been giving out in our religious education programs over the years, I came to realize that we no longer believed in the message. Instead of following God, we marched ahead with our same programs and watered down the message, fearing that if we told people that real faith is all or nothing, they would walk away.

Instead of teaching our youth the truth about God and his amazing love and forgiveness of sins, we stopped talking about sin. Out of fear, we used everything but God to attract teens to our program. Why? Because we believed HE WAS NOT ENOUGH. We modeled a lifeless/relationship-less religion as we sought to be like everyone else.

Until we restore the conviction of our message to the model of our lives, our message will fall on deaf ears. People in this world are dying to know whether Jesus is real. They are waiting to see if anyone who professes this faith in Him will really live their lives for him.

Even in our parishes, we don’t model a faith that believes that the Holy Spirit is capable of transforming our parishes, o we hold on to methods that don’t work. The only way I was able to explore a new method for reaching THE LOST was by dropping  the old one and trusting  that if God is leading – HE IS PROVIDING!

WHAT DO YOU “BELIEVE?”
“BE-LIVING”