I love the scene in the movie “Second Hand Lions”, when the three main characters go out to their garden and inspect the growth of their newly planted produce. As they looked more closely they realized that despite the description on the packages for various types of vegetables, they only planted corn. They realized that they had been deceived!

Every parish must examine the fruit of their efforts and see whether they are producing what they had worked for.

 

Like the wonderful characters in the movie, many parish staff are shaking their heads in disbelief. They cannot figure out why their parishioners are not responding to their requests for help and participate more in the life of the parish. Staff members are working very hard to produce great programs that few are attending. Many parishioners seem uninterested in going any further than what they have already done. Why?

For years we have been making the Sacraments the focus of our catechesis.

The simple answer is because this is what we (Parish Staff) have sown in their lives. Instead of attaining and growing in intimate knowledge of Jesus, our catechesis has taught them how to “look” Catholic, not be Catholic! Our adult education classes should be filled with hungry Catholic Disciples who want to learn more about Jesus because they have encountered him.

When you step back and look at your proverbial garden, you will see that sole purpose of catechesis is to attain the Sacraments. Is that not why many of your parents and their teens see Confirmation as the end rather than the beginning?

We have been catechizing with a great false assumption:

Everyone who is baptized has encountered Jesus!

The truth is that we have done little to no evangelization in our religious education programs. Catechesis has effectively replaced evangelization although the General Directory of Catechesis (GDC) clearly says that catechesis must be at the service of evangelization.

The local church is going to go into the New Evangelization kicking and screaming because they do not want to change.

Many parishes and dioceses will simply try to add an evangelization initiative to their other programs, hoping that this will solve their problems. Until we transform our parishes such that evangelization undergirds all other programs, we will struggle to gain traction in the New Evangelization.

If you want to keep producing the same fruits, do not change anything.

The kind of change that I am suggesting is to re-tool the entire parish. Every ministry must be focused on leading their people into an intimate relationship with Jesus (Evangelization) and equipping them to make new disciples (Discipleship Training).