Why Do We Have to Preach for Evangelization in a Catholic Parish? (aka Evangelistic Preaching: Part 15)

This is the fifteenth post in a series on evangelistic preaching in Catholic contexts.

The parish is the focal point for evangelistic preaching because it is near where most people are. Most non-Catholics and Catholics who are in need of evangelistic preaching are not going to attend a diocesan rally, a retreat, or large conference—but, they may be regularly attending a parish or make a one-time visit to a parish in a time of need or spiritual inquiry.

How does a parish become a focal point for evangelistic preaching? First, we need preachers. Most parishes already have a combination of priests, deacons, and/or general [lay] ministers with homiletic training. Baptized faithful who are “orthodox in faith, and well-qualified, both by the witness of their lives as Christians and by a preparation for preaching appropriate to the circumstances” can be admitted by the bishop to preach (with the exception of the Eucharistic homily, which is not ordinarily a primary place for evangelistic preaching).[1] Parishes can take steps to help faithful parishioners discern the call to evangelistic preaching by cultivating a culture of sharing personal testimony, reflecting on one’s own conversion story in small-groups, and recruiting from within the flock.

The second key step for parishes is integrating evangelistic preaching into parish life. Though Mass is not intended to be a place for initial proclamation, certain Masses, i.e. Christmas, Easter, Mother’s/Father’s Day, and harvest or homecoming Sundays in certain regions, tend to attract a large number of visitors, a prime opportunity for evangelistic preaching.[2] Additionally, when parish leaders know the spiritual state of those in their pews well enough, they can determine what type of preaching is most appropriate for Mass, i.e. if most people are not yet committed disciples or evangelized, and Mass is the only opportunity you have to reach them–then even ordinary Eucharistic preaching probably needs to be evangelistic at heart (while making sure there are then other opportunities for more catechetical or discipleship oriented preaching for mature believers).

Parishes can also consider adding a service designed for evangelistic preaching. For many parishes this requires a radical re-orientation from an nearly exclusive focus on the “already converted” to allocating quality resources for initial proclamation, seeking to attract and offer something designed for the nominal believer or nonbeliever. This shift is at the heart of the call to the New Evangelization in the United States.

What might this look like? Possibilities for parish services[3] that incorporate evangelistic preaching include:

•       Taizé-inspired prayer services.[4]
•       Modeling a service after the XLT (pronounced “Exalt”) nights popular with teenagers and young adults. XLTs “combine quality music and a dynamic teaching with worship of the Eucharist in an energetic and reverent setting.  In other words, you are sure to hear a fun and relevant talk, some of the best new worship music, and experience the intimacy of spending time with Christ in Eucharistic Adoration”[5]
•        Reviving the Cathedral Vigil services (or other adaptations of the Liturgy of the Hours) popular in the Patristic era. A version of this is currently popular among young adults in Colorado.[6]
•       Making use of services that do not include reception of the Eucharist, since receiving the Eucharist is often not applicable for someone in need of initial proclamation and allows for wider use of the baptized faithful as preachers of the Word or Liturgy of the Hours as a venue for evangelistic preaching (i.e. Liturgy of the Hours, Liturgy of the Word).
•       Offerings modeled on small-group series, such as the Alpha Course,[7] or a retreat-based opportunity for preaching and decision, similar to a Cursillo.[8]

Finally, parishes can also bring evangelistic preaching outside the walls of the parish, to non-parish facilities. This includes offering evangelistic messages in public locations, virtually through the internet, using broadcast media, and in hospitals, Catholic schools, and prisons. Preaching in the public square is not limited to presenting a sermon. Processions and other visual aspects of the Catholic tradition offer settings where preaching could potentially be inserted, after the visual captures the attention and imagination of the audience.[9]

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[1] USCCB, “Complementary Norms: Canon 766 – Lay Preaching,” 2001.

[2] See “180 Week One: Easter,” a sermon preached by Fr. Michael White, March 31, 2013 as an excellent example of evangelistic preaching in an Easter Mass, http://churchnativity.tv/media.php?pageID=96.

[3] Charles Arn’s How to Start a New Service: Your Church Can Reach New People (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1997) provides how-to steps on planning a new/additional service.

[4] See the Taizé community’s website for examples of contemplative ostinato music, intercessory prayer, and silence as characteristics of Taizé prayer: http://www.taize.fr/en.

[5] “XLT: Teaching – Adoration – Worship,” http://emmausyouth.squarespace.com/xlt/, accessed January 2013.

[6] “Young Adults Pray at Vigil Praise,” National Catholic Register, 13 April 2013, http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/young-adults-pray-at-vigil-praise/.

[7] See the Alpha USA website for more information: http://www.alphausa.org/Groups/1000065342/Alt_Home_page.aspx

[8] For a description of the Cursillo movement, see: http://www.cursillo.org/whatis.html.

[9] See “Lift the City: A Catholic Eucharistic Flash Mob,” http://youtu.be/cZ5aYoSr3Hg and “No, Not a Wedding, a Eucharistic Procession,” http://newevangelizers.com/blog/2013/04/30/no-not-a-wedding-a-eucharistic-procession/ as examples of how the visual can capture the attention of onlookers, offering a potential way for parishes to evangelistic preaching to the public square.

Top 10 Homily Prep Tips for the New Evangelization (aka Evangelistic Preaching: Part 14)

Find out more about each of these strategies in this series on evangelistic preaching in Catholic contexts.

 

 

Evangelistic Preaching (Part 13) — Strategy Wrap-Up

This is the thirteenth post in a series on evangelistic preaching in Catholic contexts.

Our final three–strategies #8, 9, and 10…

The use of narrative structures in preaching, pioneered by homileticians such as David Buttrick, Fred Craddock, Thomas Long, and Eugene Lowry, has proved tremendously important for Catholic Eucharistic preaching since the Second Vatican Council—and for good reason, a faith community gathered for the Eucharist is participating in a meta-narrative that includes both the mystical and visible elements of Christianity. However, for the potential hearers of evangelistic sermons, this narrative is largely unknown and in a culture that displays tendencies of becoming increasingly episodic, rather than narrative in thinking, other sermons structures—i.e.  expository, textual, declarative, dialectical, rhetorical, polar opposites, pragmatic, topical, quadrilateral, etc.—may be better suited for evangelistic preaching.[1] Why not give some other structures a try?

 

For those who have already made a committed response to Jesus Christ, any application of Scripture or doctrine to their life is implicitly an invitation to deeper relationship with God. Yet, for the audience of evangelistic preaching, more explicit invitation to a tangible action is essential for encouraging response to encounter with Jesus Christ. Catholic ministers, Fr. Michael White and Tom Corcoran emphasize the importance of preaching the “outcomes of the message” and “life-change”—without this a preacher can easily fall into the habit of “aim[ing] at nothing” and “hit[ting] every time.”[2]

 

 

 

 

Stephen Wright observes a commonsense reality–response to the Gospel usually takes more than one pitch, more than one message. And, given our Catholic theology of the breadth of evangelization, we understand that any decision that flows from hearing an initial proclamation is just a starting point, not the final outcome. An initial encounter requires on-going conversion and life in the Christian community. Because of this, every evangelistic sermon should include an intentional what’s next—a clear step or follow-up action or opportunity for those who may have encountered Jesus Christ and are seeking a way to respond. It also points to the potentially fruitful use of series in evangelistic preaching, so that the preacher can offer multiple topics and build a relationship with a hearer.

Okay, so those are my top 10 strategies for preparing homilies [or sermons, or messages] with evangelization in mind. 

I’m not going to claim that these ten practical strategies for Catholic evangelistic preaching are the only techniques, but they are at least a solid a starting point, and every preacher will develop his or her own preferred methods and techniques. The underlying premise is intentionality, not just choosing one technique or imitating a particular preaching, but truly applying ourselves to the task of evangelizing our preaching. As the Venerable Paul VI wrote, “ evangelizing preaching takes on many forms, and zeal will inspire the reshaping of them almost indefinitely”—it’s our job to figure out how.[3]

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[1] Thomas G. Long, “Out of the Loop” in What’s the Shape of Narrative Preaching? Essays in Honor of Eugene L. Lowry, ed. Mike Graves, David J. Schlafer, and Eugene L. Lowry, (Saint Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2008), 126.

[2] Michael White and Tom Corcoran, Rebuilt: The Story of a Catholic Parish: Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, Making Church Matter, (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2013), 144.

[3] Evangelii Nuntiandi, no. 43.

Evangelistic Preaching (Part 12) — Strategies

This is the twelfth post in a series on evangelistic preaching in Catholic contexts.

We’ve reached the point of discussing how to preach evangelistically in our Catholic context. Here are strategies 5, 6, and 7.

Effective evangelistic sermons are memorable so that hearers can continue to ponder the message after it has ended, reviewing and considering (hopefully prayerfully) the call for action or decision. To help make a sermon more memorable, preachers consider clarity (if the one delivering the message can remember it without notes, then a hearer might also be able to remember the logic of the sermon and even potentially recount it to another person), repetition, not simply restatement, of key phrases, and use of illustrations.

 

“Present-day audiences are oriented toward story in sight and sound in addition to verbal instruction,” and are indeed “accustomed to receiv[ing] and shar[ing] much of our communication through images.”[1] The use of multiple media to convey a message could be as simple as offering Scripture verses projected on a screen  for those who are unfamiliar with a Bible or Missal [photo example: Fr. Michael White of Church of the Nativity, Timonium, MD], or as intricate as the use of interwoven theater or drama to communicate a message. Medieval preachers, for example, used a visual homiletic that included drama, plays, and a specific repertoire of gestures known to audiences from paintings.[2] When incorporated with care and discernment, the use of a variety of media can make an evangelistic sermon more evocative, vivid, moving, and memorable.[3]

In an evangelistic setting, where establishing the credibility of the preacher and a way for hearers to follow-up and continue to ask questions are of particular importance, creating multiple points of engagement can help create lasting impact for the sermon. This means considering opportunities for dialogue, discussion, interaction and questions after or during preaching, using the internet and text-messaging to offer opportunities for virtual engagement, and exploring how to make the audience part of the sermon moment.

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[1] Richard, Preparing Evangelistic Sermons, 155; Wright, Alive to the Word, 162.

[2] Thomas H. Troeger, Ten Strategies for Preaching in a Multimedia Culture, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), 12.

[3] Wright, Alive to the Word, 164.

Evangelistic Preaching (Part 11) — Strategies

This is the eleventh post in a series on evangelistic preaching in Catholic contexts.

We’ve reached the point of discussing how to preach evangelistically in our Catholic context and are discussing specific strategies for developing evangelistic sermons. Here are strategies #2 through #4…

 

For Catholic preachers, this is a significant difference from a liturgical homily in the context of the Eucharist or the Liturgy of the Hours, where a relatively large portion of Scripture is provided as the basis for preaching and well-crafted integration of diverse texts is encouraged as a fruitful means of reflection for the assembly. When preaching evangelistically, one often has greater choice of text and should carefully consider, if the text can be readily understood without extensive background, if the text is effective with hearers who do not associate it with a particular place in the liturgical year, if the text will be visible to the audience during the sermon, and if a distinctly Catholic hermeneutic is required to grasp the message of the sermon. In many cases, texts for evangelistic sermons will often be much shorter than selections of Scripture used for catechetical or Eucharistic homilies.

 

 

Again, this highlights another point of difference in emphasis when comparing evangelistic and Eucharistic preaching. Eucharistic homilies are intended to be essentially connected to Scripture and intrinsically related to doctrine and catechesis (USCCB, Preaching the Mystery of Faith, 23, 31). While this is appropriate for preaching to an audience of faith, hearers of evangelistic sermons often have misperceptions based on faulty factual knowledge of Christian tradition and the Catholic Church. Effective evangelistic sermons will often include a greater proportion of time spent on factual clarification and/or apologetics when compared to other forms of preaching.

 

 

In our information and media saturated world, “in which cynicism about what to believe or not believe is everywhere,” what makes preaching unique as a form of communication?[1] One element is the potential for personal connection between a speaker and listener. We cultivate this connection, this “fullest and most intense bonding between the preacher and those who share the preaching,” by offering personal testimony, appropriate intimacy and vulnerability, being relational and interactive, and sharing our fervor, passion, love, and genuine emotion and humor.[2] Many preachers accomplish this through the deliberate minimal use of notes, outlines, or memorization of a script for delivery when preaching evangelistically in order to maximize this connectivity (note: this also helps with simplicity of message!)

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[1] Joseph M. Webb, Preaching Without Notes, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2001), 29.

[2] Webb, Preaching Without Notes, 25.

 

Preaching the Kerygma. Preaching for Evangelization. It Doesn’t Happen By Accident…

Yesterday’s second reading from the Letter to the Romans (aka the Third Sunday of Lent, Year A) is one of those amazing Scripture passages that makes you stop. And just say YES! Lord, Thank you! Or utter an audible, Amen. Why? Because it’s a mini-kerygma, pure and simple.

Here it is:

Since we have been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have gained access by faith
to this grace in which we stand,
and we boast in hope of the glory of God.

And hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For Christ, while we were still helpless,
died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die.
But God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

I wanted to just jump out of my pew and rejoice when I heard this at Mass yesterday.

But here’s where a big gap arises. Anecdotally and statistically, it seems that the depth of the meaning of this passage isn’t known to most in the pews. And this is why evangelistic preaching is important for Catholic ministry.

After yesterday’s Mass, someone remarked to me:

“I think I’ve heard ‘the plan of salvation’ [preached] 1000% more in Protestant churches than Catholic ones….even though salvation is more than the ‘Jesus prayer’ why isn’t it being talked about more? We believe ‘I have been saved, I am being saved, and will be saved,’ but I don’t hear ‘salvation’ as a central theme in Catholic homilies the way I did in Protestant churches.”

I agree. There’s a need for evangelistic preaching in Catholic ministry. In places where ordinary folks will actually hear it. And this isn’t about copying Protestant preachers–not at all! Evangelistic preaching has a history in Catholicism that’s older than the Reformation.

Read my article about how and why to preach evangelistically in Catholic settings here in Church Life: A Journal for the New Evangelization. It’s a mix of theology, history, and really practical/pragmatic sermon preparation tips…so read only what appeals to you 🙂 Or, if you’re the visual type, check out these excerpts from my presentation on the topic. 

Evangelistic Preaching (Part 10) — Strategies

This is the tenth post in a series on evangelistic preaching in Catholic contexts.

We’ve reaching the point of discussing how to preach evangelistically in our Catholic context. Here I offer Strategy #1 – Enter into their worldview.

Thomas Long echoes this idea, cautioning, “it would be a mistake…to imagine that we are preaching to blank tablets on which the gospel can be freshly inscribed. The culture has been scribbling on those tablets,” with the messages that humanity is saved by knowledge and enlightened people will be ethical, human rituals are “at best unfortunate, and at worst contaminants,” and spiritual experiences and “heartfelt moments of illumination” are good, but “religious institutions are inevitably corrupt.”[3] By imagining the questions, fears, and joys of our contemporaries who hold these views, and using these perspectives as a cornerstone, we can develop truly evangelistic sermons.

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[1] Moyer, Show Me How to Preach Evangelistic Sermons, 58-78.

[2] Stephen I. Wright, Alive to the Word: A Practical Theology of Preaching for the Whole Church, (London: SCM Press, 2010), 28.

[3] Long, Preaching from Memory to Hope, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 77, 73.

Have you enjoyed this series and are looking for Part 11? Blog posts for this series are on temporary hold since an article-version has been picked up for publication. After the article is published, I’ll post everything again online. I appreciate your patience 🙂

Evangelistic Preaching (Part 9) — Definition and Homily Development

This is the ninth post in a series on evangelistic preaching in Catholic contexts.

Putting the elements of audience, content, and purpose together to form a definition, evangelistic preaching in Catholicism is announcing the message of salvation in Jesus Christ to nonbelievers in order to bring about repentance of sin, conversion of hearts, and a decision of faith.

On the surface, this appears to be a simple definition. Yet, many preachers who can comfortably prepare and preach Eucharistic homilies or catechetical sermons to the gathered community of the faithful are decidedly less confident in preaching an evangelistic message. Truly actualizing and embodying evangelistic preaching requires a complete orientation towards the world of the nonbeliever—a category that includes not only those who have not heard the Gospel or are not Christian, but baptized (and even fully initiated) Christians who have not made a fundamental response to encounter with Jesus Christ or who need to deepen this response—and this is no simple task.

So how do we develop evangelistic sermons?

Foundational elements of the homiletic method such as reading, listening, and praying with a text and/or topic, listening to and praying about the community, Biblical exegesis, choosing an appropriate structure, delivery, assessment, and others apply to all forms of preaching, regardless of whether it is pre-evangelistic, evangelistic, catechetical, or liturgical preaching, including Eucharistic homilies.

Beyond this general homiletic foundation, building a genuinely evangelistic homily requires intentionality. To aid in our collective rediscovery of vibrant Catholic evangelistic preaching tailored for our cultural context, I offer ten practical strategies for developing effective sermons that are authentically evangelistic in outlook.

 

Evangelistic Preaching (Part 8) – Purpose of Preaching for Evangelization in Catholicism

This is the eight post in a series on evangelistic preaching in Catholic contexts.

We’re in the final part of defining Catholic evangelistic preaching by audience, content, and purpose. Having identified the audience as nonbelievers (a term with multiple meanings in our Catholic context), and the core content as the message of salvation, we now turn to the purpose of evangelistic preaching.

The purpose of evangelistic preaching is to bring about “repentance of sin, conversion of hearts, and a decision of faith.”[1] This is the “conversion from radical unbelief to belief” mentioned in Fulfilled in Your Hearing that is not the primary purpose of the Eucharistic homily.[2]

Practically, this means that an evangelistic sermon’s message or topic is designed for action. It is not merely information about the core content, information about salvation, but communication intended to foster and cultivate conditions for a response of conversion.

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[1] “Bulletin…Synod [on] the New Evangelization,” prop. 9.

[2] Fulfilled in Your Hearing, 17.

Evangelistic Preaching (Part 7) — What’s the Content of the Message?

This is the seventh post in a series on evangelistic preaching in Catholic contexts.

We’re in the midst of defining Catholic evangelistic preaching by audience, content, and purpose. Having identified the audience as nonbelievers (a term with multiple meanings in our Catholic context), we now turn to the content of evangelistic preaching. 

The content of evangelistic preaching is the message of salvation—that through a living, personal encounter with Jesus Christ, who died and rose from the dead, salvation that beings in this life and fulfilled in eternity, is offered to all people, as a gift of God’s grace and mercy.[1]

This does not mean that in pastoral practice, all evangelistic messages are identical. Audience-driven topics such as universal spiritual needs (i.e. stability, hope, wisdom), intellectual questions (i.e. Does God exist?), and existential issues (i.e. broken relationships, direction in life) are all valuable starting points in evangelistic preaching to bring people to the core content that defines the sermon, and hopefully cultivates the conditions for encounter with Jesus Christ.[2]

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[1] Evangelii Nuntiandi, no. 26-27; “Bulletin…Synod [on] the New Evangelization,” 9; Deus Caritas Est, no. 1.

[2] Ramesh Richard, Preparing Evangelistic Sermons: A Seven-Step Method for Preaching Salvation, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005), 136-142.