Evangelisation Is Not A Solitary Task: We Need Dedicated Parish Teams

 Rt Rev Malcolm McMahon, Bishop of Nottingham and Chair of the Bishops’ Conference Department for Evangelisation and Catechesis (England and Wales), on the eve of Home Mission Sunday (21st September) explains why every parish should have a dedicated evangelisation team.

The model of a modern parish is of a people centred on Christ who are not inward-looking, but are constantly looking for and using opportunities to share their faith: this is something that we must strive to make incarnate as an urgent priority. As a Christian Community, we believe that Christ is in the midst of us and that he invites us to spend time with him, especially during moments of prayer, but that’s as a precursor to being sent out.

During this year of St Paul, it’s timely to reflect that the Apostle starts several of his letters, “I Paul, called an apostle.” He’s not here simply telling people who he is and naming his job, but he is clearly sharing that he is a person who has been called and sent out.  Similarly, we are all called to holiness and to centre our lives on Christ as a member of a parish, but we are also called to go beyond our Church walls to share the Word of God with others.

In a parish setting, clearly it’s not possible for everyone to commit in the same way to the Church’s mission. Yes, we are all called on a daily basis to share our faith, to be missionaries in our times, but committed groups of people are needed to animate, train and help equip parishioners to do this vital work. Parish evangelisation teams are essential therefore, otherwise there is a danger that this vital work, the reason the Church exists no less, will be side-lined and in some cases completely overlooked in favour of an insular-looking, “maintenance model” of Church, where an awareness of mission is lost in the mire of modern life.

A parish evangelisation team helps to form and support parishioners in the living out of the Gospel in their daily lives, in turn people will be given the confidence to explicitly share their faith with others. The starting point is our evangelisation and a team can help the baptised to reflect on their lives, draw closer to the Lord and then equip and encourage people to turn outwards, to publicly witness to others of the joy of knowing, personally and as a Catholic family, Jesus Christ.

The General Directory for Catechesis makes it clear that evangelisation is at the heart of good catechesis and also that evangelisation is at the heart of Adult Formation and the formation of young children. All the activities of the parish should have in view the overall work of evangelisation, so that more and more parishes begin to see themselves as evangelising communities.

Team work isn’t something that we should just associate with sporting endeavours, but is firmly rooted in the life of Jesus and the early Church: we’re not called to be solitary evangelists, even St. Paul travelled with companions. Jesus was the first to set up an evangelisation team of twelve, then came the seventy two and other groups of disciples who are mentioned in the New Testament. It is a good way to work.  It is a way that was taken up by Cardinal Cardijn who founded the Young Christian Workers. He saw the value of teams who are able to reflect on the situation in which they found themselves and coined the phrase, “See.  Judge.  Act.”  It’s something which empowered young team members to become leaders in their own milieu and this is a good model for any Christian.

To support the baptised in this task, for the first time, this year parishes in England and Wales have been sent a DVD – we’re delivering the material in a medium that is familiar to people in the modern world, so hopefully it will be picked up and used by parish groups, not just evangelisation teams but RCIA, Youth SVP and everyone. We hope its effect will be to support and encourage the foundation of evangelisation teams in our parishes.  It also sends out a message that the Church embraces the modern means of social communication.

Secondly, we are supporting parishes through offering a nationwide evangelisation training day programme. The person who is an evangelist has to have a deeper understanding of their own faith, so that when they share, they know what they are talking about. Every baptised person has to realise the need for formation and training to enable them to live out what they believe in their ordinary life situations of home, work and leisure. So some training to help them be up front Catholics is very important.  The DVD models many different ways of evangelising in today’s world.

The Gospel of day on Home Mission Sunday (Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard) reminds us that the Lord gives us life. The denarius that the workers were given kept them alive for one day, that’s why the Lord gave them the same amount. In response to the gift of life, we have a job for life which is to make the Good News of the resurrection of Jesus, and all that means for us as individuals and as a community, known and celebrated. The gift that we’re given demands a response for life, which is a job for life. This is what the bishops are hoping for and we believe all people of Christian virtue are called to give this example to others, that we are all capable of becoming evangelists, no matter how humble a worker in the vineyard we might be.

As Christians, we are not called to be hostile to the world we live in, but we are under an obligation to live and manifest the treasure of the Gospel we have been entrusted with. If we experience opposition, misunderstanding and marginalisation because of the way we live and share our faith, we are probably doing well, precisely because of the contrast between God's ways of doing things and what comes naturally to human beings.  Our way of living and being should provoke questions within those with whom we come in contact. As a Catholic Community we are called to be witnesses and I encourage the baptised to take a new step to respectfully make their faith known to those around them.

The resources referred to in this article can be accessed from www.caseresources.org.uk

ENDS