 So, how many are here from Ohio? Okay, Michigan? Great. What was some of the ones? New York? Indiana? Illinois? Virginia Beach? Where's that in Virginia? Okay. Pretty good, huh? I know my geography. Boston? All right, great. New Hampshire? Okay. Mostly northern states. Florida? Florida? Georgia? South Carolina? Okay, so all of you folks that are south of Mason Dixie Line, you're probably not experiencing what the rest of us are. So, how many of you are part of a parish that had to be merged with another parish? Anybody? See, okay, hand-folded. How many of you have been part of a parish in which the parish church was closed and sold? Just a couple. Okay. How many of you have seen a new church built in your diocese? Okay. In the last five years? Still more. Okay. All right. So, I'm from Detroit, and I've been an auxiliary bishop in Detroit for five years, and each year I've closed a church so that it would be sold. And I'm on pace for another one to happen in January. I don't think so. I'll be six for six. So, what a lot of us are experiencing in the Midwest and the northern part, the industrial kind of like the industrial areas is we're experiencing tremendous demographic decline. A lot of folks are going to Georgia and Florida in South Carolina and Virginia Beach. Yeah. Of course, you know, when people from those places come and visit Michigan in the middle of the winter, they always say, why are you people still here? Right? So, we've seen tremendous demographic decline. In the archdiocese of Detroit, in the last 15 years, our total sacramental activity, by that I mean baptisms, confirmations, marriages primarily, have declined by 50%. So, what I want you to imagine a graph across 15 years, you've got one line that's screaming down at a 45-degree angle. The one liturgical activity that's remained constant is funerals. So, you've got one line kind of going flat and another line screaming downwards. It's not a good pick. You don't need to be a sociologist to say, hey, there's a problem with that. Your input is declining rapidly. Your output is steady. So, I mean, praise God, many people or souls are on their way to heaven. But another 15 years, you know, what will we see? So, I share that as a setting for the kind of way I'm going to go through the call of Peter. And what I want to do as we're going through it is pull out certain dynamics that go on in this interaction between Jesus and Peter, and try to look at how those dynamics are just kind of like regular part of what it means to be evangelizing, because what Jesus is doing, essentially, is evangelizing Peter. And he's inviting him to an entirely new life. So, what can that tell us, teach us about becoming an evangelizing parish? You know, as I say, I've closed a number of churches. I've merged even more. I've presided over the merger. I've been involved with these merging. And so, you've got people from two warring parishes trying to become one parish, which is part of our problem where I'll get to that. And they'll say, yeah, but our parish merged with another parish, and now we're merging. That merged parish is merging with another parish. When is this going to stop? How do we make sure this doesn't happen again? And the only answer is grow. You know, it's actually natural for churches to grow. The only things that don't grow are dead things. So, part of what we're facing is the need for what Pope Francis will call pastoral conversion. We definitely need personal conversion, but we need pastoral conversion as well, because, you know, there's a business tautology. Your organization is perfectly designed to produce the results that you are currently getting. So, in the Archdiocese of Detroit, if we're really happy with 50% decline in sacramental activity, we ought to just keep on doing what we're doing because we're doing great at it. If you've got any kind of feeling, intimation that, you know, this ain't working. Maybe we should try something different. That's what we're actually being called to in the New Evangelization. At the heart of the New Evangelization is this pastoral conversion. It requires conversion, first of all, of heart. It means taking stock of the fact that, you know, my parish is meant for every single person in the territorial boundaries of my parish. Each one of those people who have never stepped inside our church belong to us. I have the responsibility. And I mean me as an individual, not as a bishop. It's not my job altogether. But each one of us has a responsibility for the evangelization of every man, woman, and child. I won't go as far as St. Mark in Mark 16. He says they went out and preached the gospel to... God, Jesus said, go out and preach the gospel to every creature. All right, so I'll leave the dogs and cats to you. But we have responsibility. And it takes a conversion of heart to accept that responsibility. Because it means I have to invite people who are not my same ethnicity. So many of our parishes are based on ethnicity, not my socioeconomic group. So many of our parishes are based on socioeconomic groups, mainly because of geographical location. My heart needs to be open. I need to have a desire for the souls of people who don't look like me, who don't spend their money in the same places I do, people who sometimes might smell bad. That takes a personal conversion. But we also need conversion on the level of our pastoral practice. That's mainly what I'm going to make some indications about. So before we go any further, any questions or reaction right off? Please. Yeah, I will do that. She's a music minister in her parish. She's not getting new people into her youth choir. And so what are some ways that we can churn that around? Okay? Great. We'll talk about that. Excellent point. How about the laity? Go read. I went back when I... Okay, four years ago, the Archbishop said, Mike, I'd like you to start an initiative in the Archdiocese of Detroit to change the culture of the Archdiocese so that we would become missionary. I asked him if I had more than three weeks to do that. But then the first thing I did was I went and looked at the decree of the lay apostolate from Second Vatican Council. And in like paragraph three, they say, the first task of the lay faithful is the evangelization and sanctification of souls. Evangelization is the task of the lay faithful. And our embrace of the Second Vatican Council was great in bringing the lay faithful into like the governance and the life of a parish. You know, we created lots of places, we created parish councils. Now we have lay ecclesial ministers. And we brought, you know, and so you have ushers and Eucharistic ministers who kind of brought people in a certain way. But we've not, we've brought people in, but we've never sent them out. Because what the Vatican Council is saying, it's the lay faithful that are called to evangelize. You know? And so, yeah, because I, you know, I think myself, you know, I am trying to evangelize my barber. But he's the one person I sit with in, I mean, I'm a professional religious person. You know? And he's, you know, I, you know, he's the one that have at least a chance for an extended conversation. I mean, otherwise, I know everybody would be able to know who's in the church. It's the lay faithful. They're out in the field. So, excellent question. The lay faithful who are in the church, but only at church. Well, thank God they're in church. All right? And so how do we activate our lay faithful to go out? Like one of the biggest things I feel like is that we need to do is get the church capital C out of the church, small C. Right? Pope Francis says the parish is a field hospital. Right? That's one of the things he says. Okay, now think about a field hospital. What does that evoke? Military. Right? You have a field hospital on a battlefield. And so does everything, all the important stuff, where does it happen? In the battlefield. You just come to the field hospital, get patched up. So why? So you can get back out on the battlefield. That's where the real work is happening. One of our problems is that everything happens in our church. Everything happens in our parish. You come to the parish or Bible study. I mean, this stereotyping, I'm broad generalizations, but we say, oh, you've got to come to the church. You've got to come to the church. What if stuff happened in your home, or in your neighborhood, or at your work flat, you know, in the lunch room? What if we brought Jesus out of the church? Because maybe you heard that when Pope Francis, just before he was elected. He was speaking with all the cardinals. All the cardinals before the election have a chance to say something about the state of the church. And so he said, we need to break out of our self-referentiality. He said, you know, in the book Revelation, it says Jesus is knocking at the door. And it's clear that he's knocking so that we would open up and let him in. He said, now Jesus is still knocking at the door, but he's trying to get out. He's trying to get out of our churches and into the world where he's supposed to be, where we're supposed to be, where we are. And so, yeah, we need people coming to our church. We need them to go out, too. So, yeah. Let's be the last one, then we'll get started. Right. So, how do we market a product that a lot of people are walking away from? Well, we start with the individual. And the best marketing tool we have is very simple. Can you articulate the difference that Jesus has made in your life? If you can do that, if you can authentically say these are the things that are different in my life, because Jesus is in it, you're an evangelist. You have the heart of what you need to communicate the faith. It's pretty simple. I mean, it's simple to say, but to be able to articulate it, you can actually get help to do that. But if you can say what difference Jesus has made in my life, it's all you need. So, great. So, you get the feel of what we want to deal with. And, okay, one more. Yeah, strategy to build the youth and keep them in the church. One simple thing I'll say, I'm not sure it'll actually touch on it. We'll touch on it. But one of the things that we've done is we've invested in trying to cataclyse our children without evangelizing the family. You see what I mean? You know, I do a lot of confirmations. And I cause a lot of priests to lie. You know, I have to say, are these, you know, sufficiently prepared to receive the sacrament of confirmations that, yes, they are a father and inside, I'm going, fire! I mean, I could say that here, right? You know, it's... But, yeah, you know, because this is another thing, you know, I feel like we've done as a church is that we've lived in an institutional model that is to say, so my story. I'm not sure where you're going to get to this talk, okay? But, so my story is I grew up at the latter end of kind of like the old days of the Catholic ghetto. I grew up in a Catholic ghetto. 5,000 families in this neighborhood of Detroit. It was, you know, had a huge school. And, you know, the only way I knew who people were Protestant was that they didn't go to our church. You know, they went to another church because it was still a vaguely Christian environment. So I'm 58 years old or I will be in a month. And so I just kind of the tail end, at least in Detroit, of this kind of Catholic ascendancy. And my parents would bring me and my brother to the church, to the school. And essentially they said, okay, sisters, you make them Catholic. And they could. They had us for 30 hours a week. And we went to church. We prayed at home. There was, it was part of an environment that everything and even the outside environment, you know, there were no stories that we would do on Sunday. There was a generally Christian kind of stream working. And then in a few short years, the river changed directions. And we never changed. And so tons of my generation were just kind of washed away, you know. We went from, I didn't have the Baltimore catechism, but I learned a ton about Jesus. And I felt like I knew him as a kid. When we got into high school, actually middle school, you know, our eighth grade education was about Jesus Christ Superstar. Most of you are old enough to remember what that is. And where Jesus was kind of like this failed poet. And so I started to get confused. In high school there was God's spell and some of my, the religious education I got was just like it was deconstructing Jesus. That Jesus was just a cool dude who had good psychology. He could motivate people. And basically I lost Jesus the Lord. I just never, I couldn't locate him anymore. And I started to drift by the time I got to college. I was really drawn to the drinking culture. So much so, you know, at one point I got a phone call from a guy. He, we're, I'm over here at Doug Dooley's bar. And we need another bouncer. We're looking to hire another bouncer. So I thought of you, which I felt like was really complimentary. It suits my temperament. I was a linebacker playing football. I mean, the best thing I can, the only thing I knew how to do playing football was I could tackle people really well. And so it was like, man, that's a very attractive offer. Fortunately there was another guy, another friend of mine who invited me to a prayer meeting. I walked into the prayer meeting. People were doing this stuff and praying out loud. And I was freaking out. But apart from that, they seemed relatively normal when they weren't doing this, you know? And they talked about Jesus in the way I used to know him as a kid. I relocated Jesus. And it turned my life around. I don't know many in from my high school class who are still Catholic. We'll still be practicing. The world changed, we didn't. That's the call for pastoral conversion. So let me do my job now. I'm not really getting paid for this, but this is the job I'm getting paid for. So, okay, one more thing to offer. An awful lot of people are dying out, dying, leaving this world, or they are moving, going overseas someplace. And if the Catholic Church does not reach out to minorities, African Americans, Hispanic youngsters, and train them, put them on the street, congregation will grow in Virginia Beach in 1994, $100 a week so that we could keep the lights on. Now we have, because of the involvement of everybody, the ministers, the sisters, et cetera, members in our church, and we almost have to get a seat changed. The doors are open to everyone, and everyone can get involved in doing something in the church. Great, thanks very much. The main point, our culture has to change, which is part of the point here. Here, so we'll move on here. So, Luke chapter 5, on one occasion while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Genesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of them, one of the boats, which was Simons, he asked him to put out a little from the land, and he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. And Simon answered, Master, we toiled all night and took nothing, but at your word I will let down the nets. And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both the boats so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord, for he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken. And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching men. And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him. So, just to begin with, notice there's a contrast that Luke makes here. On the one hand you've got the crowd standing, they're pressing in on Jesus. They want to hear him. They've heard about his miracles. Maybe they've heard him preach before. Jesus had, you know, arguably the most fascinating personality that's ever lived. He was attractive. He attracted crowds. But notice here what... What's he looking at as they're pressing on? He sees two boats and the fisherman. Jesus is looking for disciples. He's not over... He's not enamored with the crowd. He's looking for disciples. That's just an important part for us to realize. You know, this whole sense of Catholic solidarity that we have is awesome. But it can crowd out or overshadow the fact that what God is interested in is a personal relationship with you. What Jesus is interested in is friends, which are disciples, not just fans. Can you feel me on that one? My sense... I use that contrast a lot in my confirmation homilies. So I ask, are you a fan of Jesus? Are you a friend of Jesus? And I don't mean to judge. I mean, I wouldn't judge an individual. But my sense is that a lot of what we see in our parish churches... Just the fact that one of these people say... So I came out of a very intentional communal experience as part of a charismatic community for a while. And so it was very intentional. You knew you were part of it, you made a commitment. And so when I came out and went off to be a priest, they were saying, well, you know, how can you do that? I mean, there's no faith in these churches. I said, the fact that they come at all, they've got tons of faith. I'm just not sure how focused it is. A lot of our people, sadly... Maybe not sadly, but they're part of the crowd. What this gospel has opened up for us is that what we're called to is discipleship. And that, even just that language, is not part of our vocabulary. We don't think about being Catholic in a sense of intentionality. We think of it more of, this is my inheritance. I'm entitled to this, because I was born Catholic, I was baptized Catholic. I mean, we have arguments about who should receive communion, et cetera, et cetera. And a lot of it, it's a sense of entitlement. Well, I'm Catholic, so I deserve this. What I'm going to say again, I'll say later when it comes up, is that a Christian walks around this world amazed. Why do we say amazing grace? Because it is amazing. Because we did nothing to earn it. A Christian, you can tell, is by this kind of sense of... I mean, you can be an introverted Christian and be amazed, but nobody can tell. But you're still amazed. I'm not judging you. You have to walk around all of... So many of our brothers and sisters who sit with us are there? I'm not judging you, but more about a sense of solidarity or entitlement or tribal allegiance, you know? So part of the tug is, how do you become a friend of Jesus? How do you move from being a fan to being a friend of Jesus? Here's the thing. Here's the start. They're washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little bit from the land. All right, so most of what we know about St. Peter is kind of whole legendary stuff rises up around him. He seems impetuous. He's a man of action, right? He took the sword and cut off Malchus' ear. He bursts into speech a lot of times. And so here's my first thing. So Jesus comes in, sees the boat, gets in, says, put out a little bit. Now, I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but my feeling that if Peter didn't already have some kind of trust, some kind of relationship with Jesus, Jesus would find himself wet, right? Off you go. Thanks for trying, you know? Jesus, in dealing with his disciples, already established some kind of trust, some kind of awareness of who he was. And so even when he gets in the boat, Simon's back, he's in the boat now. He's probably still washing his nets, and Jesus starts to preach to the crowd. Jesus entered Simon's life in a meaningful way in the shallow end, the lake of Galilee. He didn't get in right away and say, okay, put out into the deep. He said, let me just enter here, put out just a little bit. So Simon, you know, it was useful for Jesus, so he can, you know, there's this whole acoustic thing about water and everything. But Peter is just going about his daily business, and Jesus enters into his life in a very gentle way. And Peter has the opportunity to hear the message with very little demands on him, right? He's still working, but he's hearing Jesus. He's hearing the good news. He's hearing the gospel of God. So one of my questions is, in your parish, is there something like that? I mean, how do people who maybe don't know Christianity, people who have been away from church for a long time, how would they ever get into your church? How would they ever have an opportunity to hear just a little bit about Jesus? Because what I want to say is that if you say, well, we'll invite him to Mass. That's like throwing somebody in the deep end, right? That's putting out into the deep, right? I mean, the mystery of the Euchar is just so deep. And you know, if you invite him, say, well, come to my church. It's a really wonderful church. And then at the great audience participation moment, they're like, oh, no, you can't come up. I mean, that's not a problem with the Mass. It's a problem with us. It's a problem with our pastoral ministry. Are there shallow end entry points? Are there places that people can come? Maybe it's, you can just come for adoration. I mean, if a person is totally on church, they would take a lot of explaining, yes. But are there places where preaching is happening apart from the Mass? Is there a Bible study group that's maybe more like Lectio Divina rather than deep Bible study? You folks, I'm sure you can do some pretty heavy stuff. But are there Bible studies that people can just come and join and not feel judged? Just come and join us. Listen. Tell us what you think. We're open to everything. Are there places like that that we can invite people into an environment of faith? I think that's a good question for our parishes. How do people get in? Do we have a gateway that is not just, or does everything just happen at Mass? Is there something else? We'll talk more about that. Hopefully when I shut up and we can get back to the conversation. But that's the first thing we consider about pastoral conversion. It's first thing because it comes first here in the book. Maybe it's the very first thing. Maybe we need to fix our hospitality, our ability to welcome people period into our church even at Mass. But let's just think about that. Put that in your hopper is something to consider. And this is one other thing. I say evangelism comes from relationship. One of our priests in Detroit was just saying, who is God sending you to today? Who is there in your life? God is sending me to my barber. I know that. Who is God sending you to? Because we talk about saying, well, we should all go door to door, stuff like that, which just freaks us out. Who wants to do that? I've done that before. A, it doesn't work. I used to have a beard. So you would have doing this and thinking, I'm looking kind of intimidating. This is not like, yeah. So it doesn't work. Why? There's no relationship. The heart of evangelization is relationship. That was the way for Jesus, right? He had built up some kind of trust with Peter. How are we building relationships? Not strategic, manipulative relationships, but how are we taking advantage of opportunities to do something like, hey, my husband is really sick, he fakes an operation, and I'm just beside myself. And we'll say, well, yeah, I'll pray for you, but I hope it works out. How easy would it be to say, it's in situations like this, this is a place where I find Jesus really makes a difference in my life. Knowing that I have someone to go to to talk about this. How simple is that? You know? That's creating an awareness of, but it's my friend. And they're more likely to hear it from me or to receive it from me because there's a trust. The heart of evangelization is relationship. And a lot of what it takes from us is the ability, and also just the mentally, to be able to articulate. These are the things, the differences that Jesus makes in my life. So after he'd finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch. Simon said in Reply Master, we've worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your will, at your command, I will lower the nets. You know, I hear a kind of, really, in Peter's voice. I mean, are you kidding? Part of it, you know, yeah, he's tired, he's worked all night, caught nothing. I think part of it, too, is what do you know about fishing? You're a carpenter. See, Jesus is ratcheting up the claim. He's claiming to know something about Peter's life. So he's making a claim. He's offering Peter a chance to take another step. This is pretty crucial. Jesus has built trust. And now, in a way that's not... I mean, he's making a claim on Peter, but it's like, well, just pull out of the way and throw your nets in. You know, if nothing happens, that's cool, but would you do this for me once? It's not a big deal. Yeah, sure he's tired, but he's making a claim. What he's actually doing is he's giving Peter an opportunity to try on being a disciple, right? Because he's following Jesus' command, Jesus' invitation. Jesus isn't saying, you know, drop your nets and follow me right now. He's, no, he's just giving him a taste of what it would feel like to be a disciple. See, this whole evangelization thing is a process. And most of it is a process of the heart. Sure, there'll be, like, intellectual issues that people might have. There might be other kinds of, you know, obstacles for them. But most of it is the heart. And Jesus isn't saying, I'm getting out of the boat and you go do this. Jesus is staying with him. He says, let's try this together. I'll stay in the boat. Pope Francis is a big one on this sense of accompaniment. You know, when a person enters into a kind of the dance, really, that is coming to Christ, they need to be accompanied. It's not meant to be a solo activity. And so Jesus himself is accompanying Peter on this journey into the unknown of what it might feel like, what it might be to be a disciple. There's not a program for this. There are programs for other things, but it involves a personal engagement with another person who might have the same objections of Peter. But are you willing to walk with them? Even if they're, you know, they're still thinking, you know, they're still saying, I don't believe any of this. I think you're crazy for doing it. Can we walk with people? Are there environments that we can invite somebody to, again, to share their frustrations or to share their doubts? Maybe they're moral difficulties without judgment. Jesus isn't judging Peter. And I'm not saying that, you know, part of our issue as Catholics is that our kind of way of getting into a community starts with, I believe, therefore I behave, therefore I belong. And that doesn't work in the present age. And the joy of the Gospel is pointing to that, raising up this dynamic of accompaniment. What speaks to our culture today, because it's so atomized, it's so... People can't, you know, we talk here about these various communities, like, you know, the motorcycle community or the gay community or about all these communities because they're not real communities. They're just people who like the same kinds of things. People are dying for genuine connection with people. The dynamic that works in evangelization today is belong, believe, behave. I'll walk with you. You know, you're welcome here. And when you've encountered Jesus, then we'll talk about behavior. It's another dynamic that's not comfortable or, you know, not easy for us, but it's the way Jesus worked with Peter. Another, you know, another kind of, this is kind of a leap, you know, for our preaching. You know, for a lot of us who, like my generation who said, you know, I didn't learn the Catechism, but I made a lot of collages, you know, so for me, myself, you know, I am very deficient. Like, I could not tell you in order the stations of the cross. I remember having to lead them when we were on a pilgrimage to the seminarians. It was a walking stations of the cross. And I had to lean to the other priest because we would alternate introducing it. And I said, because I didn't know what it was. I never learned it. I mean, I never even learned the Ten Commandments for goodness' sake. Seriously, I didn't. When I was first year as a priest, I was walking through the school, the sis' grade teacher came out and says, Father, would you come talk to our kids about the sixth commandment? And she's continuing talking inside. I'm going, trying to figure out which one she's talking about. I never learned it in that kind of way. And I'm like, you know, that's just the way it was. So, yeah, for me, it was like, you know, we were just thirsty for doctrine. But what people are thirsty for now is, how does the gospel meet my needs? How does the gospel speak to things that really touch my heart? How does the gospel speak to community? Where can I find a sense of a place where I belong, even though I'm different than other people? Where is that environment? How does Jesus meet, you know, I'm worried about the future. How does Jesus speak to the future? How do we solve people's problems with the gospel? That's mainly, especially for preaching. But that's an important aspect of our pastoral conversion, that we can't just speak to kind of this pristine kind of doctrinal truths, which are huge. But how do they affect daily life? Part of that is, as we as priests need to believe that the gospel actually can change people's lives. That the gospel is the power of salvation. For all people. But that's an important aspect. Jesus is actually solving a problem that Peter has, a daily life problem. No fish. That means no money. That means maybe, you know, my family is going to go hungry tonight. Jesus is solving his problems with the gospel. In a very loose way. I'm really stretching on that one. The other thing too, he says, when they had done this, the fish, their nets were tearing. They signaled their partners in the other boat to come to help them. They came and filled both boats so that they were in danger of sinking. One thing I would point out here is that Peter put out huge catch of fish. What did he do? He called his partners. Odd blanket statement. I'll only attribute it to the arch-sized of Detroit. Our parishes compete with one another. Especially if they have schools. Why? There's a shrinking number of Catholics. Especially the shrinking number of Catholics who can afford Catholic education. And so we compete. Why? The more people I have in my parish, the more likely it's going to make a budget another year and we won't be the ones to close. They will. I'm not saying it's as malicious as that. But the fundamental dynamic that happens between parishes these days in Eastern Detroit is competition. We don't realize that if we were to put out into the deep there are tons of fish out there. So many that if it works we're going to need somebody else to help haul in the fish. That's not an instantaneous thing. But we've not been on mission. We've not been going after fish. We've been trying to take care of sheep. The two basic, you know, dynamics of what Jesus calls his apostles to. To be shepherds and to be fishermen. We're really good at being shepherds. I mean, so good we never let them leave the flock. Never get out of the pen. But we're not so good at fishing. If we're going to be good at fishing we have to be open to collaborate with other parishes. We can't do it alone. So that's another dynamic of parish life that I feel really has to be addressed. Are we willing, are we open to the idea that maybe my parish and this other parish are going to collaborate on a joint effort to evangelize people. We'll sort them out later. Right? Because that's where we heard that other image. They haul the fish in, then they sort them out. Okay, these go to your parish, these go to my parish. Are we open to doing that? I think that's a key in many ways, even just our whole attitude about being about parish ministry. A lot of what we our attitude is about we're going to provide the parish staff or the parish and volunteers are going to provide these things for you, the parishioners. We're providers of service. You can come have your children catacysed. We'll do your marriage prep. We'll do your baptismal prep. We'll do these things and you pay us money. It's essentially a consumer. I mean, again, I'm trying to pay broad strokes here. There's a consumer aspect to it. How can we change that dynamic to saying, listen, we all our parish, we have a mission to reach every person, every soul in this territory. We're in this together as a partner instead of providing an after school, school perhaps. How can we as the parish staff assist you, the parents in your primary role as the first proclaimers of the faith to your children? How can we help you in your job as opposed to saying, here we'll do your job for us? Maybe I'm saying stuff that is offensive, but I don't mean it that way. I think I'm trying to speak to the reality of what we're called to. If we're going to be parishes that evangelize that means we're parishes on mission. If we're in mission, we have to be partners with one another. It's not just this hierarchical kind of, I'm the general and I'm sending you out to face the firing line. We're partners in mission together. That's more of an attitudinal change, but I think that's an important one. Here's the amazement one. Simon Peter saw this. He fell at the knees of Jesus and said depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him and those with him. To me this is the moment that in many ways Saint Peter becomes a Christian. He's amazed. He's astonished. What I love here is that it said before that the catch of fish was so many it filled up to the gunnels. I've seen they filled their both boats so that they were in danger of sinking. I've seen there's in one of the kibbutzes in the city of Galilee there's a museum and they've recovered a first century fishing boat. It's probably the size of this part of the stage and maybe half is wide. It's an open boat. It's not like there's a deck and a below deck. It's just an open boat. If they filled the boat with so many fish it was in danger of sinking. Then it says Simon Peter fell on his knees. Now maybe it's just me but I'm just thrilled at the image of Simon Peter up to his elbows and fish at the knees of Jesus. Isn't that something? That's a man who's amazed, who's overwhelmed with this is evidently a divine encounter. Something out of the ordinary has happened. This is the beautiful thing about Christianity. This is the beautiful thing about evangelization. The success of evangelization which is a life changing encounter with Jesus Christ and I don't mean just a single one time turnaround but that encounter with Jesus that changes a life is up to Jesus. You and I cannot affect evangelization. We can't make it happen. All we can do is set up the meeting or help provide the conditions for the meeting. It's Jesus who has to meet the individual. This is the beautiful thing. In catechesis I was a catechist for five years before I entered the seminary so I know some of the dynamics of the catechism and it's all trying to get these kids to be interested in something like transubstantiation. I was hampered by a book that used that term and it's like it's an important thing but I get excited about that. In catechesis you can say here's the material and this is the key way we're going to deliver it and here's how we're going to test whether or not they got it and I'm involved with every moment of the process and at the end of the process they say yep they know it and therefore I can move on. Evangelization doesn't work that way because the heart of becoming a Christian is Pope Francis or he repeats Pope Benedict maybe you've heard this before being a Christian is not an ethical choice or a lofty idea but rather it is an encounter with an event a person that gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Being a Christian is the fruit of a personal encounter with the risen Lord Jesus Christ. And again it doesn't have to be one of those Saint Paul moments it could be something that develops over time but it's personal and it's something that Jesus does. So in a certain sense for me just kind of staying with Saint Peter if you're engaged in evangelistic ministry it's like you're stepping out of the boat every single day because you're cooperating with the Holy Spirit so that the Holy Spirit can do something that I can't do. I can't make somebody love Jesus I can't make Jesus meet that person in the way I want him to but I am convinced that Jesus wants it more than I do. I can't make somebody believe Jesus won't make somebody believe but he'll be available for an encounter. That's the exciting thing to me about evangelization it's that opportunity to see somebody go he's real if you never had that moment it's extraordinary but Jesus is faithful he'll back us up. Again at the end of Mark's Gospel so the disciples went off and preached the Gospel everywhere meanwhile the Lord confirmed their words by the signs that followed them we're aware of people being healed from time to time you hear that sometimes when you're on mission healings aren't guaranteed but signs which includes healings signs attend the preaching the Gospel Jesus backs it up that's part of the amazement that's the joy of the Gospel that the onus isn't on us it's on Jesus but he's powerful he wants to do this he can do this so knowing our role and living out of that amazement of what it means to be a Christian so that we can share it what we're called to really from an institutional culture to an intentional culture in which it's not just the leadership of the parish that's responsible for mission but it's for every single parishioner to engage, to partner in one mission Pope Francis says I dream of a missionary option that is a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything hang on to that everything so that the church's customs ways of doing things times and schedules language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today's world rather than for her self-preservation by the way you've probably heard it how do we move from maintenance to mission you know it might mean we need to get rid of that building money, raise fundraisers and everything just trying to keep this building going maybe we need to move to somewhere else we've had parishes in Detroit do that saying this is killing us especially in the city we can't afford to keep this 100 year old building beautiful as it is we just can't keep it up how do we move from maintenance to mission as part of that what did Jesus say follow me and I will make you catchers of men what we need to do in the biggest way as Catholics is learn how to fish I have to make a confession I don't know how to fish I'm not a fisherman my dad didn't like fishing we did a lot of outdoorsy stuff fishing wasn't one of them and it's almost like I have to give up my man card I'm not a fisherman in certain circles but I did have an opportunity to go fishing with a friend of mine up in Alaska it was exhausting we were fishing for salmon in this bay I can't remember the name of the town but I was jumping up and down all these salmon were running I threw it in the water I wasn't getting anything he said you need to change lures and I said how do I do that I don't know the line is so small I can't tie it I really felt danger of my man card there but I started catching fish first you have to go where the fish are that's the thing about fishing you can't wait for them to come to you you have to go to them that's the first step and then you have to know what they're biting that was the whole problem about tying this thing on you have to learn how to throw it out but then you have to learn how to hook them how do you bring them in we were on these kind of rockets I was jumping up and down trying to figure out where the fish were after a certain while I was like please don't bite please don't bite I'm just bee this is tiring but it was fun there's a whole thing how do you bring them in how do you get them into the boat there's the yucky part scaling and cleaning I had to learn new skills if we're going to become evangelizing parishes we need to learn new skills and it's going to be exhausting it's going to be we say hey I don't know how to tie this on can you do it for me we work together to figure this thing out that's a huge challenge but the disciples when they started what did they do they dropped their nets and followed him that's the sign of a disciple to drop your nets to say I'm all in on this this Jesus is enough and I'm going to go for it you know I try to think about their first evangelization evangelization committee meeting after Jesus said go make disciples of all nations you know how many churches do we have none how many bishops do we have how many priests how many seminarians how many seminaries hospitals what do we have we don't even have the new testament we have the old testament and we know the difference that Jesus has made in our lives and they have the Holy Spirit they just started doing it we can too Jesus is calling us to get out of he's comfortable to us he's going to take some heart change he's going to take some practice change but he's given us everything we need the Holy Spirit knowing the difference that he makes in each other how are we going to respond