 How many people here, I will not be reporting you or anything, but you can do this surreptitiously. How many people here just helped me have read Forming Intentional Disciples? Okay. Okay. That's good. Helpful to know. What I'm, for those of you who have, lots of people told me, they said, oh, we hated all the statistics in the first chapter of that book. In fact, I almost didn't get the chapter to it was so depressing. I worked really hard to make those statistics as friendly as I possibly could. You'll be happy to know I will not be repeating those statistics. That's because we've learned a lot in the last four years and I've got new stuff for you. It's all new. But what we want to do is talk about our context, sort of, we'll start very quickly at the national level and then we'll start looking at the journey that people typically make and how this affects our parish life. And this is the big picture I will be dealing with the application at the parish level tomorrow afternoon. But let's move along here. Now, you've heard of nuns, right? Not sisters. And I know there's a lot of sisters here, but no, N-O-N-E-S. I am a native of Seattle, Washington, the land of nun. Our tourist magazines talk about how if you ask a citizen of Seattle what their religious affiliation is, the majority of them, 60% of us would say nothing. So it's not just that we don't attend church. We think of ourselves as nothing. We're not Buddhist. We're not Muslim. We're not Jewish. We're not Christian. We're not Catholic. We're not anything. We're not affiliated. The fastest growing religion in the United States are nuns. That's what they call them. People who say, this is not the same as saying I'm an atheist and it's not the same as saying I don't believe in God. It just means I'm not affiliated with any religious group. So we're living all of us in many ways in the land of nun. Now, if you happen to be from the deep south where I grew up, it's different there. It still is, to a certain extent. But if you're from parts of the east coast or the west coast, the big urban environments, then you know what I'm talking about. In our generation, mission is the only maintenance that works. Father Michael Sweeney, my co-founder and I, we wrote a book, a little booklet. It was basically the presentations we did in Rome to theologians and seminarians there on the theology behind the called and gifted workshop. And we called it in those days, 15 years ago, the parish mission or maintenance like we had a choice. I wouldn't use that language now because we don't have a choice, not anymore. In our generation, God has no grandchildren. People do not simply inherit religious identities and go on to hold onto them for their lifetime. That is not working anymore. And the younger you are, the more this is true. So the only option for us is intentional mission. Now, here's something that was brand new that just came out and is so exciting from an evangelizing perspective. And that is, the short version is, basically one out of every two Americans you meet already has some meaningful connection to Catholicism. That doesn't mean they're Catholic, but it does mean they have some bridge of trust already in place. No other religious group has this kind of connection with vast numbers of Americans. This is from the latest 2014 U.S. religious landscape survey. They said 45% of American adults, 112 million people, have some kind of meaningful connection to the Catholic Church or the Catholic faith in some way. Now, only about 20% of American adults are actually Catholic. I mean, if you say, what religion are you? They won't say I'm Baptist. They won't say I'm Jewish. They'll say I'm Catholic, okay? So there's your core, about 50 million people who would say adults, who would say they're Catholic. However, this was so amazing. Pew went on and asked a fascinating question that no one's asked before. They turned to the people who had already said, well, I'm Protestant or I'm Jewish or I'm nothing. And the people who had not said they were Catholic religiously, and they said, I want to ask you a second question. I know you said you're Protestant, but just curious, do you think of yourself as partially Catholic in some way? Now how do you get to be partially Catholic? I want you to think about that. Do we have a category for partially Catholic? Now, I am a convert from the, I was raised as a fight and fundamentalist in Southern Mississippi, so I am the survivor of three RCIAs and the graduate of none. Yes, they let me in anyway, because I failed all the tests, but they said she means well, so we'll let her in. Okay. Oh, now, I want you to think about it. We had in my RCIA, my first RCIA group, we had a blues musician who was entering the church with us, and he wrote the Half-A-Catholic Blues, and it was our theme song, right? And it goes like, I'm only half a Catholic and I got the blues, I don't know how to cross myself and genuflect, but I'm only half a Catholic, what can you expect? All right, but you get the spirit of it, right? So we're clueless, but we're on the road. There is a lot of people in this country who feel half a Catholic, even though officially in religious terms they'd say there's something else. But they identified with the church, that's what was so fascinating, 9% of American adults, when you do the math, that's 22 million people. It's a lot of people. Say as a matter of fact, I do feel partially Catholic. Now this just messes with our heads, right? Because we don't have like categories for this theologically, or in canon law, unless you're in a catechumenate. But that there's people out there, think about it, two thirds of these people who say I'm partially Catholic had been raised Catholic. So that makes some sense to us, right? Well sure, they've got the family connection or whatever. But one third of them were not raised Catholic, they do not have Catholic parents and they still feel partially Catholic. You want to just go, wait a second, how is that possible? There are millions of Americans out there who inwardly they have this bridge. There's already the Holy Spirit is at work in their lives. Some of them have no Catholic background at all, but they actually identify with certain of our beliefs or certain of our practices. These are bridges that evangelizers can walk across. And what is amazing, most hopeful of all, is that of all of these partial Catholics, or the pew calls them cultural Catholics, two thirds of whom were actually raised Catholic, 43% of this group who were raised Catholic said, as a matter of fact, I am open to coming back. There are millions of Americans who interiorly have got one foot in the church. Though they don't use the name Catholic anymore. But if you and I are aware of this, of how God is already at work in their life, the Holy Spirit is building these bridges. These are things that we as evangelizers can really, where we can meet them. And then the one third who weren't raised Catholic at all, but still feel partially Catholic. There's another huge number of people that have, that the Holy Spirit is doing something in their hearts, in their minds. If only we understood that many of the people we encounter are in this in between place. This is the 21st century. This is where people are. They're all over the map. They don't fit those tight little categories anymore. And but it's perfect for those of us who want to be evangelizers, who want to bear witness to Christ, who want to call people to that encounter. Now, there is also a group, a third group who say I'm an ex-Catholic. And that's my definition. I'm not only no longer, I'm not just half a Catholic, I'm ex-Catholic. But even in that group, some of them said as a matter of fact, I am open to coming back. So the point of all this is don't take. One of our, one of the things when we teach people how to evangelize, the motto is never accept a label in place of a story. If somebody says they're Catholic, trust me, you have no idea what that means. If they say they're an atheist, it does not necessarily mean they don't believe in God. I know you want to go, oh, what, what, what do you think? I mean, what does the word atheist mean? I don't believe in God. Not in the 21st century, in the 21st century, people use religious language to make personal statements. They're not using it in dictionary ways. So if they say I'm a nothing, if they say I'm a Buddhist, if they say I'm Catholic, that's a label. You are not done, and you must not take that literally. Because the reality is, for many people, a lot more complex than that. And we won't know what the reality is and what the Holy Spirit may be doing in their lives until we earn the right to hear their story. Then there's a fourth group who, again, they're not raised Catholic, they don't have Catholic parents, but they're connected some other way. They work in a Catholic institution. They have a Catholic spouse, or maybe they just identify with Catholic beliefs and Catholic practices. But every one of those connections is a bridge across which you and I could walk if we are evangelistically minded. Now, Hispanics, yes, they are much more likely to feel connected, 85%. However, notice, only 45% of American adults say they are Catholic religiously, Hispanic American adults. So the number who claim the faith has plummeted very dramatically in the last few years. But what they're doing that doesn't mean it's not all or nothing. They still feel connected in many other levels, maybe in family, maybe in terms of culture. The bridge they use to leave us is the one across which they can return. If we are there, helping them come back. So we just want to be aware of this sort of reality. Now, okay, they also ask people who said that they were Catholic religiously, they said, okay, you've already said your religion is Catholic, but we have a question for you. Really, really, is being Catholic more about a religion or about a culture for you? Notice, 50% of those who said their religion was Catholic said, well, now that you mention it, it actually is more about culture. It's not primarily yet a faith. And even those half a Catholics, what's really interesting, and this makes sense, the majority who are raised Catholic have left and still feel attached somehow. But 68% of them said, hey, it's because of culture. But notice, those very interesting people who have no Catholic background, but still feel partly Catholic, a much higher percentage said it's about faith and not about culture. Those who are not raised in the faith see it. They see the spiritual. They're much more aware of that. So we want to be aware of these sort of these dynamics. The truth is the majority of American Catholics have left the church at some point in their life, 52%, it has become the new normal. 11% have already come back, but that means 41% are still gone. Some of them think of themselves as half a Catholic as being cultural Catholics. And some, the larger numbers say I'm an ex-Catholic. But we know, I know that looks grim, but we know remember a lot of them are open to the possibility of coming back. Remember, this is a snapshot in time when you talk to someone, and they tell you the story of their lived relationship with God, which is what we teach people to do in making disciples. They're telling you the story of their journey to this point. It's a snapshot in time. And the Holy Spirit is still working in them, and they are still in motion. Every one of us in this room is in motion because it's a real relationship. And so somebody now may say, well, I'm nothing or I'm an atheist or whatever and you're going okay, but that doesn't mean that they're not moving. It doesn't mean they will not move next year. So we have to get out, we have to understand this is not an all or nothing situation. And this, if you looked at all the people in the United States, all the adults who say they're Catholic and you sort of tried to sum them up in 100 figures. Notice those four red figures over in the lower right hand side. That's us, that's everybody in this room. You and I are the core, right? You would not be wasting your time here if you were not a seriously committed Catholic who cares about the future of the church. So that's us, we're the core. Notice there's only 4% of us though, in the whole. Cuz you know, when you actually look at all the people who thought of themselves as Catholic at some point in this country, there's almost 100 million of us, numbers. But there's this core who not only attend mass on a regular basis, but basically make everything happen at every level of the church's life. In the parish, in the diocese, whatever, in the school. That core, you and I will determine the future of the church. And I do not mean you have to have a title and a salary to be part of the core. This is not, this is any one of us who makes decisions or implements decisions at any level of the church's life. We hold the future. Our obedience to the Holy Spirit will determine what happens. History is made by those who show up. Evangelizing parishes that we've worked with. What's fascinating, when you make disciples, when you call people to that encounter with Christ, you preach the gospel, you call them to follow him. They begin to do so. What happens, almost inevitably, they move into the core. Within a year or two, the core grows. Not only does it become an apostolic core, but it grows in size. Some of the parishes we work with have 40% of their adult population are in the core, not four. This is the national average, but it changes dramatically locally, depending on whether we are intentionally calling people to discipleship or not. And the future of the church will be determined by the core. So the title of my talk was Big Challenges, Big Opportunities. Let's start with the challenges. And by the way, if you're interested, this is my town. I live in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This is the Garden of the Gods, and they're doing rock climbing there. I just wanted to show you a picture. But some of our challenges, six and a half Catholics lead for everyone who enters. And that has changed dramatically from seven years ago. In 2007, it was four to one. Now it's six and a half to one. What is happening? Turnip generations. The younger you are, the millennials. Are the least likely to enter the church. RCA numbers have dropped over 50% in eight years. Because why RCA was primarily for young adults, and it was primarily focused around marriage and family, they're not getting married. They're not practicing. So they're not bringing their fiance's in. And no, they will not be returning when they have children. Because they're not baptizing their children. When I say maintenance will not work and God has no grandchildren, I am not kidding. When I'm a convert, as a young adult, I remember practically the first thing somebody said to me, one priest, he said to me, he says, when your peers wanna get married, they'll come back. And when they have children, they'll come back. He was certain that we presumed the sacraments would call them back. Not anymore, that is gone for the vast majority. I'm not saying it never happens, but for the vast majority of young adults, that is no longer a driving force. We cannot depend upon inherited religious identity or that sacramental carrot to just bring them back. We are going to have to go out and evangelize them. So, as I said, and infant baptisms have fallen 25% as well. The final sacramental frontier. And I know this is you're thinking, this is incredibly grim. Somebody get her to shut up, okay. There is good news coming, but we have to know what is happening because our culture is moving like this. If we are going to preach Christ to this generation, we have to be aware of what's going on out there. Half of millennials, that's the 18 to 34 generation, the ones who are now bearing children have already left the church. Those raised in the church have already dropped the identity. And 41% of those who remain are thinking about the possibility of leaving. People don't make this decision overnight. Most people think about it for a year or two before they actually leave. They do it in stages. Nobody wakes up and says, hey, I just feel like being a Baptist today. I don't know why. Doesn't work like that. But we have a lot of people who are in our pews or marginally involved with us, who are thinking, will I keep doing this or am I going to do something else? Right now, we presume, we've tended to presume in practice, if your body was here, your head was here. Your heart was here. No, a lot of the people who are physically present are wrestling interiorly. And we need to be aware of that as well. Now, opportunities, things are happening, which are very, very interesting. The last figures we have, 2014, for the first time in almost a decade, adult baptisms rose significantly. 12% after this plummet, this very continual fall. What's going on there? Catholics in their 20s reported a 13% increase in mass attendance. A study was done in Canada, the United States, and Great Britain, only of last or non-practicing Catholics. And they said, so are you thinking about maybe coming back or looking at your relationship with the church again? 26% of American-Labs Catholic says, as a matter of fact, we are. If we do the math, that amounts to 14 million people in this country who are privately thinking, hmm, you know, if they all showed up, it would be about 800 per parish in this country. So just in vision, come Sunday, you walk in the door and there are 800 strangers saying, we're back, hi. What are you gonna do? That's how many people are grappling. What's interesting, 75% of them said it was because of Pope Francis. He is a great, massive builder of bridges. He builds bridges, he rouses curiosity, but guess who's going to have to help them make the journey the rest of the way? It's gonna be us. The local disciples and apostles who will be walking with them the rest of the way. But he is providing us a bridge. It was so funny when he was visiting the United States last fall. You know, I just wanted to walk down the street in my town and say, so, what do you think of that Pope, huh? I went to my local Starbucks and the barista, she's there. And she says, so, what are you doing tonight? I said, well, I'm watching the Pope on television. She goes, I just love your Pope. My brother, who is not Catholic, okay? I'm the only Catholic in my family since Wittenberg. And yeah, German, we were German and Irish by background. But anyway, one day he called me, he said, he says, really, love your book. He says, I've given it to all my pastor friends, my Protestant pastor friends. I said, really? He says, yeah, most of them are ex-Catholics, now they know why they left. I'm like, please don't help me, no, that was not the point. But he says, we love your book. He says, and we love your Pope. He says, you guys, you Catholics, you're rocking. I said, we are? This is rocking? Okay, but I want you to hear the word from the outside. People who have no background, no natural affinity with us, no Catholic ideas in their heads are like going, pay attention to that. So we're seeing it, we're seeing young adults starting to respond differently. I mean, they'll be interesting, the impact of World Youth Day is going on right now. And we know what a phenomenal instrument that is of the Lord. One of the other things that has happened for the first time since the 70s is what they call the retention rate. And what that means is, it just means if you were raised Catholic and now you're an adult, do you still think of yourself as Catholic? Well, that has been plummeting for 45 years, steadily, slowly. For the first time, it didn't. And there's a number of these other things, but all this happened, started to show up in the same year in 2014. So you want to ask, what is God doing? We know that people have surprising connections. We know the Holy Spirit has not left them without a witness. It is not that they hate our gods. It's not that there's no bridges left. It's that we have not been aware of how sort of subtle and complex this is. And you and I, their friends, their family, their coworkers, their neighbors, can be the apostles who come alongside them and help them on this journey. The one group in the United States, the one Christian group who is not declining in numbers are the evangelicals. And why? It is not that they don't have people believing, believe me they do. They have 21 million evangelicals who were raised as evangelicals and have left. Everybody, it's the culture affects everyone. It's not just Christians. Every religious tradition is facing this. Our culture encourages people, no matter what faith they were raised in, to think about it again when they become adults and make their own decisions. So no matter how good a job we do, inevitably most of our children are going to be rethinking, even if they do it quietly and they don't talk to you about it, many of them are rethinking. Do I want to stay here? Do I want to claim this as my own? Or maybe there's other options for me out there. However, the difference in the evangelical world is more people enter the evangelical world than leave it, which of course is not what's going on for us. We have the highest disproportion of people who leave versus people who stay, who come in. We have the highest number of people leaving of any religious group in the country. So there's about 5 million converts, adult converts in the US. And I have to apologize, this figure is a little bit wrong. I just realized I didn't have time to correct it. But of those Catholics who were raised Catholic, if you're raised as Catholic in this country, about 6 million of them are now in the evangelical world. They would now call themselves evangelicals. So Mike Pence, who just became the Republican candidate for Vice President, famously used to, he was raised Catholic in a very devout family. And he's been a devout evangelical now for decades. And while he was making the transition, he called himself an evangelical Catholic. He was trying to kind of figure it out, you know, okay? We don't, we don't think, well, what are you, a Baptist Catholic or something like that? You know, I mean, right, that doesn't make sense to us. But people in transition do these sorts of things. Remember, many of these people in the evangelical world, however, would come back when our parishes change. This is what's so fascinating. When we start making disciples, when we start preaching Christ, when people's lives being changed, you know what? The seekers show up. You don't even have to go out and recruit them. They hear about it. I'm telling you, the word gets out like nothing flat, and the seekers will come to you. And some of them were raised Catholic and some of them weren't. Now, Canadian study, young adults who stay, have experienced the presence of God and seen answered prayer. They've had an experience to ask their real questions inside the Christian community. They understand the gospel at a deep level, meaning they've heard it. The charisma preached. The great story of Jesus Christ preached many times from many perspectives. They've had a chance to wrestle with it and say, if this is true, what does it mean and what do I do about it? And they have seen older adults, their parents and other older adults they have relationships with living the faith in a compelling way. This is not primarily catechesis, which is just what Bishop Byrne was talking about. This is they see it lived, they see it fruitful. If this was true, they're gonna likely be here. And if it is not true, most of them are gone. The single biggest issue is that the majority of Catholics in this country are not certain you can have a personal relationship with God. And I know probably to most of you in the room and certainly to me, this is like just about blew the top of my head off when I realized this. But since the book For me Intentional Disciples has come out, I've had conversations with bishops, with seminary faculty, with religious, with priests, with lay leaders at all levels who told me, I did not have a relationship with God when I entered ministry. I did not even know it was possible. These are not bad, they're not bad people, I want you to hear this. They're not intentional hypocrites. What they tell me is no one talked about it, I literally didn't even know. What God is doing now among us is that we're breaking the code of silence and we are talking about this very explicitly. This is what St. John Paul was talking about, he says many people, many Catholics are still without any explicit personal attachment to Jesus Christ. They only have the capacity to believe placed within them by baptism and the presence of the Holy Spirit. I thought, what are you talking about when I first read this? This is what the Holy Father is talking about. This is sort of a classic, the key to the doctrine of the Eucharist, by Benedictine Abbott, written in 1925. So this is well before the Council. He says it is a famous teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, that faith is truly a contact with Christ. Without that contact of faith, we are like a rock in the middle of a mountain stream. The stream of his life passes us by without entering us. And this means a lot in Colorado, okay? This is very vivid. That means I could be like a boulder in the middle of the stream. And I've got waves of grace flowing over me, past me, around me constantly, and none of it penetrates me. I am in, I am placed in the stream of the church's life. The grace is available. It's not a desert, but nothing penetrates. Nothing changes me, why? Because until the faith is established, the great redemption has not become our redemption. The riches of Christ are not ours in any true sense. The sacraments are always sacraments of faith. The church makes a distinction between the power to have faith given to all of us in valid baptism. As infants or as adults, if you were validly baptized, you received a power to believe. But that is not the same as using the power. The free act of faith, that free personal choice, is what the Benedictine Abbey is talking about. What St. Thomas is talking about. And that is what evangelization addresses. So it's not passive, it's active. There's a wonderful little section in the Catechism. When I do clergy days, and I do quite a bit of them, I spend a whole section on evangelization, personal faith, disposition, and sacramental grace. And this is the 32nd version. Basically, the liturgy involves the conscious, active, and fruitful participation of everyone. In all the discussions I've heard over the years of liturgy, constantly about what is it to be active and conscious, et cetera. No one ever talks about fruitfulness. I was really blown away when I finally stumbled across this. It's fruitful because it was conscious and active. The liturgy does not exhaust the entire activity, the church. It must be preceded by evangelization, faith, and conversion. And then it produces fruit. The life in the spirit, involvement in mission, and service to her unity. So evangelization, fruit, and conversion, faith and conversion is supposed to precede the fruitful liturgy. So this is pretty much how it works. In practice, most of the time, we tend to look at, in many ways, the sacramental economy, which of course I'm representing by the Eucharist here. But it's true for all the sacraments. We tend to look at them sort of by themselves, kind of naked, all by themselves. Not, we don't see it in this larger economy, but what the church actually says is what is supposed to precede this is evangelization, personal faith, and personal conversion in order that the fruit that is supposed to accompany the sacrament is actually born. You and I, in practice, in the introduction they said 500 parishes, the truth is it's way more than that. We've lost track a long time ago. We've worked with at least, directly with at least 130,000 Catholics all over the world, and in hundreds and hundreds of parishes. And over and over again, most of the time, we are seeing little or no fruit from people's attendance at mass. They come in passive, and God knows I've been in that situation, right? You're too busy thinking about other things, you're distracted, whatever. You're just there because you're fulfilling your obligation. And so you're not really praying, and you're not really conscious, you're not really open. And so, you know, I walk half asleep to receive communion. I'm always, you know, sherry, wake up, wake up. But many, many, many of our people don't even know that they should wake up. They do tend to approach the sacraments as though they are magic. I show up, I do what I'm supposed to, and then the magic thing occurs. That is not what the church says. The church says the fruit, the impact, the transforming impact on you and me is dependent upon our spiritual hunger, our faith, and our openness to receiving, to being, to having the grace enter us and transform us. And the hungrier you are, the more you receive. This is the whole sacramental economy up there. You bear much fruit, Jesus said. John 15, I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I and him will bear much fruit. Jesus said, we will prove we are disciples when we bear fruit. We will bring joy to Christ Himself. We will have joy ourselves. Our prayers will be answered if we bear much fruit. We were anointed to bear much fruit. Fruit that will last, fruit, the absence of fruit or the presence of fruit is really the sacramental, basically canary in the coal mine. If we don't see fruit, for instance, it's supposed to produce mission. The service of the mission is one of the fruits of the liturgy. So if we're primarily doing maintenance and not mission, we want to say, okay, there's a fruit problem here. And if there's a fruit problem, I have to say what's happening in the evangelization and conversion department. The other thing is, it says it's going to, the fruit of the liturgy is supposed to be service to the unity of the church. So if we're at each other's throats, when I became Catholic, and I walked into a civil war that I knew nothing about, but if we're like that, that's a fruit problem. And we need to say, okay, let's go back and say, what's the problem in the conversion personal faith area? Because if that is present, the sacraments, the liturgy will bear, it's intended fruit, and you can see fruit. Fruit is something you can recognize, it's concrete. It doesn't take a saint to figure out there's good fruit. That's why Jesus kept saying you could tell good fruit, you can tell a good tree by the fruit it bears. You can tell a bad tree by the fruit it bears. It's visible to ordinary people, our fruit is visible. Disciples bear much fruit. And when we work with parishes, and we've done it with some parishes that are doing amazing things all over the world, what happens? Things change when you make disciples. People show up at mass. I know, it's like stunning, but they really do. Because they want to worship, they want to pray, they serve, they feel every opportunity. They come clamoring, asking to serve. They give over and over again, we hear parishes tell us, we have the highest per capita giving in the diocese. Why is that? Because disciples give, because they care about the church. Their priorities change. They study, they feel every class, they come to conferences like this. Every class in the diocese, every class in the parish. And the other thing that happens is they discern, they long to know what God wants of them. And so all the stuff we desperately want to see happen, stewardship, passing on our faith to our children, mission to the world, priestly vocations, religious vocations, secular vocations of all kinds, they just pop when we make disciples. Because that's what fruit-bearing looks like. In our Making Disciples seminar, we talk about, this is a very, very simple schema. We talk about three sort of developmental stages in adult formation. There is what we call seeker, disciple, and apostle. And we've used this for years. I mean, it's nothing official about this, but we've just found it very helpful. Seeker is what I was writing. When I wrote the book, Forming Intentional Disciples, it was just focusing on that first stage, that seeker stage, which could include, I'm an atheist, that journey from maybe I'm an atheist, I don't even believe in God, all the way to the point where I have begun to follow Jesus intentionally as his disciple in the midst of his church. I'm not a saint yet, but I'm beginning that journey. That initial development, that's what we mean by seeker. Disciple is what happens after you have chosen to begun to follow Jesus as a disciple. The first piece is what the catechism calls the first and fundamental conversion. Okay, that's becoming a disciple. The second one is the second lifelong conversion that most of us here are engaged in. And that's, so both of them are really talked about in terms of ongoing conversion. That disciple stage is very important. This is where catechesis comes into its own. This is where people start to bear fruit. This is where people go public with their faith and start to evangelize. And this is where the charisms start to manifest. I can't tell you, we've helped at least 100,000 people go through a discernment process, charism discernment process so far. And we've listened to tens of thousands of people tell us their story. And what we hear over and over again is, well, about two years ago, I went through this awakening or this conversion and then this thing showed up. What is this thing? This gift starts to manifest in their life. It's very, very typical. And so we're helping them recognize what the Holy Spirit is already doing. But this is all typically of that second, that disciple phase. And gift discernment, which is fascinating, helps people start to think of themselves not just as a disciple, but as someone Jesus is sending on his behalf for the mission of the church and helps them move into the apostle stage. And this stage is what Pope Francis calls missionary disciples, same thing, exactly. Now, this is the developmental stage at which people discern vocation of all kinds, including priestly and religious vocations. And this is the stage at which the evangelization of cultures and structures occurs. Every time we talk about evangelization of culture, we have to understand our ability to live out the church's teaching on evangelization in the marketplace is totally dependent on the number of our people who have reached this developmental stage. Otherwise, our theology sits there, a beautiful theology. We have a gorgeous theology of evangelization, which is sitting there mostly untapped because the vast majority of our people are not developmentally ready for it yet. Now, this is just sherry talking based on our experience around the world, not just me, but we have a lot of other people, a lot of collaborators who work with us and travel with us. I would estimate loosely that only about 2%, 2% of all Catholics, no, let me put this way, only about 2% of all the charisms we've been given and about 2% of all the vocations we've been given are manifesting. We have no vocational shortage. I know you realize that, right? Because there's no such thing as vocational unemployment. If you're baptized, it's too late. I know they didn't check with you, did they? Your parents just had you dunked and there it is. But seriously, that is the church's teaching. When you and I were baptized, we were also anointed for a mission. Baptism is a sacrament of lifelong vocation, not just of initiation. So, but I would estimate very loosely based on our experience that only about 2% of all the vocations God has already given the church are being lived because we have not been calling the majority of our people to that encounter, sustained encounter with Christ out of which vocation arises. When we do that, they start popping everywhere. If you want priests, make disciples. If you want religious, make disciples. If you want people, Catholic apostles to the political scene, to business, to education, to life issues, to family, to whatever part of the world, make disciples. And then the, yes, and that is our shortage. And you, this is not, doesn't have to take forever. The truth is if you have a people around you who understand this process and are really actively supporting you, people can move from seeker to disciple to early apostleship in one to two years. It is not a glacial process. Now believe me, hear me, I'm not saying they're saints. Does that make sense? Because that's a lifelong process being transformed, right? But at least they've gotten to the point where it has dawned on them, God is asking something of me that I'm supposed to discern. I have a call to answer and I'm beginning to wrestle with what that is. That's what I mean by early apostleship. We could have hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of Catholics moving into that stage of development. In a couple of years, if we were serious about addressing this issue of making disciples, I'm gonna stop right here. We have been here before in the church's history. In the early 17th century, 400 years ago, 50 years after our council, the church was in terrible situation. The church in France had lived through eight civil wars in a row. And a generation stood up and said, let us see what love will do. And they deliberately called. It was a collaboration across all classes, priests, religious, lay people, the poor, the rich, the educated, the uneducated. Tens of thousands of disciples collaborated. It was a generation of disciple friends who set out to transform their nation. And they did. Out of that revival, that nation of France was transformed for 150 years. And the revival that God worked in France affected the entire church and the entire world. And that's my question to you. The historians call them the generation of saints. But I think God is calling us to be a generation of saints again for the 21st century. And that's my question. Will you and I together say yes, lay down our lives together, profess Christ together, bear fruit together that brings glory to his name? And if we do, if we're willing to do that, I think God will do the same thing in our generation that he did in theirs. And we can become, the historians will be talking about this hundreds of years from now. They will say in the early 21st century there was a generation of saints in the United States who changed through whom God changed the course of history. And we all said, amen. Thank you.