 Good morning. How are you? Okay, so how many of you were at my workshop earlier this morning? So you probably have an idea of what I'm about to do right now. I'm going to get you to move. I'm going to get you to get up in just a second when I say go, and I need you to find a stranger, and I need you to introduce yourself to them, and I need you to ask them, tell them one critical thing. What's been the most challenging part about being a disciple of Jesus Christ for you? You have two minutes to accomplish your mission. One person shares for a minute, then the next person shares for a minute. I'm really serious. You need to get out of your seats, and you need to go find someone you don't know right now. Go. Should be switching right about now. Should be switching. Thirty seconds. Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Let's not get too friendly. Remember, we are Catholic. Well, I hope you're at the right conference. This is a spiritual warfare in the trenches. When I left my parish in Raleigh, North Carolina, I thought I had a pretty good handle on evangelization. I'd been working in youth ministry and different types of ministry and working on how do I evangelize my own parish when I was a director of faith formation. When I left youth and became the director of faith formation, I asked this committee of adults, I said, what is the greatest problem you have? And they said, oh, hands down, it's how do you engage the parents? Sound familiar? Yeah, it's like hit your head against the wall. How do you do it? And so that's why I found this model. But after applying that, beginning to plan for that model, and this isn't a talk about that model, I did notice one critical piece, and that was this, is that if we took the same catechetical content and applied it to this new catechetical model of all generations catechesis, without making it evangelistic in nature, it'll have a very short shelf life. Because the substance of what we're catechizing with is based on one critical assumption, and that is that everyone who gets baptized has already got it. And so we catechize that way, assuming that they know what to do with the information that we give them, and it's so far from the truth, as we can tell, because instead of creating disciples, when our teenagers get their sacrament of confirmation, what do they want to do? Leave the church. Something isn't right. So as I was kind of praying through tonight and saying, Lord, how do we do this, and how do we develop this whole process? I decided to go ahead and launch from a particular passage, and I hope I got this right. This particular passage from Luke, this is from Zachariah, after John the Baptist is born and he makes his proclamation, this is the tail end of it. Thus he has shown us the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness, before him all our days. And as you can see, I've highlighted a couple of particular areas, and that's where I'm kind of going to go through, and the first one is the hands of our enemies. When I was on the road for the first couple of years, and I was just crisscrossing the country, going from parish to parish, doing some preaching ministry, parish missions, staff retreats, things like that, by the way, I've got to tell you that staff retreats, probably the staff are the second most difficult audience to do a retreat for. Second, only to high school Catholic youth, and they do the same thing, they feel like they've already gotten everything they need. Whoa, you guys aren't laughing now. That wasn't a slap, but I think in a lot of ways, you know what happens, we go to the places like this, or we go to a retreat, and it's very hard to take that minister hat off, isn't it? Because we're constantly looking for that next greatest thing. What can we find, some good tidbits that we can use, and then all of a sudden we find ourselves no longer in a position where we open ourselves up to receive what the Lord really has for us to hear individually. And you know as well as I do, from a ministry perspective, that if there's going to be any revitalization in the parish, it has to happen through those who are initiating it first. Amen? That's us. And that's one major roadblock we're going to have to overcome. It's a huge battle. So, I started going out and I was looking at parishes and doing the different things, and I was realizing that, particularly when I was praying, when I was preaching missions, you'd get out there and you'd start preaching to the people, and it was a very weird sensation I began to realize. I felt sometimes when I was at different parishes, like I was in a phone booth talking to a crowd, and they couldn't hear me. That's kind of the sensation it felt like, and I couldn't understand what that was at first. It was just this idea of, it seems like I keep throwing things out there, preaching the gospel, sending material out, and it was hitting the glass and falling down, and it was never penetrating. And as I kept saying, Lord, what is going on? What is happening here? I would have different experiences. I experienced something like that at a particular youth conference. I was with Jim Beckman one time, and I was in the midst of my talk, and Jim comes walking out in the middle of the talk, and he says, hold on one second, let's stop. And then he says, I sense the spirit of oppression over this crowd. Let's pray against the spirit of oppression, and that for me was just, boom, light came on, and I began to realize, hello, that makes total sense. And as I began now with my eyes open and beginning to realize what is this sensation, and I started to pursue more and pray more about this, and say, Lord, what's really going on? What's happening here? I began to realize and then eventually began to see some really harsh realities. Like, for example, did you know that there is a cohort of demons assigned to your parish, and their job is to make sure that your job remains unfruitful? And how naïve it is of us to sit there and think, well, all we need to do is find the next book or the next program, and if we just take that and apply it to our parish, that this is going to bring about the renewal, and not think that there's an enemy out there who's going to counteract everything that we attempt to do, and we're not paying any attention. It's almost like as if we're at a battlefield, and we've got these new weapons, this new program, and we're looking at how it works and how to make it all function, and when we're focused on this, and meanwhile, the enemy has just flanked our lines and is now in our camp, and they're neutralizing the gospel. So for me, I began to realize that I needed help, and in my ministry, instead of going around and soliciting money, I solicit prayer warriors, and I've got about 300 prayer warriors who are praying for you tonight, and their job every week is I send out prayer requests, and when I call parishes and I'm there and they want me to come and do a mission and we're leading up to the mission, I said, okay, so tell me where are the negative activities that you're parish? What's happening that's negative? Because that's how you identify the demonic influences in your parish. What are the negative things that are taking place? Is there gossip? Is there oppression? Seems like nothing seems to be sinking in. Is there a great spirit of fear that's going on where people are just afraid to do anything? The priests are afraid to preach the truth because afraid that people aren't going to be receptive. All of that is open game. And that's how you identify what they're doing in their parish. And once I start getting that list, I bring it to my prayer warriors. And long before I show up, we start praying and asking Mother Mary to begin to start suppressing or destroying these strongholds. And I can't tell you the difference that we recognize, that I recognize when we are actively praying against the influence of the enemy and their strongholds in our parish. Amen. I was in Texas, I won't say where, but I was in Texas in this one small town. And I was on a conference call and I walked across the street to a park and I'm just walking around the park on this conference call. And as I started walking back to the church, I didn't see it, but I sensed that this is a small little town in Texas. Railroad goes through it and there's only one Catholic church in the town. And as I looked at the church, it seemed, I couldn't see it, but it appeared, I just sensed it, that there was this big, massive demon sitting on top of the church and the church was his throne in the town. Seven years prior to me coming to this particular parish to start helping bring about some renewal there, they had not had any sacraments except for Eucharist for 30 years. The enemy's alive and well. The pastor, when I was done doing some training there, the pastor confessed before the whole group, he said, he started to experience some hope that maybe we can begin to turn things around and he's a priest from India and he felt like he wasn't being effective, he was just about ready to go to the bishop to ask to be removed because he didn't feel like he was the right priest for the job. Another parish that I went to, I got there and there was just, there was just, again, something that was just in the way and I couldn't understand why, so I started asking more questions. Well, tell me about what's going on with this town, what's the history of the town and they shared a little bit about the town and how there's one church on one side of the river and another church on the other side of the river and great segregation between the town and the pastor says, well, you know our property, the railroads came through here and our church property on the corner of it is where a huge massacre occurred of Chinese immigrants. The Irish, the railroaders were trying to push out the Irish who were revolting against the payment and they brought in all these Chinese immigrants to continue the railroad and the Irish men, Catholics, went over and slaughtered all these and so the spirit of death was very present and as a community we began to pray against the spirit of death to remove them from the grounds. One last story just to kind of give you a sense. I was at this other parish and I was preaching the weekend homily so Saturday comes and it's time for distribution of Eucharist and I'm standing there in my spot and I'm distributing communion and all of a sudden this woman walks up and the body of Christ and she doesn't look at me, no eye contact. Amen, and I give her communion and I'm like, whoa, what was that? Lord, what was that? And I just continue, I'm like, that just disturbed my spirit. What was that? And then a little bit later another woman comes up, same thing, whoa. About five people at that liturgy, that 5 p.m. liturgy came and experienced that same thing, just wham, I'm like wow, Lord, what was that? Sunday, the next thing, two more masses, same thing, another dozen women came up and by the time that second mass was done it was very clear, the spirit of incest was evident and present in this town. And on Sunday night, I usually don't, I kind of keep quiet and just pray and send a note out to my prayer warriors and said, I need you to pray about this but for some reason the Lord just compelled me to talk about it. I said, and I just blurted out, I said, you know, I've never been in a town or a church where I have experienced the spirit of incest as I do so prevalently as I do in this parish. I'm thinking, oh, probably shouldn't say that, doesn't really endear you to the people. It's like, you know, one of the things I went, you can never take that back. So, we're done and every night after the mission we did this social and that cake and cookies and punch and coffee and I'm there and chatting with people and one by one different groups came up and said, Deacon, I gotta tell you, you were dead on about that. Incense runs rampantly in this town. See, I think a lot of times we don't pay attention. You certainly haven't heard much about the enemy in our lifetimes, have we? It's not something that's commonly preached about, which really frankly it needs to be because our people are disposing themselves to more and more evil. An incest, I believe incest is the number one way that people are getting demonized, where they have demons on the inside of them because it's happening all over the place. More and more people are having these experiences and they're just opening themselves up because nobody believes that the devil is real. I was in New Jersey doing an in-service for women's Catholic High School and I read a reference to demons and the assistant principal said, demons, you mean they're real? I thought that was just stuff on television. The prevailing thought, their weaponry is they don't want you to believe that they're real. And then once you come to believe that they are real, then their next weapon is they want to make you afraid. They want to make you afraid. That is their MO. Being rescued from the hands of our enemies. Uh-oh, did I not hit it right? There we go. 1 John 3.8. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. You see, our effort is not just to lead people to God, but it's also to undo the work of what the devil has been doing in our people's lives. But I've got to be honest with you, if you're anything like me, which I suspect you are, a major part of that battleground is to undo the work the devil has done in you. Like for example, I did that opening little exercise. I did that just about everywhere I go now, with groups that I talk about, because I found with large audiences in parishes that if I don't give you permission to reach out and talk to strangers, you won't. Isn't that true? We don't. It doesn't happen in parishes. The very first few years I did parish visitations and did evaluations from an evangelistic standpoint. What would a visitor experience at your parish if they were coming to your parish to, you know, looking for God? And I'll tell you the truth. If I was looking for the love of God, I probably would never go to a Catholic church. I probably wouldn't. And part of it is maybe because I won't understand, you know, some of the solemnity and the prayer before, but oftentimes we go to Mass and we worship the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. We experience his Eucharistic presence with perfect strangers and that's satisfactory for us. If I'm a stranger coming to your parish and you don't even want to know my name, how will you ever get to the place to share with me Jesus? See what I mean? And it's not because we're bad people and it's not because our parishioners are bad. It's because there is an enemy out there who is influencing us to great lengths and we're bringing it in our house and we're utilizing it in our house. We're utilizing the same systems. We're putting on the mask just like the world trained us to do. Are we not? Only what we've learned to do is make it a good holy Catholic mask. Praise you Jesus, right? Tell me your family isn't like mine. When my kids were younger, you know what it's like trying to get my five daughters and my wife ready for church? Please tell me your family is like mine. Tell me because I'm telling you what, from my house to the church takes 10 minutes door to door. So I would wake up my family an hour and 15 minutes before mass thinking that, you know, it takes them an hour to get ready, 10 minutes to get there. That means we actually get there and walk down the aisle and sit in our seats for five minutes before mass begins. But you know what happens? Something happens here, somebody's fighting there, and next you know what time is it? Seven till. What am I doing? I get my kids in a car. We start driving down the road. Shut up! We're going to church! We're driving around, driving. And then all of a sudden we parked the car. And that's where the miracle happens. The doors open and all of us walk out into the church, like the Partridge family all lined up nice and straight. John, how are you? God bless you. Mary, how's the gallbladder? Bless your heart. And then you go get ready to get a seat, but you're late and sure enough you sit, get ready to sit down and someone is sitting in your pew. Well, would you sit behind them and pray through them? And pray for them for the entire mass. Right? And then we do what the church, you know, what we're supposed to do, what everyone expects, because it's all about the training we receive. You see, you don't have to be Catholic so long as you look Catholic. And so what do we do? We do the Christian calisthenics. Neal, sit, stand. Neal, sit, stand. Amen. And then we get ready to go, marching back out to the car. God bless you. I'll pray for you. The doors, everybody gets in, the doors close. Shut up or go to hell! Please tell me your family was like mine. All right? We have been trained so well by the world and the problem is that we're bringing in so much of the garbage out there and we're still applying it to our Catholicism, our Christianity. And so it's not authentic. And the devil is the one who's been influencing us and the influence is in us and that fear runs rampant in us. Does it not? Tell me, I'm not telling you something you don't already know. We know this. We experience this on multiple levels. As a director of faith formation in my parish, I had this six foot seven father in Raleigh, North Carolina come to the church and he wanted me, I was in charge of confirmation and he said, my son is a baseball player and he can't be at your retreat and I want him to get confirmed so I'd like you to do a private retreat for him. I said, well, gosh, yeah, that's quite a dilemma. No. What do you mean no? I won't do that. Listen, I want my son to get confirmed then I guess you'll have your son miss the baseball game. No, he's going to be at the baseball game. You need to do a private retreat. I'm sorry, I will not do that because I have like another 65 other students and if I do it for your son then I'm going to have no life and I like my marriage and my family. So if you want yours, I can't believe you're denying my son the sacrament. No, I'm not. You're the priest of your family. You're making the decision. And so you can imagine a six foot seven guy standing over a little hobbit, you know, dude like me going, you're going to change and I'm like, I am sorry, I am not and this was an old convent, my office was upstairs and the secretaries are down there going. So finally I just wouldn't budge. He goes, the pastor's going to hear about this. The secretary goes, Ralph, yes? Are you okay? My heart is still in my throat, right? Yeah, he didn't like that. You think? I know, we've all had these experiences and you know, it's not that that father was being bad, he's trying to do the best with what he was given. I know because I was one of those guys that was given the same stuff. Thank God we've made so many corrections on catechetical materials and what we should be doing. We still have some ways to go with evangelization components because the things that I'm finding around the country is that, you know, the mission of the church, right? Matthew 28, go make disciples and it takes two things to make a disciple. Evangelization, connect them with the person of God through the power of the Holy Spirit and discipleship training and what I'm finding is that in most churches we're doing, if we're lucky, 30% discipleship training with zero evangelization and we wonder why our teenagers want to leave the church when they're confirmed. We are not making the connections and the enemy is doing a great job of keeping us in this problem. I'm not again telling you anything you don't know because we're all in the trenches trying to figure out what's going on and I want you to awaken you to the realization that the enemy has been doing so much on them and the easiest way you're going to identify what the enemy is doing to them is examine what he has done to you because it's so prevalent in us. That conversion really does have to happen in us that taking and accepting faith really does have to happen in us. We really have to live from a place of authentic faith if we're going to give it away because you know as well as I do, we cannot give what we do not have. How can we share authentic faith with someone when we don't have it? All we do is push material or give them knowledge but it takes more than knowledge it has to be leading people to entrust God based on the knowledge we have given them but instead we give them knowledge and expect that they know what to do with it and they don't and it becomes this difficult challenge. So, serve without fear. This is a critical piece. How do we serve without fear? Because that's something that motivates us all the time. We respond more to fear than we do anything else. Why do you think it's Satan's number one weapon? It is truly his number one weapon, fear. I do a lot of men's retreats and I was at this one particular retreat in California and I had everything else planned and in the middle of it, right, just ready to start my first talk, the spirit jumped in and took a left turn and I'm like just following the spirit and he basically I turned around and I said, you know guys, I've got six talks ready for you this weekend to help you grow spiritually but here's the truth. The truth is, what is the value of giving you all this great content when you know as well as I do that you're only going to act on whatever it is that your fear will allow you to go to? I mean that's the truth. That is the bottom line and you want to know if we're going to become effective in the New Evangelization I'm going to give you what I believe is a very hard truth and that is that we are not ready as a church in local parishes to implement the New Evangelization. Oh, we're trying. We're looking for books. We're looking for programs. We're looking for the quick, easy fix but there is no quick, easy fix and there is no magic program or no one book or no one process that's going to do it but we do not want to pay what it's really going to take to see the New Evangelization and until we move to that place where we're ready to go there we're going to keep looking for quick fixes. I go around and I hang out with priests once in a while and every once in a while a priest will come up and say, Deacon Ralph, you're doing all these different things why don't you give me one or two great little programmatic things you've done that have really knocked home and set up parish on fire and I just smile. There's only one person, one person who's already at your parish who knows exactly what needs to be done at your parish to bring about the New Evangelization. One person and he is the Holy Spirit but we do not, do not want to go through the effort of what it takes to train an authentic disciple to do. You see, I was at this parish once and we were talking about discipleship and I asked the people and I was just this was a training for the staff and I said how many of you are disciples of Jesus Christ and of course they all raised their hands and I said if you're a disciple of Jesus Christ then answer me this, who are your disciples? Because every disciple of Jesus Christ should be discipling others. That is our identity as a disciple. The Holy Spirit uses a disciple to form and fashion disciples. So who are your disciples? I said to them and this DRE, this wonderful lady who just kind of speaks what she's thinking. She just said I don't have time to make disciples, I'm the DRE. And I just, she said that and just blurted it out and I almost responded immediately and I just stopped because I'm like that was perfect. And then everyone just let that sink in and then they started to chuckle and then it became humorous but the reality was so true. It was so true. We're so busy doing programs that are not functioning that we have no time to actually make those disciples. So we have to figure out how is it that we're going to make those disciples and you see we have to be able to begin to train people up on what to do with the Holy Spirit. I don't know about you but it's the best kept secret of the church. Did you ever get trained at all on what to do and how to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit in your religious education? Has it ever been a part of your formation? And yet everything that happens, is this not true? Do we not hear this in our preaching? Do we not get it from the church fathers where they tell us that everything that is done, it's done because God does it, yes? Then why are we not connecting them to God? Why are we not making sure that they know how to discern the voice of God, to listen to the Spirit and to act and live and operate in the power of the Holy Spirit because that's what discipleship training does. Instead, the people do what they've been trained to do. They come and they become the pew potatoes. And they spud out in church. And they look to the priests and deacons and the nuns and the lay professionals and they say my job is to just occupy time and space and throw some cash in the basket. Your job is to do the work of the church. You see, we basically formed them to be country club members where they come and they pay their dues and they use whatever part of the church they want, but beyond that they have no further responsibilities. And then we wonder why when we say we really need some volunteers. Who's gonna help? And everybody's too busy doing their own thing. Something's not right. Something's got to change. And there's some pretty inherent things that are in the way. First and foremost is this fear. I mean on multiple levels within the life of a parish. Fear of confrontation. That six foot seven dad. Don't want to do that again. How many times do you keep trying to hold the line, hold the line and it's just like a tidal wave of parents that keep coming after you year after year telling you I need you to bend because my kids sports or activities year after year and the line keeps slipping, keeps slipping until basically you just have to bring your kids twice to get confirmed. It's happening. I was talking to a couple of places in Southern California. They're not even offering religious education classes in between the sacrament years anymore. Why? Because nobody's coming. It's all about the carrot, isn't it? I mean religious education only has one purpose, isn't it, is to receive the sacraments. That's what I got. And then I was told I'm done. I mean as a DRE I understand. We like to enjoy our jobs. We don't like the rejection. It's hard. And of course then we're afraid of losing families, right? And that's a pastor's great stress. And God bless these men. But sometimes the pressure the diocese puts on you and the priests, my brothers, they expect you to make sure... I know, I was talking to a pastor once and he said, you know Ralph, never once have I gotten a letter, never once have I gotten a notebook from the diocese to tell me how to increase the faith life of my parishioners, never once. But every year I get a thick notebook saying how to have a successful BAA, Bishop's Annual Appeal. You want to know a very inherent problem in the church and one that we're going to have to overcome if you want to see the new evangelization? We have to stop serving money first before God. Because it's so, you know, and it's true, God bless these guys. They're not going to get a phone call because they went through your books every year to check and see how many baptisms and you're not going to have the dean or the vicar general call and say, last year you had seven R-C-I-A people and now you have five, you're down. What's going on? You're not going to get a phone call like that but if you don't bring in your money, oh, you're going to get a phone call. You see what I mean. And so what does that do to our brothers? We need to pray for our priests. God bless them because they got the big targets. You got the smaller ones, they got the big targets because we need them to stand up. And it is hard. Listen. It's hard to stand there at the door, you know, when you say goodbye when people are leaving. Like I remember I just got ordained on my pastor and said, Ralph, you're the married clergy. Why don't you preach on birth control? So I did naively and I shared my story and I talked about it and I said, if anybody wants to email me, please, feel free. I'd love to have more conversations. By two o'clock that afternoon my email was overrun. Who the hell are you to tell me what to do in my bedroom? People leaving Mass saying the vilest things to you because you decided to speak truth. See, this is where the enemy comes in and says, this is how we're going to hold you down. Because unless you've got some superhuman battle armor on or I don't know what it takes but you got to get a thick skin because this idea of trying to please people, you get it. You try to please one group over here you take off that group. You try to please that group you take off that group and finally you realize Lord I got to just worry about pleasing you because I'm going nuts here. But that's the work of the enemy penetrating our hearts penetrating our lives trying to get you to shut up and not speak the truth. Trying to get you to minimalize what is most important and we lose sight of what's there and we're seeing us there and we're missing the souls. We're missing the flock. We're seeing that they're getting attacked by wolves and now we're not able to help them because we're just licking our own wounds from being bitten. Tell you one really tough thing that one thing I've seen across the country that just is it's grieving my heart and it's alarming me is that the people who are in charge of ministries in these parishes that I'm going to across the country are praying. We are not praying. We're not praying for our people. We're not praying for specific events. We're not bathing our lives in prayer so that we can get connected and have the strength to remain standing when the people need us to stand. We are not praying. We're not connected to God. We're so busy doing that we're not creating the time to be with God. So I had my son he became a youth ministry. He graduated from university. I had $5 so he married in. He's a tall guy. He's not a hobbit like the rest of us. And he said, Dad, it'd be silly for me since you've been doing this for 27 years what would you mentor me? And I said, absolutely. I would love to. And he goes, where do we begin? I said, that's easy. Let's just imagine that I'm your direct report and that every year I'm going to evaluate you. 50% of my evaluation of your efforts this year is going to be based on one thing. How well you did it coming in at the beginning of your day, dropping your stuff on your desk, grab your calendar and go into adoration and you spend 30 minutes with the Lord every day. And so he's like, well, what do you mean? I'm like, you need to pray through everything. So you look at your calendar. How many meetings do I have? I've got three meetings with three kids. Pray for each kid by name. I've got staff meeting. Pray for every person on your staff. I'm meeting with Father. Pray for Father. And then when you're done praying for everything in your calendar, then pray for the appointments that you're going to have that are divinely set up that you don't even know about. Pray, pray, pray, asking for the strength, the courage to stand up because you know you've got a parent meeting. When's the last time we actually prayed with concern for the parents? Instead of vile feelings and thoughts. Guilty is charged. Oh Lord, give that six foot seven man a horrible rash. I am but a sinner. But that's what I would do. I mean, sometimes the anger because I wouldn't do what the scriptures were calling me to do. Forgive. Don't let the sun set on your anger. How many of us have gone to bed each night angry at different people, our own staff people or parishioners because of things they said and they didn't understand. It was misunderstood. And all the while who's in the mix smiling? Satan. Who's in the mix stirring up the nest getting you to focus on anger and hatred instead of love and forgiveness? Satan. Who's the one that wants you separated so that you have a bunch of silos on your staff? Satan. You see, if we don't pull together and recognize that we're actually on the same team and start pulling our resources it's never going to happen. To happen. If I'm on staff with you and all that happens is that your door is closed all the time that shows me it's an unhealthy parish staff. When you can't have the doors open and there's little quiet conversations chit chatting softly so no one else hears because you're probably talking about them. This is how they work. This is how they penetrate. This is how they win and render us inactive. 2 Timothy 1-7 let me read to you before that we get to 7 I'm going to start from 5 it says this I'm reminded of your sincere faith a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice now I am sure in your lives how is he sure by the way? Is that just an assumption? No. He's sure. How is he sure? He can see it. He can see faith. What does that look like? For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God within you see this isn't just for him for Timothy this is for us listen to Paul's word to us for this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is in you what is the gift that God gave us? His what? In the face in the form of His Holy Spirit alive and active in us He wants Timothy stir this spirit up in you operate in the life of the spirit that is within you through the laying on of my hands for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather a spirit of power and love and of self-discipline do we believe that people receive the Holy Spirit in sacraments? Yes or no? Why do we continue to live in sin? Why to continue to live powerless? Why is there no power? And why are we just kind of going through the motions continuing to do the same old same old and not even paying attention? You see I'm just a simple guy I'm just a simple habit deacon trying to go out there and do something but you know this is how simple it is for me I want to come and I want to use something I want something to happen I turn on the switch and there is no power there's no light is there a light bulb yet? Is it connected? Yes but there is no power when something like that happens I ask a very simple question why is there no power? So once I ask the question I follow it up why don't we do that in ministry? I'm just curious we never do that for ministry why isn't a kid who confesses who goes and gets a sacrament of confirmation why does he leave the sacrament of preparation process questioning whether he even believes in God why do I not see any active activity of the life of God in him or her? Why don't we ask the question where's the power? I don't know about you but for me my experience was that when I encountered the living God I could not avoid the power he was there how can you not experience the life and love and power and peace and love of God all that he has to offer us and not know that he's there but you know what it looks like? it kind of looks like this come here can I borrow you for a second? what? I'm being called up front come on come on upstairs what's your name? JJ thanks for being a victim I mean a volunteer I appreciate that JJ close your eyes out loud as loud as you can to share what you experience physically in your hand right now nothing isn't that what our kids are going through and getting in their sacraments? not what they're getting, what they're experiencing yes or no I don't know about you but that's not the way it's supposed to be back up again if something changes let you face the audience because it's more fun if they see your face okay if something changes you got to scream it out and I need you to articulate what you're experiencing okay? if something changes okay everybody let's just leave the room excellent you can open your eyes almost huh give him a hand thank you did you see his reaction? oh I just encountered someone oh someone besides me is here oh I feel this pulling and rightly so I'm gonna die this is the power that we're supposed to receive Paul tells us when you receive me it's not a spirit of fear but why are we operating in fear because we are not operating in faith what I want to know is have you entrusted your entire ministry to the power of the Holy Spirit are you acting through the Spirit or are you resting on your own abilities because God has much more for the people and he wants to flow through you to minister to your people but sometimes we stop because we think he doesn't want to use somebody like me I mean I have no business being here you've got some big dog hitters over there that are really good I have no business being here except for I finally got the memo Ralph get out of the way and let me roll that's all he wants to do and you guys have amazing powerful gifts that he wants to activate but we don't live in faith we live in a spirit of fear am I good enough I don't know enough how am I going to have the right answers how is this going to happen and we have no trust in God's word did he not tell the apostles I will give you the words but we don't live that we just live the easy stuff go to Mass on Sunday do these things but to live in authentic faith is what the enemy does not want you to do doesn't want you to live that way he wants you to remain totally fearful oh good I got six hours to go to serve in righteousness righteousness well in my workshop this morning we talked about faith and the only way that we can be reckoned as righteous is in faith in faith in Christ is to have authentic faith in him the kind of faith that you entrust to him completely where you really place trust in him for the longest time I was doing ministry purely from a defensive position always afraid that I was going to mess up always afraid I might say the wrong thing and then before then I thought well I can't even let my volunteers do talks because I'm afraid they're going to say the wrong things instead of trying to empower them hey we're human let's make the correction we all learn and move on but instead we're working from a place of defense when we have the king of kings and the lord of lords we're working from a place where we think we are powerless and Satan seems to be dominating our parishes because we don't believe we got a big daddy who's your daddy I mean either he is the king of kings and the lord of lords the god the creator of the universe or he's not and if you believe that that's true then how is it making your ministry different how is it encouraging you to step out and take that leap of faith to put yourself out there to reach out to the stranger and say I don't know you who are you welcome to the parish to allow god to move you to the places that scare the hell out of you because he has a plan for you you see he actually wants to scare the hell out of you and so instead we sit back in fear and we're afraid but Paul says but to the one who without works trusts him that trust is a key thing guys everywhere I go across the country when I'm looking as an evangelist the battlefield when I'm looking in the pews it's the battle for faith I love what Gandhi said Gandhi made he read the scriptures and he said I read your bible and I'm here to tell you I would become a Christian if I could find one I think that was a very condemning statement because we profess to believe but we live our lives as if it's not true or it's not going to happen and the people are watching us the core they're watching what we do that's why I said the only way the new evangelization is going to really engage is if we're prepared to sacrifice to suffer to die and move up to the next level and until we're prepared to do that we are going to remain in the rut we are Jesus told us it was going to happen people are going to hate you because of me but what did he also say remember in Mark 16 when he talked about it was the other Mark and great commission text he said those people who believe will experience and do amazing things through the power of the spirit he wasn't just talking about the apostles he didn't just say in the apostolic times he said those who believe will do amazing miracles are we witnessing that are we teaching that are we teaching people to prepare to do that or are we just saying here's what it means to be Catholic don't get me wrong we can do that but there's so much more we can give but we've got to be ready we've got to be ready it's going to get hard you think Satan has made it hard for us now it's going to get harder it's going to become so much more difficult so much more difficult point it the right way practical applications learn to operate in the power of the Holy Spirit and I have this question for you are you operating in the power of the Spirit not are you just a naturally well organized person to know how to do organizational things do you understand what it means to be operating in the power of the Spirit where the Spirit begins to start working through you where he starts ratcheting up your game because you're letting go and entrusting him if you start asking God you show me how to operate in your power be careful because he's going to start taking away control from you he's going to start taking things away I was sharing with someone earlier and I was ready at this parish to do a parish mission and I spent time and prayer all week long preparing for the mission and I showed up with zero in my book for what I was going to talk about I spent three hours in adoration the day of the first night ready to go I left there with zero on my pad Lord I hope you got something he wasn't giving me anything until I stood on the spot did he say go with this and then from that point on next thing I know he had to take it all away from me all my prior planning all my comfort zone I'd love to have just a bone God give me something he gave me squat because he brought me to a place where he was saying either you're going to trust that I am God and that I want to do this more than you do that I want to be more successful than you do than you are than you want to be until you come to believe that then you're still going to operate purely from your own power learn to be operated by God's power when I was working with a pastor I was doing this training and I had to leave it on a flight at three o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday catch my flight and dinner was done at one and pastor's looking at his watch he says okay let's get started he's looking at his watch as I'm continuing I got this next segment and finally it's like almost two o'clock and he goes deacon it's almost two o'clock we've got to leave in an hour are you going to roll out the plan and I'm like I'm sorry father what plan is that the plan to revitalize our parish isn't that why you came to show us the plan I'm like I don't have a plan for you father and then he just said well excuse me for asking but then why are you here I said I see my mission father is to help you and this parish staff learn how to become led by the spirit because he is the one who knows what to do but you know that is a death that's really hard to die is it not I mean to sit down and learn to wait upon the Lord we got a 16,000 things on the list screaming at us to tell us what to do and we had the time to just sit remember what Jesus told Mary Martha has made the greater choice Mary made the greater choice sorry come on guys it's been almost an hour okay I'm getting a little tired thank you for laughing made me know I did it wrong you know what I mean but we don't like to do that be still stuff you know for me the reason why I'll be honest the reason for me why that was so hard to learn how to do was because I only felt like I was fruitful for God if I was doing stuff I was still earning his love like I said we got to go back and we got to see what the enemy is doing in us so that we can see how we can free our parishioners because they're just like us one of the things I've learned very clearly and that's why I count on my prayer where's heavily is that the battle is always one in prayer always long before I show up if the prayer has been done that's one of the reasons why I think the Steubenville Conferences that particularly the youth because I've had a lot of exposure to those are so amazingly impactful is because of the prayer that goes into it the anointing is heavy and I can tell when I've traveled around the country from conference to conference to which organization has their prayer warrior team intact and functioning because the anointing is stronger in those places it makes kind of logical sense it's not rocket science but it requires our death to be still, to pray to fight and realize that prayer is a very it's absolutely essential it is our lifeline to the power to break away burnout next is parish-wide vision this is another thing that I'm seeing everywhere I go is that you might have 12 staff and when I go in and I ask all 12 staff individually in an interview say we got this guy Charlie over here and we want to evangelize him what does that evangelization look like or what is the mission of the church and I get 12 different answers so it's kind of like Moses coming around and saying okay when you hear the horn blown it's time to go so start packing up second horn means we're leaving in 15 third horn means move out and then when the third horn blows 12 tribes move out in 12 different directions because what's ending up happening is parish staffs are being filled not everybody is blessed or wise to come and get trained like you are and so what ends up happening is you've got all the surgeries and all they're doing is replicating the models they have witnessed and so there is no unified comprehensive vision where everybody on staff is talking and moving in the same direction vision, vision, what is the model you know what would really be cool to see is if a kid comes to mom and says mom why do we have to go to church and mom says because we're supposed to wouldn't it be cool to see mom say because I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ how would it come to get fed to get strengthened, rebuilt so I can go back out and do it again how would that change how our youth understand what it means to be Catholic last but not least minister did I not put that up there okay good minister to achieve the goal that's that whole idea of the light idea what is it that we're really trying to accomplish what's the bullseye what's the target if it's to make a disciple then are we going back to our parish programs and the things that we're doing and are we really doing the honest evaluations and saying does my confirmation program bear the fruit we desire if not then maybe it's time to change but then the question is how do we change what do we do what are we supposed to do because we don't know how to change we're so program dependent we don't know how to do anything outside of that why do you think and yet we're calling for a new evangelization which requires a new movement of the Holy Spirit which is called a new Pentecost but we don't want to wait upon God we don't want to call upon God one last thought as I start wrapping things up and we'll open it up for some questions and answers I was working with a pastor and a staff and I said wouldn't this be amazing if your pastor came to you and said in two weeks we've got to decide how we're going to try to implement this new evangelization endeavor so here's what I want you to do every day this week I want you to go to adoration when you come in I want you to clock in and I want you to go to adoration and spend one hour of your day everyone on staff business manager minister everybody go pray and I want you to ask the Holy Spirit what do you want us to do for this parish for two weeks I want you to do that and on the third on that second Friday we're going to meet in adoration we're going to go to adoration for the first hour and we're going to continue to pray and then we're going to cut out all work for that morning and we're going to get together and we're going to sit in a room and as your pastor I'm going to go around and I'm going to ask east of you what did you hear the Holy Spirit say tell me what would that do to your prayer life Holy Moly would that make you become much more conscious on trying to listen to what the Spirit is trying to say to you because you know what we do right now right let me let's be honest we get together in a staff meeting we sit down we open up with a token prayer oh God come and bless this meeting and then let's pull our resources come out with brainstorming we come up with our plan bless our plan it's true isn't it I know what I'm talking about I was in lots of those meetings instead we don't sit down and go Lord what do you want to do how do you want to transform my parish but here's the key thing before you can become corporate discerner you must become an individual discerner the work must begin in you so as the Spirit begins to prepare your parish for transformation you must be getting prepared interiorly in your heart in your life do you operate in the power of the Holy Spirit are you activated by Him are you making it your aim to be guided by Him it's a very hard thing to learn how to do but that's what we're supposed to be training people in so that they can do it because you see if I can train someone to become a disciple of Christ and I get that connected to the Holy Spirit and then they can listen to the Holy Spirit then begins the next battle to obey the Holy Spirit and then as they start obeying the Holy Spirit they actually start living in the power of the Spirit and then the Spirit tells them directly what they're supposed to do instead of the pastor standing up front what they're going to do and then the people just stare at them and go uh-huh is mass over yet it's a very hard challenge but you know the process is not a 45 point plan but we have to begin to confront the enemy who has already entrenched himself even within our own thoughts and patterns and behaviors and that's why we need the life of the Holy Spirit activated in us Lord you show me an adoration after the Q&A session instead of being a staff member who's coming and going oh great another adoration can we actually approach the Lord and say Lord you show me you show me my heart show me what's in the way is it pride is it fear show me what is in the way so that I can become a much more docile tool for your spirit any questions we have two microphones that are going to be running around here's one right here oh wait we have the first one here first one here and if you come up front if you got a question and then you guys all got to pray that I can answer it but I saw some priests it looks like so I'm covered score gonna come up on the stage but uh Dean can heard my questions for Petrock and decided to take chances with you so we're starting an endeavor I'm on a commission that the bishops asked me to be and it's for youth and young adult ministry in our diocese and I said I'd do it if we could root it in prayer and so we've asked for we're going to launch and ask parents to come to every all school mass and pray for the spirit of indifference to be dispelled at the Catholic high school and the middle schools um and for parishioners to pray for the youth in their parish but honestly I have no background in intercessory prayer I just know it has to happen that way so how do we do it? okay before you start those initiatives you would find a small group of people first find the prayer warriors gather them together and bathe this in prayer for a period of time couple three months whatever four months bathe it in prayer so that and begin to identify you said indifference the spirit of indifference is there so start praying specifically against the spirit of indifference and everything else that you say see there like if you were to say Lord you show us reveal to us what else is there and just start taking the list of all the different things start praying actively against them before you approach the parents to start engaging because they will not be free to engage to ask people who are bound to pray for other people to be unbound isn't going to work so we need to you need to get a core of parents who you know get it and already have the heart for that ask the Lord to bring them to you identify them get them to start praying are we praying corporate I mean together are we gathering to pray yes all the above daily corporately all the above one of my things for pastors I tell pastors I said I believe a pastor needs to have a small group of people seven set five to seven people that they gather every Friday to pray for the pastor so they got to be able to speak they got to be able to keep it all confidential and everything so the pastor can come and he can share his own heart his own wounds his own brokenness his own concerns for the parish where it never goes anywhere because that way we're praying for him and sustaining him and he's got a group of people to do that and then the staff people can come and utilize them as well and then you can invite parishioners to pray also the prayer chains and all the other different tools that parishes have but that there has to be tools that know what's going on in specifics of what to pray for before you start the initiatives like when I do parish missions I would love if they prayed and and bade six months in prayer for that mission before we even get close to doing the mission the people on ground besides my prayer warriors I would love for that to happen great question someone else if you come if there's a lot if you come over here to the microphone and this is one of those pregnant moments okay yes you know the verse be not yoked with unevenly with other believers you know you hear that verse before and we're looking at the high divorce rate that's going on and so you know just how do you strengthen the pre cana you know in our church that's going on to establish the families there you know to solve some of these problems yes okay good I've just got a few minutes here to handle that question but seriously again obviously you're going to hear me say it's going to begin with prayer but I would again go back and here's one of the interesting things you're going to be throwing out questions to me but my disciples when they throw out questions like that I turn around and I say you're asking the wrong person who should you be asking the Holy Spirit but again we isn't it true we're not accustomed to saying I got this serious issue and I don't know how to address it so let me go see if I can find is there an expert in the audience anyone father someone who could and really it's the spirit who knows that answer so I would gather some people together again in prayer and discernment Lord you show me how do we begin to do that obviously there has to be good models right because people grow up to live the models right so we have to figure out how we're going to strengthen the models are we praying for our families our couples because you know you come to Mass and when you're on the altar and you look out at the people you see these married people you know half of them came fighting that morning it's true I mean my car illustration was really spoke a lot of truth to that I mean we do come that way and so we need to pray for those people because we need to show people what a good marriage looks like because right now people are getting afraid to get married because they feel like they're going to fail and so I'm not sure that we're doing a great job of being able to articulate that both from the pulpit and in the ways that we teach and then we talk about it so that's some good ways of doing that other question from your experience with doing intergenerational catechesis and stuff our parish is a very large bilingual community that does mostly curriculum based everything how would you suggest or how did you experience that transition into something more led by the spirit or using a curriculum in conjunction with you know an encounter with God okay so if I understand your question is how do we bring the evangelization into the process of the curriculum right in your experiences how was that how does that transition made well the first of all I looked at the content and I always looked at whatever it was that we were going to teach with a particular goal in the end right and that is how is what we're going to teach today add and make the direct connection to the relationship with Jesus Christ that we're all supposed to be living in how do we make that connection so if I'm doing a teaching on original sin how do I make that connection to the relationship with Jesus Christ doing it to all the sacraments because right now most people think the sacraments are the ends right not the beginning and so but how do I now make the connection to this is all goes back to a relationship with Jesus Christ so in the content the take home kids that we prepared for all of that everything was making a line back to a relationship with Christ really what ended up happening is those parents that came it was a small parish so I had like 500 650 families I had 200 families of the 550 on the roles coming and it was the parents not new people coming to the church it was the parents who were coming that were waking up and realizing they didn't have a relationship with Christ and so we were literally doing opening meetings introducing them to a relationship with Christ leading them to a place of conversion and leading them to pray the prayer of conversion and then talking about what does this conversion really mean because people don't understand that people don't understand like for example it says in the catechism reference number 1131 it's that one text in the catechism that talks about the sacraments or efficacious and nature it's got those hundred dollar church words but the very last sentence is absolutely critical in that it says that the fruits of the sacraments will not come to fruition unless someone is properly disposed well I can't control the Holy Spirit and say excuse me miss receive the spirit BOOM and all of a sudden she's like lit on fire I can't control God like that nor am I supposed to but there are things that I am supposed to do and so I am supposed to lead her to a place of proper disposition and Saint Peter talked about that at Acts chapter 2 you gotta be repentant you gotta be baptized well repentance means you stop acting like your God living by your own rules and baptism we don't do a good job of catechizing on baptism we just talk about the right but we forget about the fact that baptism basically means you die you give God everything when's the last time we led people to make that decision I think what we've fallen back to out of fear it's how do I show you how to add a little bit of Jesus to your already busy life instead of saying it's one or the other your life in the world or your life completely to Jesus Christ and we're so afraid of making people go to that decision because we're afraid they're gonna say no but our job as evangelists is to bring people to that decision it is all Jesus or no Jesus what did the scripture say you can't serve two masters and you can't serve mammon and what are we trying to do teach them how to serve both you can't do both so every meeting everything would focus back at the beginning of the year we would do I wouldn't go with the books I wouldn't go with the content we made up our own meeting and it was evangelistic in nature and saying it all starts with this a relationship with Jesus Christ I think every RCIA program why is it that RCIA has to be a certain amount of months I don't understand if I'm gonna go, remember I told you I'm a simple guy so if I'm gonna go build a house I can't start building a block walls until I got the foundation laid why am I building the walls where there's no foundation because it's because Easter's coming well isn't that what we're doing is based on time not on production why I'm just a simple guy I'm asking the question why why can't we go back to I can't move you on to discipleship training until you're connected with God so for me that's kind of how I did it sorry it was really a long winded answer actually we were talking about original sin earlier just in our discussion so that's funny that you brought it up again thank you anyone else otherwise yes I see that hand that makes no sense to me so I'm not sure if we're done last question so Deacon I really liked everything you said but how do I get my staff on board praise you Jesus bring him to the St. John Bosco amen brother that's what happened yes that really it becomes that question again if you were my disciple and you asked me that question what would I respond back with you're asking the wrong person because who's the one who knows how to reach every one of your staff members it is the Holy Spirit he is the go-to person that we never go to you know we don't we never go to him I don't know why he's the best kept seeker of the church he happens to be God but we never go to him but I mean obviously praying for each of them talking about okay so let's talk about an evangelistic process real quick okay it's the same kind of principle you would use like if you're a parent who's lost kids from the faith know what I'm talking about like I run in contact with these seniors who are grieving because their kids have left the church and they left the faith and I said and they don't know what to do so they asked me how do you evangelize and I said well my first suggestion would be stop telling them what they're doing wrong don't tell them what they're not doing you're not going to church and concern they know what you believe they know what you understand don't do that start using testimony right it's the testimony of the saints that will overcome the kingdom of Satan the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony and so instead of saying that saying here is what happened to me at the John Bosco conference here is what I began to understand here's how the piece has made sense what do you think about this begin the dialogue but long before you begin those kind of testimonies what are you doing praying praying sick mama