 This is how we're gonna start. I'm gonna tell you a little story. I'm gonna pray that we're gonna do this thing. And we're gonna have fun, okay? I guarantee you I'm gonna challenge you guys a little bit today, all right? I'm gonna challenge you a little bit. So I have a bottle of bourbon because part of the reason that, and if you ask just about any of the speakers who've been coming for any number of years, I've been coming for about 10 years or so with a couple of years off in there. We don't come for the money. And the reason why we don't come for the money says, Stupendville doesn't have any. Okay. Second, and this is not some, so this is not like a big speaker payday thing, okay? By the way, if any of you guys are like, well that bald guy's pretty good. I'll have him come speak at our thing and da da da da da and you ask me. Most stuff I don't speak at anymore. I only pretty much do leadership formation stuff at dioceses and parishes and things like that, okay? So I don't do general speaking anymore. And I charge a lot now because if I get on a plane and go somewhere and take time away from my family, I don't even feel bad about it. But I come to this because I have friends and I make friends and so I spend time with people. So outside of these sessions I'm with people, like the whole time pretty much. And so last night we were with people and it was Sister Mary Michael's birthday yesterday. So we got her a cake and we went and sang happy birthday and we drank a little bourbon and then I left that party and I went down to the hotel and I had some friends there and other people showed up and some people I was supposed to text like Marcos and I didn't actually, I sent the text to transportation instead of Marcos that I was gonna be done, my bad brother. So I owe Marcos. Anyway, so yesterday we go to get this bottle of bourbon at the Kroger because I needed to have this so that we could have something for everybody to sit around and talk. And notice we didn't drink that much. I mean, good gracious. So I walk into the liquor store at Kroger which by the way in Texas, this is a phenomenon which you never have happened because we don't have liquor stores in grocery stores. Nor like anybody from Louisiana. Like in Louisiana you go into the gas station and there's liquor behind the counter which is kind of like, wow, this is convenient and kind of sad. Anyway, so I walked in there and I asked the lady, how you doing? And she said, I'm doing good. Well, you know, I can't really tell the truth because I'd probably get fired at this place if I did. And I said, what do you mean? She said, well, they don't like it when you really tell the truth. Most people don't like the truth. I said, I'm not afraid of the truth. Tell me the truth. How you really doing? And she said, I wish I wasn't here. I said, you wish you weren't working? She said, no, I wish I wasn't on this earth. Okay, here's your first test. What would you do? Not what's the best thing to do, like actually, truly, right now, where you are and somebody who you just randomly met in a store tells you, I don't want to be on this earth. What would you do? Like for real, not like, oh, this is the thing I need to do. This is what I ought to do. Like, what would you do? Before we answer that, we're gonna pray for this woman. The name of the Father and the Son of Holy Spirit. The people we meet, Lord, you love them. You long for them. You desire a relationship with them. You created everything for them. You created them for you. So why we're here is to be in relationship with you and we grasp it so much other stuff that can't fulfill what our hearts long for, Lord. Forgive us for the times that we put other things before you or make things too important. Help us to love you above all things, to have our identity flow from that relationship with you and be with us, Lord, as we go to your world that needs you so desperately. And this time together, challenge us, prod us, humble us and make us better evangelists for our own holiness, for the growth of your kingdom, for the salvation of your people, for the glory of your name, for the good of others and ourselves so that we can be who we're supposed to be, that your church might come alive, that we can proclaim your gospel, that more people can come back to your Eucharist and that, Lord, in all things, we might be saints. We love you, Jesus, help us love you so much that we can't help it, amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. All right, so for real, what would you do? Somebody share. Go ahead, stay it loudly. I need it real loud and kind of short actually because they're recording so I'm gonna have to repeat back, so. Okay, try to find out what's going on and ask questions. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, invite the Holy Spirit into it. Yeah, prophetic listening, yeah. And by the way, prophetic listening is something that in these sessions and years past, we talk about quite a bit because my brothers who used to run this with me really kind of came up even with that phrase, prophetic listening or popularized it, which is basically that we wanna be people who are able to listen to what the Holy Spirit says to us in a way that's going to tell us what those other people need from us, okay? So good, thank you for that. Somebody else share. Go ahead, okay. So you'd be compelled to give him a hug, okay. So see, let me tell you, and this is why I wanted several responses. The point is there's no perfect response here. There's no canned response here. This is where you have to try to figure out, okay, what are my gifts, what am I good at? I couldn't give that woman a hug right there, not at that moment, not yet. And in some ways, if you have that approachable, look at me, I'm not the most first approachable guy, okay? Let's be honest. I mean, I walk into a room and people are like, oh crap, he's gonna hurt me. And for real, you could probably hurt me more than I could hurt you. So at this point in my life, I used to think I was tough, I now know I'm not tough at all. Okay, I'm a weenie. So I couldn't give her a hug though right then because I have this look at me that like my resting angry face, you know? It's anyway, we're not getting into this. You get the point. So what would you do? That question is not, I get to tell you what to do. Now I'll tell you what I did. I tried to have a little bit of a conversation whether she got angry. She got angry because something was hurting. And I knew I could see that right up. And I said, I'm sorry to hear that, that you don't wanna be on this earth, that you don't wanna live. I'm sorry. And I said, that must hurt. And I'll pray for you. And then she said this. Here's another thing she said. She said, oh, don't do that. You're talking to a rabid atheist and I don't want your prayer. And I smiled at her and I kinda laughed and I said, hey, I understand. I got a lot of friends who are atheists too and I completely get it. Sometimes it feels like people are trying to do things to you and all that kind of stuff. I'm not in that camp. I don't want you to feel angry at me for praying for you. Just know, I want something better for you, okay? And so I talked to her a little bit about the bourbons on the shelf and the other stuff. And so for those of you who just walked in, we're passing alcohol around just FYI. So hold it up, hold it be like, look at our bourbon. Yeah, so if you wanna shot, like what time is it like eight o'clock in the morning, you can have one. And I told her, look, I'm going to pray for you but you just pretend I'm not, okay? And she laughed at that. And then she checked me out and I told her, I hope you have a blessed day. I'm gonna be praying for you and thinking about you. And she smiled at me. And that was about the best I could probably do for me in that moment. But this is why we do this. This is where we actually try this stuff, right? And by the way, I'm gonna tell you something. Here's a little secret. That woman I met yesterday in the Kroger liquor store, when I was buying bourbon, was way easier to evangelize than anybody in my family who doesn't go to church. Can we all agree upon that? That woman is way easier to evangelize than the people who go to my parish who don't know Jesus Christ. That woman who I met in that liquor store yesterday is way easier to evangelize than the people in my neighborhood. Now, am I called to help her in what respect I can? Yes. Am I called to deeply invest in that woman's life? Absolutely not. So I wanna be very clear here. Well, random moments of evangelization are great. What we're aiming at are our family, our neighbors, our coworkers, the people in our parish who don't know Jesus Christ. That's who our mission field is. Your mission field are the concentric circles of people around you, okay? Now let's talk about evangelization for a second because I don't take any, one of the principles of what Catholic missionary disciples does as an apostolate, we don't take things for granted. I do not take for granted that you know what evangelization actually is and we agree upon a definition, nor do I take for granted that all the people in here have actually been evangelized and are disciples of Jesus Christ. In a little while, I'm gonna try to evangelize those who aren't. I'm gonna straight up tell you, I'm gonna preach the gospel and ask you to respond. Okay? And before I go any further, if you want these slides, my email is marcellatcatholicmissionarydisciples.com. You can email me, I'll send you the slide deck, okay? Marcellatcatholicmissionarydisciples.com. So look at this definition. Evangelization takes place in obedience to the missionary mandate of Jesus. And then Francis quotes the Great Commission. It's obedience. Now, we got a lot of parents in this room. If you tell your kids, hey, I want you to go clean up the dog poop in the backyard so your dad can mow. And then you come back half an hour later and they haven't cleaned up the poo and they've been disobedient. Are there consequences? There better be unless you're like one of those, you know, oh, it's okay. I'll go take care of it. And then like that's not very good parenting, okay? Like make your kid go clean up the dog poo for Jesus's sake, for their sake and your sake, okay? It's only right. All right, so you make them go do that. There's consequences. And if we don't actually have obedience to our God, there's actually consequences to us and for the world. There's consequences to me. I might step in poo because I have to come after them and mow and it's consequences for them because they might be lacking something if they're not obedient, right? Same for you if you don't do this stuff. Now, the fact is that evangelization, and I wanna go back here, let's go back, okay? Evangelization is helping people come to a faith in Jesus Christ where they're converted to him. Grace, faith, conversion. Evangelization aims at those things. God works first to provide the grace to be able to respond to it in faith so that you can be converted. Now, here's something I'm gonna tell you. There's a lot of Catholics right now who are getting better at understanding the karygma. The karygma is a Greek word that means proclamation, okay, charismatic response or gospel message or whatever you wanna call it. That primary message, the great story of Jesus Christ that he has come into this world to save souls and he's come for you, okay? That, people are getting better at proclaiming that and teaching that and preaching that and I'm gonna give you a fatal flaw, okay? Because 10 years ago I would have said the fatal flaw is we're not preaching that and teaching that at all pretty much and now we're doing it. So let's all be happy that the Catholic Church has acknowledged we need to be more characterically oriented, more gospel oriented. We need to be comfortable in proclaiming that stuff. Everybody agree with that about 10 years ago it would have been different? When we started this track and when we rewrote it to be evangelization and discipleship oriented, boy, we got some pushback, even internally, okay? Now, that would have been the fatal flaw 10 years ago. The fatal flaw now is that we preach it, teach it, we proclaim it and then we get to the point of saying and Jesus Christ wants to have a relationship with you two and then we go sit down or we're talking to somebody else and we say this is a possibility for you two and we're done. People are then and I've seen like the look on the face of somebody sitting in mass after father gets up, he, you know, preaches a karygma in his homily and people are like, I want that. And he says in you two could have it and he sits down and after mass I'll go up to him if I know the priest I don't do this randomly like rando guy in the back saying father let me tell you how to improve your homily. Like I'll go to the guys who I mentor or work with or whatever, who are friends and I'll say look, father, I was awesome for real. Like, you know, I don't give out praise about speaking and preaching that's not real, but you miss something or I would actually encourage you to add something and that is tell them how, tell them how to have the relationship and then walk them through a process where they can have it and you don't have to overthink this here. You could do something like repeating the baptismal promises, making up your own prayer. I mean, even Francis did it and even jelly gallium. He gave a prayer of how to have, you know, an act of faith and if you pray that sincerely, that's all it takes. That's your response. This is why the church in her sacraments builds these things, right? In baptism, you have to have a personal response and if you can't do it as a child, then the parents and God parents do it for you, right? Until you can yourself and the problem is we've forgotten until you can do it yourself and left it as like, well, I guess everybody's done that and this is the problem we're in. We got a bunch of baptized, confirmed, catechized Catholics who go to mass, they're sacramentalized and they do not know Jesus Christ nor follow him and therefore they are not disciples of Jesus Christ because to be a disciple of Jesus Christ takes an intentional act of faith to say, I want to follow you. Be clear here, this realization has changed the church in the United States in the last 15 years. It's literally changed the orientation of the church because in leadership circles, bishops, priests, catechetical leaders and others are now oriented towards this, we now have to change what we do and how we do it. So it's okay if you come into this session saying, I didn't get this in grad school or I didn't get this in my formation or I didn't get this growing up or whatever, that's okay. Okay, be humble enough to say, I don't necessarily have all the skills to be able to do this and now I have to learn and the church is actually learning from two areas of the church who have been doing this a little bit more than any others. It has been in youth ministry and campus ministry and the most bold have been in campus ministry. Guess where my roots come from, campus ministry. So when we go on campus, I remember 20 years ago, I was walking on the 20-something years ago, it's not even just 20 years, walking on the campus of Texas Tech, teaching my students how to do campus evangelization, just going on campus and talking to people about Jesus Christ. And I remember the first time I did it, they said, Marcel, I'm not gonna go do street evangelization without you coming with us. I said, I promise I will be there, show up at 10 a.m. in the big square on campus and I will be there, I promise. At 10 a.m. I walked and I was about 50 yards from where they were supposed to be gathering and I watched them for half an hour to see what they did. After I'd spent some weeks helping form them on how to have the conversations and stuff and telling them how not to argue, how to ask more questions than they're asked, et cetera. And I see this little bitty girl, she's like this tall, and this humongous guy is like 6'6", doing like this. I couldn't hear what he said, but I walked up to him and they go, the little girl goes, Marcel, because I'm supposed to be the campus minister who has all the answers, right? Like here comes Superman or something. I was like, yep, no, I'm not really. So I walk up to the guy and I say, hey, what's your name? My name's Marcel and I shook his hand. He said, my name's John or whatever it was. And I said, what are you guys talking about? And he goes, I wanna know why the Catholic Church killed so many people in Spain during the, you know, and he's going off about the inquisition and all this other stuff. And I said, John, I would love to talk to you about that, but look, let me just ask you a couple of questions first. First of all, where are you from? They're like, I'm from Mule Shoe or wherever he's from, you know, some little po-dunk town in Texas, which by the way, every little town in Texas we call po-dunk just because it's not my town, okay? Anyway, some little town in Texas and I said, what do you study? And he says, this and this and this. And I say, so where'd you learn about the inquisition? He starts telling me, I was like, you got a lot of questions, don't you? And he's starting to calm down a little bit and da-da-da-da-da-da, and I'm asking a bunch of, so, you know, what's your family? You know, what kind of faith stuff do you have growing up in your family? He's calming down a little bit more just as he's talking and he realizes that I'm not there to attack or just to win or anything else, you know? And I do this for like 15 minutes. And finally the guy's smiling and laughing and he's, you know, I got him going and I was smiling at him and stuff. And at the end of it, I say, so you wanted to know about the inquisition, right? He goes, oh yeah. Notice the posture has completely changed at this point. My job was not to go in there and win, prove him wrong or do anything else. My job is to go in there and love the guy. Now, I've never done this perfectly and I've gone in sometimes to try to win and most of the times I've learned something it's because I'm a knucklehead and I had to go do something stupid, make a mistake, okay, and that's okay. Because even in your mistakes, God can work. Even in your limitations, God can work. All we have to give God are our inadequacies. We are inadequate to the task, God is not. And this is where we learn it's not about us. So when you feel like it's awkward, when you feel like I can't do this, when you feel like I don't have the skill or the ability or the talent or the gifts, that is from your own woundedness or the enemy. Those are lies and we have to name them. So you guys are all catechetical leaders in some respect, whether you're catechists, young adult people, you know, DREs, school teachers, all this stuff, pastors. What you need to know about in your parish, in your ministry is that first thing right there. Jesus never ran a program. Jesus never ran a program. Jesus had no resources. Jesus had no buildings. The apostles had no staff. When they started, there was squat. And I get it. Look, I've been the Lone Ranger Campus Minister at a campus in Texas Tech. When I started in campus ministry, any ministry at all, full time, with barely any budget, a ministry that was on the downturn, was dying. And I could tell you all the success stories and stuff like that of what that looked like and, you know, no, the point is the programs don't make the ministry. People make the ministry. And the ministry is not about the program, the ministry is about the people you're trying to reach. So stop looking for the magic bullet, the quick fix, the right curriculum. Stop looking for the perfect thing that's going to make you better at what you already need to be doing, which is evangelizing, building relationships, preaching the gospel, being bold, growing in your own prayer life, becoming a better saint. Because you are the answer, not the program. You are. And the others you invest in, that you get to go do the same thing, go on mission with as well. So when I get into this, what I'm about to get into for just a second, I'm not going to spend a lot of time doing this. I usually spend like hours doing what I'm about to do in about two minutes here in a second. Be careful, okay? Okay, so when we're talking about ministry stuff, what I want you to conceptualize, as an evangelist and somebody who's in the church trying to do stuff, you may not have the, some of you guys have, I talked about this yesterday, some of you are decision makers and some of you have decision makers that tell you what to do. If you're a decision maker, especially in a parish, in any way, and I know some of you can't really see this, that's okay. The point being, what you need to understand is there are three stages, pre-evangelization, evangelization, which we're gonna be talking about here in discipleship. And if everything you do at a parish or in your program or in your ministry or whatever else is everybody's welcome to everything, then you're doing it wrong. I'm gonna say that again and I say it boldly and I will throw this hand grenade into this room and I don't care if it's at the USCCB and I tell bishops this, by the way, and bishops are like, okay, tell me why. Here's your hand grenade. You are, not everybody should be going to everything. Stop it, cut it out. I know you want numbers, numbers are not the goal. Fruitfulness is named more than numbered. So you wanna be fruitful, understand. Pre-evangelization, which is before somebody is ready, that woman last night was pre-evangelization. That woman last night in the liquor store says she doesn't wanna be on this earth is pre-evangelization. What she needs to do is have somebody be kind to her, somebody invest in her. And I can't invest, but I can be kind. I can pray for, I can encourage. That's pre-evangelization, it's building relationships. It's when we start the basic human understanding of building something small. This is done outside of church walls 99% of the time. You cannot program for this most of the time. This is done in your neighborhoods. This is done in schools. This is done on campus. This is done in the buildings and the work. This is not done in church buildings. Seriously. So evangelization is the proclamation that aims for conversion. And you can build up to evangelization. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about that if I have some time. And then discipleship is formation. It's the catechetical depth. It's the service and social justice and other stuff primarily, those kind of things, right? It's learning how to pray and discern and all those other things that go into being a disciple of Jesus Christ. Don't confuse those things. When we confuse those things, we do things backward or in the wrong way or order or for everybody. Okay, I'm gonna stop for a second because I wanna move off of this. But this is necessary so that you understand there's distinctions both personally and in ministry. But I wanna stop for a second and see if anybody's got questions. Any questions? Good question. So our question was, I work in campus ministry. Should I not invite students who are on the fence to a Bible study? Okay, depends on what kind of Bible study it is. So let me give you a couple of things. Okay, so a little while ago for the missionaries that are working on campus in North Texas and Denton, Texas, and they're helping do Bible studies and stuff like that, I recommended something. I'm not gonna even do this because it's being recorded. I don't want everybody to know the recommendation of what I recommend. But I recommended something that has a charismatic proclamation in a Bible study format. That's evangelical in the sense of helping somebody come to wrestle with Jesus Christ, his claims, who he is and what he could do for me. So it's wrestling with the gospel, right? If you have something like that, absolutely invite them to that if they're open to it. Now, part of this also is have you put the time in to build some trust to be able to make that invitation where it might be answered anyway? You don't wanna jump the gun. Now I've jumped the gun before. Okay, I have a neighbor, his name's John. He's one of those Ash Creaster, kind of, you know, he goes Ash Wednesday, Christmas Easter, kind of Catholics. And I had him over the backyard and, you know, when my priest buddies and my other friends come over and we're sitting around the fire pit or in the pool or whatever and John comes over and hangs out and he knows all, we pray together and do stuff like that and he's been open to it a little bit. And then I was like, hey, John, I'm starting a small group. You wanna do it? And he's like, oh, that's not my thing. Okay, I jumped the gun. And it told me, slow your roll because we're gonna be here for years. Let's just, let's do a little bit more of this relationship build. So I backed it back up into the pre-evangelization stuff. Okay, so you gotta kind of discern that. And sometimes, at least he knows he's worthy of it. Any other questions before I move on? Okay, so let's talk about your personal tool belt. And I talked about this yesterday in my other sessions, but until your heart aches like God's heart in some sense for other people and their salvation, you're not gonna evangelize. You just won't do it, because it'll feel like a job. Not a relationship, not something that flows out of a lifestyle, not something that you're gonna love to do. It's gonna feel like a job. Think about the, excuse me, it's, oh, he's killing me. Think about the prodigal son. But think about the father and the prodigal son. What was, where was he when the prodigal son was gone? Where was he most days? He was watching, he was looking for the prodigal son. He's literally waiting for the prodigal son to come home. He sees him from a far distance because he's looking for him. Are you looking for souls that are far away from God? And you might say, yeah, I am. And then I say, well, what are you doing about it? Well, not much. Well, then you're not really looking. We need to turn our gaze to the people who never darken the doors of our church if our church is going to be renewed. We need to turn our gaze to the people who never come to our churches or our parishes, our ministries, our programs, our events, our classes, our sacraments if we're going to renew our church. Because our renewal of our church is not just going to come by getting the people in the pews a little bit more excited or converted to Jesus Christ without going back out into the streets and changing other lives. All that's gonna do is create a little bit better club that we're already okay with. And I'm sick of Catholic club stuff. And I'm gonna tell you, I think God is too. And that's why he's allowed for the church to decline because it's our fault, not his. We took our eyes off of the souls that are in our parish boundaries that need Jesus Christ. And we're just feeding the people who come. Some of them, because for every one person that joins the Catholic church in the United States right now, six leave out the back door. We're not even serving those people real well. We need this prodigal response of the father. We need to know there's eternal consequences that are gonna have to happen if we don't do this stuff. And we need to take the initiative because people who are out there, who are comfortable and okay, will not come to your church. Not only that, but they're not even gonna think about their need for God until you help them wrestle with these kind of things. And so you gotta learn how to ask the kind of questions that are gonna motivate this stuff. And you gotta lean into the power of the Holy Spirit. Who's the one who can change hearts? And you gotta say, God, I want this. I gotta be motivated by this love, okay? The Holy Spirit wants this way more than you do and will empower you to go do on this mission if you allow him to. So what does this look like? How do you do this? How? This is a question you probably came here for, but until you get to this point, the how doesn't matter. Okay, now I'm gonna stop right here. If all you want is tell me how to do A, B, C, D, E, I'm gonna tell you first of all, this is art more than science. Evangelization is art more than science. It needs constant discernment. It needs constant thinking through, is this the best way? What did I do right? What did I do wrong? And then letting God fill in the gaps of your inadequacies, okay? So, but it starts with letting the Holy Spirit work through you, having a heart for these people, wanting their salvation, desiring this stuff, taking the initiative and doing all that stuff before you get to the how. Cause that should compel you to do something and now you ask how. Is everybody tracking with me here? Okay, so what does this look like? Let's start with this. Why do we proclaim our testimonies? Why do we give our witness? Well, if God's impacted me, I should be able to talk about it. First Peter says this. If somebody asks you why, then you need to be able to tell them. What has God done in your life? Has God operated in your life? And if God hasn't operated in your life, then here's what I would tell you right now. Stop, stop. If God is not operating a powerful way in your life and go pray in faith, Lord come into my life in a powerful way, because you need that. If you don't have a story, then you need to have a story. In other words, maybe you haven't been converted, not fully. So we do this because we know that people care more about stories nowadays than they do about truth. They care more about narratives than they do about what's actually true. They're gonna use their emotions just as much as their reason in modern people. Would you agree with that? That people are like this, I mean, it bugs the heck out of me that none of my kids talk about what they think anymore, they just talk about what they feel. And I'm not unconcerned about your feelings, but I wanna know what you think more than what you feel. And when you're trying to think through something. And most of the time it's miss speaking, actually. And I'll say, are you actually feeling this or are you thinking this? Oh, well, I'm thinking this. And even in our language, we talk more about our feelings and our thoughts as if they're just feelings, okay? So this power of personal testimony is that it's also, Pope Paul VI said that people will not listen to teachers, okay? You're supposed to all be catechists at some level, whether you're missionary, whether you're a campus minister, a young adult, whether you're a DRE or whatever else, right? You're all catechists. You're supposed to be teaching the faith. You're supposed to be handing on the faith. That's what catechesis is, handing on of the faith, right? So at some level you're supposed to, but before you do that, before you can teach, before people will listen, they wanna know that you're a witness to it. Pope Paul VI says, people listen more to witnesses than teachers. And if they do listen to teachers, then they will only if they witness to it first. Evangeli Nuntiande is where you can find them. So what do you wanna do for the conversion story? You're gonna do the before, during, and after. Before you had an encounter with Jesus, like Bishop Cousins talked about last night, what happened in the encounter with Jesus and after what was different? It's very simple. Don't overthink this. Before, during, after an encounter with Jesus, what happened? How did things change? Okay, a couple of things. Yes ma'am. Yeah, good question. Our question was, does this mean it needs to be a singular event or can it happen over time? No, it's not just a singular event, okay? So, let me give you some examples. I usually do literally an hour and a half on this or more, you know? I'm doing these slides that... So, there's gonna be stuff I leave out. I apologize. But, I want, think about it this way. When I say I'm a cradle Catholic, what does that mean? Anybody tell me what a cradle Catholic means. What does that mean? Born, baptized as a baby. Okay, does that tell you anything about where that person is right now? All it tells you is they were probably baptized. It doesn't even tell you they're baptized. And let me tell you why. Cradle Catholic over here. St. Therese of Lisieux. St. Therese of Lisieux has two parents who are saints and her sisters are on the way to canonization if they're not already canonized. Shut your mouth, that's not even fair. Everybody in your family is a saint? Shut up! I mean like canonized, that's stupid. Okay, St. Therese cradle Catholic. Probably never committed a moral sin. Great, you know, and by the way, patroness of missionaries. Okay? And over here is Bubba. Bubba's a cradle Catholic. Bubba's actually only been in a Catholic church for funerals. Bubba's never been baptized, but Bubba's grandma was Catholic. His mom was baptized as a baby but never went to church after that. But their families always said they're Catholic so he says when people ask, I'm a cradle Catholic. Okay, got it? This is why we never accept a label in place of a story. Never accept a label in place of a story. And in your story that you're telling, it could look like, look, it took me 27 years wrestling with God back and forth, up and down, in and out, sometimes believing, sometimes not believing, not knowing my heart was restless and all this stuff and I don't even know when it happened or how but I've come to faith in Jesus Christ in some way, you know? It does, look, your story is your story. I don't get to define this. My story has a moment. I can, I have a story with a moment and I'm gonna do it here in about 40 seconds here in a second, okay? And then I'm gonna actually make you guys do one minute testimonies to each other, okay? So we're gonna stop here in a second. I'm gonna make you do that and the reason why is because I wanna see you get uncomfortable. I actually make bishops and priests and Catholic leaders and dioceses and parishes do this with me and when I do it, I'm literally taking notes of how to improve and I tell them, believe me, it's a lot harder to give it to a guy who's actually paying attention to every single detail on how to do this better and it's gonna give you feedback than somebody you just met or somebody who in your family who you struggled and you've never given your testimony to. I make it way harder so that when you go do it with somebody naturally, organically, it's actually really easy. So I'm gonna tell you my story. Notice some before, during and after. Notice I don't need, like the details that are important to me when I tell this story, I could tell you when and who and you don't need to know all that stuff. It's very important to me. I can call that moment back from 30 years ago. I can call that moment back right now and I can actually literally like be back present. My emotions might come back up that I felt that night, okay? But that doesn't matter to my audience. When I practice it and I do this, you wanna do this where it changes every time I do it. That's why it's organic and natural. I might say something today I didn't say last time or never said, okay? All right, so I'll just give it to you. I grew up in a very Catholic family. Two parents that are so Catholic, my dad got Catholic youth of the nation when he was in college. My dad went into seminary for a couple of years. He left, he married my mom, had a bunch of kids and they raised their kids Catholic. They were from South Louisiana, where all the kids raised Catholic and it was kind of like biosmosis you learn the faith. But none of the kids really absorbed it except for my one oldest sister. The other four of us, we all left the church and I left the church pretty much before I left the house even though I was still going to Mass but by the time I hit college, I was running after girls and booze. And I just wanted to party my way through. Almost fell out of college. Finally had to deal with my own stuff because I felt guilty about all the stuff I was doing but I didn't know how to deal with it. And some friends invited me to a retreat. And I went on this retreat and that night in confession, I finally faced all that stuff that I was kind of packing down for years. And in that moment, I knew God loved me and I knew I was forgiven and I just let it all go. And so I left that confessional and I went over to the chapel and I knelt down in that chapel and I told God, I don't even know how to do this or what this means but I want to give you my life. And from that moment on, I've tried to follow Jesus Christ and there's been good and bad and there's been easy and hard but I know that God's changed my life. He's the one who saved my soul and then one day I'm going to rest there forever with him. And I think this is something that everybody has called to is to have this kind of relationship with Jesus Christ before, during, after. And at the end, what did I do? What I call a soft sale. Okay? In a testimony, I make a soft invitation. With the karygma, you make a bold invitation. And the reason I do that is because a soft invitation cracks the door, this could be you too. Right? God can work in your life too. In the karygma, we do a God, if you want this, let's do it right now. If you think somebody's prepared for it. Okay, we'll talk about that more in a minute. Okay, questions about this. All right, okay. So have you ever asked anybody what they want you to pray for? Okay. And what do they say? So I remember the first time this happened to me, my sister was going through some terrible times and this big deacon, his name was Deacon, I think it was Dick, Deacon Dick. And he was the largest deacon I've ever met in my life. He's like six, six and weigh like 700 pounds, okay? And he was very loud. I am the deacon who proclaims loudly. And so we're back in the narthex of the church and Deacon's coming up to Marcel. See, I'm even breaking the microphone right now. Marcel, how are you? And I'm like, oh man, it's been rough in my family. Like what's going on? Everybody's listening to him say all this. Well, my sister, she's not doing that. Oh my gosh, will you pray for her? Yes, let's pray right now. Lord Jesus Christ, you know, he starts praying over me like this. And I'm like, that was amazing. I needed that right now. And I told people yesterday, what did I make you guys do yesterday who were in my session on prayer? Made you in the session by praying with each other, right? We're doing it again. So you're gonna do the same thing you did yesterday. You're gonna ask the person what they personally need prayers for. And when you answer that question, you cannot say my mom, my dad, my sister, my brother, my dog, my cat, my cat's throwing up and needs prayers. No, I need this to be a better evangelist. That's the answer you're gonna get. I need to be more bold. I need to be more out there. I need more courage. I need to be more gentle. Whatever it might be, find that thing. We're gonna take a second. You're gonna think about that. Then I'm gonna say, okay, name that for the other person. The other person is gonna pray for you. I'm gonna, I want you to keep it very short, okay? This is like a 10 to 20 second prayer. It doesn't have to be long. Very short, 10 to 20 seconds, okay? We're gonna wrap up when you start hearing the room wind down after about 20 seconds. Stop, don't go on, please. Consider other people in the room. Then you're gonna reverse. You got it? This is not hard. We can all do this, okay? So let's do this. All right. So, evangelization is incomplete. Evangelization is incomplete until the gospel is proclaimed. If there's nothing else you get out of this session, this is the principle you need to know. Evangelization is incomplete until the gospel is proclaimed. I can't emphasize this enough. Evangelization is incomplete until the gospel is proclaimed and until somebody responds to it in faith. This is the heart of what we do. We need to be able to do this thing. And here's the thing. We're getting a little better at it, but people are still stuck in, I need all the, you know, like, well, let me tell you this. We've had to steal a little bit from our Protestant brothers and sisters because they've done a better job in the 20th century of evangelizing, but they haven't even done a great job. They're losing numbers too, just FYI, because their methodology is not quite what a Catholic understanding of evangelization is. But the gospel message they have held onto way better than we have, especially in the West, okay? And the gospel message is the story of Jesus and the salvation that he brings from the Father to reconcile all of humanity to the Father. That story has a billion different ways of telling it. And in the Protestant world, they teach kind of formulas, like, you know, the five finger gospel, the great laws, you know, the kingdom based stuff, all these different ways, and most of them, not all, most of them are, you could kind of take them and use them in a Catholic context. There are a few that have some things, especially with some justification issues in the way they talk about the legalistic aspects of salvation that don't quite, you know, come over into Catholicism. But when they keep it real basic, generally it's transferable mostly. But here's the problem is that when Catholics do that, Catholics fall back into silver bullet territory. This is how you do it. And I want you to be very careful. There is no one, two, three, four, five way to preach the gospel. You telling the story of Jesus and what he's done for other people is your story. Yesterday I did that exercise where I had somebody come up and we talked about how God existentially, you know, has this plan of salvation that he made each one of us for himself and that we're greater than anything that's ever been created because we're his sons and daughters, right? Now what does that do? That helps people kind of back up and see the big picture of creation and purpose and meaning, but it doesn't tell all the story. That's not the fullness of the gospel because the gospel has different parts to it. And so what I want to do now is I'm going to proclaim the gospel. I'm going to invite you to pray with me. And if you've ever responded to the gospel before in faith, great, pray with me and let's do it again. You don't outgrow the gospel. You don't outgrow the gospel. What did Jesus proclaim? Well, he proclaimed transubstantiation near the queen hood of Mary. No, you proclaim the gospel. The kingdom is at hand. He's the Messiah. Jesus for three years. And by the way, I'm not saying those things aren't important, but I am going to say this and I am going to pull the pin and I am going to throw the hand grenade and you're ready for bodies to hit. It doesn't matter if your people know about form and matter of the sacraments if they don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ. It doesn't matter if they know about papal authority and the magisterium of the church and all the texts of the catechism, if they go to hell. Can I make it more plain? You do not outgrow the gospel and you need to proclaim it again and again and again. In fact, if you're not constantly proclaiming the gospel message that Jesus Christ had come to save us in your teaching and your preaching and your formation and your other stuff and you go back to it, then you're not doing what you ought to do as a catechist. Go read any of the general directory of catechesis. Go read any of those, the new directory. Go read any of the documents on it. Go go read catechesis your dinde. All of catechesis and all of formation builds upon the solid foundation of the gospel. All of it. The gospel is necessary for our catechetical instruction. So, carygmatic catechesis is at the heart of everything we do. We don't get beyond carygmatic catechesis. We take it with us as we go and we take a disciple who loves Jesus now and has been evangelized and now we take that person somewhere deeper where things like the magisterium of the church matter. The queenhood of Mary matters, right? Because we're not done once we come to this point of, boom, I've been evangelized and now I'm good. Ha la la, we're Catholic, we go deep. Because holiness, true holiness can be mined. It can have that once we have deeper, deeper understanding of these things. Remember the principle, you can't love what you don't know. So if you wanna love God more, you need to know more about God. But before we get to love, I mean, before we can know a whole lot, we have to start with love too. Love is the principle. That's what we're aiming for. It's not just the knowledge, right? The purpose of catechesis is to love, not just to know. It's to know so that you can love more. Okay, everybody got that? Okay, here's the gospel in just whatever comes to me right now, whatever. Now, if you go back to the very beginning, Adam and Eve, you have this couple, human beings who are made in the image and likeness of God and placed in deep relationship with a heavenly father who cares about them. In fact, the language is that he walks and talks with them in deep communion, in innocence and purity, in love and fellowship. And here is this deep relationship of humanity. And God calls them to this, makes them for this and places them in this relationship. And yet humanity in the persons of Adam and Eve sinned. And sin is a breaking of relationship. That relationship between God and humanity was broken through that sin. That breaking of that relationship has eternal consequences not only for them, but for every human being because they were the proto-human beings, the first human beings who decided for all humanity that this was not the relationship for them. And so original sin came in and sin divides. St. Teresa of Avila talks about sin of Adam and Eve as this great river, a river so wide, so deep and so strong that no bridge can go across it. No boat can get across it because it would sink because it's so terrible. And on one side of this bridge now because of Adam and Eve's sin is humanity. It's us, it's you, it's me. And on the other side is God. We have a longing to be on the other side with God, but sin and death, this river of sin and death that has entered the world because of the original sin keeps us from him. Humanity can't get across, we have no way to do so. We don't have the power, we don't have the means. We don't, it's not capable of humanity to cross the river. God has the power, but we have to make amends for our sin. We have to make the choice. So how is this? If we're the ones who have to make the amends but God's the one with the power, how does this happen? Well, God's not powerless here. He has a plan. And so he sends the one who is both God and man who can make amends and has the power to cross the river. His name is Jesus. And by his cross, that is his life, his suffering, his death and his resurrection, on that cross he offered the sacrifice for the father that said, I'm gonna pay the price for this sin and I'm gonna lay down my life for my sons and my daughters and I'm gonna give them the opportunity to cross this river of sin and death. And so he puts the cross across the river. This is an image that St. Teresa of Avila uses frequently that the cross is the bridge by which we cross the river of sin and death to get back to the father. And the father beckons to us to come and now the choice is ours whether or not we go to the father's arms and reconcile to him in relationship. It's our, but it takes us choosing to believe that this is something God has called us to and saying yes to it. Do you want to go into the father's arms to run into this relationship? Do you want to be deeper with God? Do you want to really believe that this is something that can happen that the sin and the death in your life have no more power? You can have that right now if you've never had it before or you can have it again if you've already had it in a deeper way. And if you want that, then let's just say a prayer. The name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Lord, I'm sorry for my sins and I know that I am your child. That my true identity is as your son or daughter that you made me for your very self. And so I'm sorry for the ways that I've separated myself from you by my sin and the choices that I've made, the things that I've done, please forgive me. And let me know that I'm not defined by my sin or my faults or my wounds or my problems, but that you have something better, Lord. You have called me to be with you forever in heaven. Thank you. I accept your grace and I say yes to in faith. Now, Jesus Christ is your son who has come to rescue me, that the power of the Holy Spirit might come into my life and I praise your name. I want this, Lord. Come into my heart again or for the first time. I give you all that I am and I love you. Amen. The Father and Son of the Holy Spirit, amen. Friends, it's as simple as that. It doesn't, you don't have to overthink it. You don't have to overstate it. You don't have to make it a big production. It doesn't have to be emotional. Literally, this is, I don't know, but the possibilities that salvation just came into this room are very real because it's not my power. It's not your power. It's God's power and all he asks is for us to say yes. That's it. So when you have the opportunity to invite, do it and do it explicitly. But give a choice, right, I gave you a choice. So, okay, what time do we go to? 9.15, okay, we got a little bit of time. So I'm gonna go real fast. If I have time, I might make you preach the gospel to each other, okay? But I very, very, very much encourage you, if you don't do it today, to practice this with other people who will sit there and give you feedback, okay? And by the way, I don't do self-promotion like for stuff, okay? I don't, I'm bad at it. Did I promote myself in any way, shape, or form in the last two sessions? No. But I will tell you that the book that I wrote a few years ago for Ascension called Contagious Catholic, it has like four or five different ways you can preach the gospel and can help you walk through something like that, okay? It's very practical tips on how to evangelize, including proclaiming the gospel. There's some at the bookstore, I believe still, but I won't sign it because I'm out of here on a plane right after this session. Sorry. And by the way, it just reduces the value of the book by $2 anytime I mark in it. So why would you want me to? So what do modern people want? They want to be valued, they want to be listened to, they want to be loved because that's not just modern people, that's every people of every time and every space. Everybody wants this. You want this, I want this. So why don't we do this? Our structures, our ministries, our parishes, our dioceses aren't set up to do that. They're not. They're set up to perpetuate the institution and to manage the structures. The way we budget, not set up to do that. The way we staff, not set up to do that. The way we put our time in, not set up to do that. And yet, so if we want to do that, we got to change those things in our institutions. We have to turn the ship to be able to start to point towards those things. But we start by doing it ourselves, not just by, we can't change the institution without changing people. We can't change people around us until we're changed. So if you want to renew the church, let God change your heart, then change your habits, then start investing in other people and helping be an instrument that changes their lives and then go to renew the church. When I go do institutional renewal with leaders, I don't start with pastoral planning. I don't start with big surveys. I don't start with gathering information. I start by, let's go learn how to be better evangelists and disciples together as a team and have a shared experience of learning to do these kind of things over three months in an intense way where Marcel coaches you into this stuff as a team, where you have to talk about difficult conversations and as somebody outside the institution, I get to say difficult things and hold you accountable in a way that you can't do interiorly. And then after those three months, I'm, then we might do some planning. Does that make sense? You don't do planning up front, and this is why pastoral plans fail 99.9% of the time or don't move the needle 99.9% of the time. It's because people aren't changed. And so unchanged people can't change institutions. So if you wanna have an impact with your neighbors and other people, start thinking about them, start praying for them, start investing in them, start inviting them. I have people in my backyard. I have people over a cup of coffee. I do these things. I'm not just preaching it. Friends, I'm doing this. We're having an impact locally in my neighbor. And I live in a community in College Station, Texas that has the largest campus ministry in the world, which I once ran, which has other Apostlets, including a large radio network, Catholic radio network, a youth ministry Apostlet that has missionary based stuff and parishes that's growing across Texas. 40 Days for Life was in our backyard, literally like in my campus ministry's picnic table. That's where it started by friends of mine. We have maternity homes. We have all this other stuff. It's a phenomenal place. This is like one of those Catholic bubbles in the United States where people move too to have the experience of going to St. Mary's Catholic Center as their home parish. I literally do that. And in the last 30 years, our mass attendance has gone unchanged even though our population has doubled. Over the five parishes in our local community, the mass attendance has unchanged even though the population has doubled. So what does that tell you half the people from 30 years ago percentage-wise are going to church? Even in the Catholic bubbles, things are going pop. And the reason why is because we focus so much on the people who just come to our parish that we forgot about the people in the community. So there's a local pastor and I who have a vision for transforming our local community and we're going to do it organically and we've never made it a mass announcement about it. We've never put it on the website. We've never done a bulletin thing about it because we are organically investing in men and women and teaching them to go do the same and sending them out as missionary disciples to go change the world and they're doing it. And this is going to take decades. It starts by doing these things, listening to people, knowing what they want, investing in them, having relationships, being the initiator. So our goal is to aim for conversion. We start with this process I call ALAR. Ask, listen, assess, respond. Again, when I teach this, I do it over about two and a half, three hours. So you're getting this just as a concept, not in a lot of the other stuff. Ask, listen, assess, respond. So what kind of questions do you ask? Well, it depends. Start to get to know people. If I say, if I had a deeper conversation with that woman last night who was not running around crazy in the liquor store and had time to actually chat and I stopped and asked her, so tell me about that. You said you're atheist, what does that mean? What do you think about God? We think about God, describe him for me. I love that question for atheists. Describe the God you don't believe in. Oh, I don't like God because he willy-nilly will kill kids and sin floods and he doesn't care about humanity or my problems or anything else. I don't believe in that God. You know what I tell people? I don't believe in that God either. I don't answer anything. I just, what I'm trying to do is build curiosity at that point and trust. Trust and curiosity. So that I can listen more to where they are and what's going on and what's behind it because a lot of people will come, like that guy who was doing this at that girl. You know, it's not about the inquisition, it's about something else and I gotta get behind that question that's on the surface. Is there a wound? Is there a problem? Is there something deeper? Is there something? Like for that guy it might have been he has no concept of what actually happened in history and therefore he's got these anti-Catholic understandings of what's going on. I don't know yet. That could be just me filling in the blanks. Never fill in the blanks. Never accept a label in place of a story and ask, listen, assess, respond, gets there. So you ask and listen so you can assess. Now what are you assessing? Well, that goes back to, I didn't even put it on here. The reason I didn't put it on here is because it's too much to get into. Basically what you're doing, have you guys ever heard of the thresholds of conversion? Sherry Wendell stole those from a Protestant. I just wanna let you know. Sherry's a friend of mine and so I straight up will tell her you're a thief. But so am I because then I stole them from Sherry. So okay, the thresholds of conversion. That's four stages that people get to before most people have to go through before they become a disciple. An intentional disciple. That is they've chosen in faith to follow Jesus Christ. We've defined that. And they gotta go through these. Trust, where somebody has basic trust in another person or an institution. Sometimes it's like the hospital that helped my grandma, the people up there in the chaplain, they were really good to her and it was a Catholic one, so I trust that institution. Or my neighbor's Catholic and he serves the poor and I think really highly of him. Does that make sense? It's basic trust. It's not trust as in faith, it's trust in something or somebody and a basic human level. Okay, that leads to curiosity. Curiosity is I have questions. Have you ever had a question about a Mormon? Like why they do something? Does that mean you want to be a Mormon? Okay, that's the level of curiosity we're talking about. You just have a question, you want an answer, you're like, I don't really want any of that, okay? Okay, and then there's openness. Openness moves into a little bit more active, like I might actually try praying or I actually might try to do something else. Openness is probably where most Catholics who go to church are. I'm gonna say that again. They're statistically speaking, most people who call or a Catholic and go to mass every Sunday are not disciples. Most people who go to mass are not disciples. So what should you be doing with those people? Should you be cataclyzing them deeply into all this other stuff? Not necessarily, what you ought to be doing is evangelizing them. They need to know the gospel, they need to respond and maybe haven't done that. Okay, openness and then seeking, seeking is I want it but I don't know what I have it. Seeking is where you proclaim the gospel and you actually make disciples. Got it? So this is how you respond. Now, this can also move into discipleship. I have discipleship stages I teach too. And those have markers of things like how I serve other people, what my charisms are, how my interior life and my prayer life are, how my mission is oriented, what my vocation is, et cetera, et cetera. And based on those things, people are all over the place and then you know what, based on those things, what they need. I've literally sat down with people that I'm discipling and say, let's go through this. Where's your prayer life? Where's your vocation? What charisms do you need to grow in or do you have you discern them at all? What's going on with your mission? What sins are you struggling with? How's your sacramental life? And then we say, okay, let's make an action plan. Here, what are the goals that you would want to grow into? Ask, listen, assess, respond. It works in both evangelization and discipleship, okay? So some of the other tools, you're gonna have to start praying for people. I talked about that the entire session yesterday so I'm not gonna get into that. You gotta be curious about others. Like yesterday, I was just curious about that woman and so I started a conversation with her. I'll probably go to the airport and if something pops up, I'll be curious in somebody. I remember one time I was curious about this guy, gets on the plane, has this huge crucifix, is this humongous black man who, and I gotta say, whenever a huge dude gets on the plane and is sitting in the middle seat, what does everybody do? Not in the middle seat, mine, not my middle seat. You know, there's like, you know, like that middle seat, so there's like three of them open and there's one person getting on their plane, he's like, not mine, not mine, not mine, not mine. Ah, and so he did that and he sat down and this guy was like six, six. So his knees were like up on his chin, you know? And he has this big crucifix and he's barely getting in the seat and he sits down and I say, are you Catholic? I love your crucifix. He goes, nah, I'm mine. And he was from Trinidad and so we started this conversation and he said, I'm a Christian man, I'm no Catholic. And we started talking and stuff like that and he's like, what do you do for a living? And so I told him and he's like, oh, that's beautiful, man. I love the way he said, man. And so we started doing it and we ended up spending an hour and a half praying together in the back of the plane. It was amazing. And at the end of that, he friends me on Facebook while he's on plane, he gets off and he posts this long post, took a picture of selfie with the two of us and says, I met my best friend on the plane, man. His name is Marcel. And he goes through this whole thing about, you know, this was the greatest plane trip of his life and usually he hates it and all of a sudden all it took was, hey, I like your crucifix. I was curious. So these are the kind of things that, you know, we listen before we teach. We understand how others hear what we say as best we can. And I'm gonna give you another principle. Understanding does not mean acceptance and especially in a world that's very far from God and all the craziness that's in our world, you can understand why somebody wants to be rabidly for like a transgender thing and not accept it. Because their intention, and let's be honest, St. Thomas Aquinas taught that every sin is actually somebody trying to seek happiness. They're not trying to do something bad for the sake of doing something bad. They're trying to do something that's gonna, they think it's gonna make somebody happy. So I can understand that and not accept it. Right? But that understanding helps to crack open doors. Okay, well, I did put this up here, but I'm not even gonna get into this. So I'm literally, if I go into that, we're done. So all this stuff is too much. So I want you to ask, I'm not even gonna do that. We're just doing the, I'll do that, but you can have that slide. So we don't have a lot of time, do we? Okay, here's the thing. I'm gonna, here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna pray, you can leave if you want to. I'm gonna stay for a few more minutes and answer questions. I can't stay too long. You're gonna catch a shuttle and go to the airport. Here's the other thing, okay? If you're a Catholic leader, okay? You're not, you know, you want, you actually, all I do, if you wanna go read stuff on Catholic leadership stuff, my blog right now is like, I'm throwing hand grenades on that blog left and right. Like about Catholic culture, about leadership stuff, about principles, about how to evangelize and stuff like that. So go to catholicmissionarydisciples.com. You can find our blog. This book you can find in the bookstore. I am doing a little bit of self-promotion now because it is because my board tells me I'm supposed to. And we also have a resource for people who wanna be better evangelists and Catholic leaders called transformcatholic.com where we have series of things that can help do this. But I'm gonna tell you straight up. Transformcatholic.com can help you learn, but until you do, there's no point. Okay, so don't just learn for the sake of learning, go do. Better to do one thing than learn a million. Better to do one thing than learn a million. I just came up with that, I like that. Okay, let's pray. Father and Son of the Holy Spirit, amen. Just have a moment of silence and invite the Holy Spirit into this time and place. Father, we love you and we need you. We look at the world around us and sometimes it causes anxiety or worry or problems and we give that to you because it's not as if you're powerless and you're frustrated or angry like we are. You look at the world and you don't see the problems but you see your children, some who've wandered far away. And you call us who are disciples to go help to gather your sheep, to leave the 99, to find the one so that when that sheep is found, when that coin that was lost has been found, when that pearl of great price has been purchased, all the angels and saints and you too rejoice in a way that is incomprehensible to us. Give us joy in salvation, give us perseverance, encourage for your mission and through it make us saints. Amen.