Most initiation ministers don’t think of the greeters for Sunday liturgy as being on the RCIA team. Perhaps we should. Let me tell you about my experience as an “inquirer” this summer. Because of my travel schedule, I was in a different parish almost every Sunday in July and August. No one said hello to me, with one exception.

The exception was a parish that had greeters at the door. I walked up to a greeter and greeted her! She returned my “hello.” Otherwise, the score was zero greetings.

Even “hospitable” parishes aren’t very

This is common in Catholic churches. I experience it a lot, and I complain about it a lot. A while back, a friend (who was probably tired of my rants) told me such a cold, non-welcome would never happen in her parish. Her parish, she told me, was known for its hospitality. So I went to her parish one Sunday, unannounced. No greeting. No hospitality.

Often when I meet with RCIA teams, they complain that their parish is losing Catholics—sometimes neophytes!—to evangelical churches. They sometimes suggest possible reasons for this. Evangelical churches perhaps have a simpler, black-and-white theology that may be attractive. Or they may have more dynamic preaching. Or their Sunday services may be more entertaining.

The reason evangelical churches grow

I’ve talked to a few ex-Catholics who joined some of these churches, and they give none of those reasons for switching. Their reasons? Child-care and over-the-top hospitality.

I talked with one woman who had gone through the RCIA and left her parish for a nearby nondenominational megachurch during her neophyte year. The Catholic parish she left was also a megachurch. The liturgies were wonderful, she said, and the preaching was usually better than she heard in the nondenominational church. But after she was initiated and no longer a part of her small RCIA group, she was lost in her huge Catholic parish. She had no friends there and no one talked to her at Mass.

At the nondenominational church, several people greeted her the first time she showed up. They remembered her name when she came back the next week. They invited her to church events. They invited her to a retreat. One person invited her to meet for coffee during the week. And she could bring her toddler to church and know there was a safe place for him to play during the service.

The challenge

I wish I knew what the solution was to this. There seems to be something baked into Catholic DNA that prevents us from being hospitable at Mass. What I do know is, we can’t change other people. We can’t turn our Catholic parishes into welcoming communities, no matter how hard we try. We can only become more welcoming ourselves.

So here is a challenge for all of us. For the next six Sundays, let’s commit to “finding the seeker.” You can set your own goal, but here is a suggestion. Over the next six Sundays, try to find at least three seekers at Mass. That’s one every other Sunday. A seeker is someone who is new to your parish and doesn’t know anyone in the community. Maybe they are active Catholics, or maybe they are not Christian at all. If they don’t know you or your parish, and you introduce yourself, they count as one of your three.

That leaves me with two questions. Do you want to accept the challenge? And, if so, how will you follow up with the seekers you meet?

Be sure to share your stories in the comments section.

It’s good to see you again. If you enjoyed this post, please share with a friend or colleague. Thanks for visiting!

A blog post at Whispers in the Loggia drew my attention to Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana. I had never heard of him, but I’m glad now that I have. Turkson is Ghana’s first cardinal and was the spokesman for October’s Synod of Bishops for Africa. He may soon be heading up the Vatican congregation for peace and justice. He is a rising star in the world church and is rumored to be a potential candidate for pope at the next conclave.

Why are we interested? The Cardinal says a lot of worthwhile things that relate to the mission of Christian initiation. A 2007 interview in the Times of London contains some of them. The interview shows that Cardinal Turkson is deeply concerned with evangelization. Moreover, he seems to have a grasp of the problems associated with a “notional Christianity.” Here it is, in his own words:

I think that our traditional way of making people Catholic needs to be reconsidered. The declaration that Jesus is Lord is meant to be an expression of a person’s commitment. It’s like somebody being offered knowledge of a person and consciously accepting to enter into a relationship with that person and establish personal ties. This is what holds people in these evangelical churches.

He added that some priests and bishops were products of “notional Christianity”—they had been brought up in a Catholic home, had a Catholic education, and learned their theology in seminary, but they had never experienced a personal conversion.

The danger facing the Catholic Church in Africa is that we just feed people with a few notions. Who is God? What is the Trinity? What is a sacrament? These definitions can be learnt by heart and just repeated to anybody who asks questions.

He is speaking from within an African context, but the issue exists in North America too. In fact, a lot of catechumenate leaders have been working hard to remedy exactly the problem that Cardinal Turkson identifies. We need a way of making people Catholic that fosters a relationship and forges a commitment. “Notional Christianity” will not cut it in today’s world with all its challenges. Cardinal Turkson goes on to say:

At the second synod for Africa we must look at how we are a Church in Africa. Rwanda was supposed to be 99 per cent Catholic. How could it end up with a genocide?

We need to realise that probably notional Christianity has been too strong. Instead, we need a radical conversion that will make the presence of God real and personal for each one of us.

Amen. Amen.

Kent Schaffer, on the Church Relevance blog, has posted the top 13 reasons seekers choose a church. The top three are:

1. preaching
2. teaching
3. hospitality

This would be a great discussion to have with your team. As you are making plans to start or improve your catechumenate process, how can you make the seekers’ top three priorities your parish’s top three priorities?

Dreams and Visions: Pastoral Planning for Lifelong Faith Formation
Bill Huebsch

Click here for details

The Concord Pastor wondered aloud the the other day about what requirements for membership we might list in our parish bulletins. He had run across a Unitarian Web site that got him wondering:

I Googled the church and in perusing their website I came across the following with regards to membership in their parish:

Becoming a member of the congregation involves basically four things:

(1) Fundamental agreement
with our principles and purposes;
(2) Regular and ongoing participation in Sunday worship and other congregational activities;
(3) Participation in the work of the church
(4) Financial support as each is able.

And I wondered, “Can you imagine walking into a Catholic church and finding something like that on the front of the parish bulletin?”

For more ideas on what it takes to become a member, check out Apprenticed to Christ: Activities for Practicing the Catholic Way of Life by Jerry Galipeau.

You can read the entire post here. Be sure to read the comments as well.

What do you think? What would happen in your parish if you posted such a list on your Web site or in your bulletin? How does this align with Paragraph 75 of the RCIA?

People keep usurping the word evangelization, and therefore make it more difficult for us to accomplish the primary mission of the RCIA—go and baptize. First it was the evangelicals, who used the word to identify a denomination of Christianity quite distinct from Catholicism. On the face of it, there’s nothing wrong with a denomination defining itself with the term evangelization. The difficulty for Catholics, however, has been our reluctance to speak and act as evangelists for fear of becoming identified with some of the more fundamentalist and flamboyant types of evangelicals.

Next it was businesses, especially in the tech industry. Guy Kawasaki, a former Apple employee originally responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984, initiated the idea of the evangelization of a product or business. His goal was to create passionate user-advocates for the Macintosh and the Apple brand. His goal was the same as ours, just translated to business. We strive to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the world. He was bringing what he saw as the good news about the Apple brand to the world.

Lately, there has been another shift. Individuals are now referring to the evanglization of themselves—their personal brand. Dan Schawbel, author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, says the first step in promoting yourself is to find people who are willing to evangelize—about you.

Although you are the chief marketing officer for the brand called you, what others say about your brand (especially if they are respected and well-known) is more impactful than what you say about yourself. This means that you should try and find people who will help promote you when you aren’t even in the same room.

RCIA teams must “re-Catholicize” evangelization

So after about five minutes of pounding my fist on the desk and yelling at the computer screen, “Stop stealing our best stuff!”, I settled down to analyze what they’re doing. And I came up with a “reverse-steal.” These business and PR guys are great at getting the word out—the “good news—”about their products and themselves. So why not take a page from their playbook to see if we can get better at getting our Word out? Here are seven personal branding strategies from Dan Schawbel, translated into ways we can spread the Good News.

Read the rest of this entry »

At the Forum Convocation last November, keynote speaker Richard Gaillardetz noted that the New Testament was written in Greek. That is significant, he said, because it means the New Testament was not written in Aramaic, the language of Jesus. (I think he was quoting, but I can’t make out my notes clearly.)

I had never thought of that. Gaillardetz went on to point out that the heart of our religion is a translated religion. From the very beginning, the story of Jesus has been translated into a language others can understand. And not just a translation into another language, but a translation into an entirely new culture. The apostolic example here is that we must be constantly translating. Our first task is not so much to teach inquirers to speak and think like us, but for us to translate the gospel into ways that they think and speak.

Maybe that’s obvious to everyone else, but it was a bit of an aha moment for me regarding evangelization.

We’re probably all going to see a lot of seekers in our churches over the next several weeks. First of all, we’re moving into the holiday season, and more people tend to think about faith and spirituality at this time of year. Some of them wind up in church—your church—hoping to find an answer to an inner longing.

Another reason we’re going to see more seekers is the worsening economy. People are worried and are perhaps losing hope. Those who don’t have the light of Christ in their hearts will likely wind up in church to see if they can find hope there.

The bulletin as an RCIA marketing tool

So we should all be asking ourselves, what will these seekers find when they get come to church? One task that almost every usher excels at is putting a parish bulletin in every person’s hand. As catechumenate leaders, we should all be concerned about what’s in that bulletin.

Chris Weber, director of Catholic Education Ministries Center of Central Maryland, has written an excellent post on how to make parish bulletins more compelling. He thinks of the bulletin as a marketing tool.

Think about what it means to advertise for something. What do advertisers do? Instead of simply listing the features of something, they share all of the benefits that the consumer can get by using the product.

Click here to see what else he has to say about upgrading your parish bulletin (pdf file).

Also, check out a book I wrote several years ago, It’s In The Bulletin: The Editor’s Essential Guide to Effective Communication.

And click on the comments link below to share your thoughts about using the parish bulletin or other tools to welcome seekers over these next few weeks.

• Evaluating your hospitality at Mass
• Is your RCIA team creating a memorable first impression?
• Community evangelist

You know who they are. They’re the ones who keep coming back week after week long after the Easter Vigil and Pentecost are over. They light up anytime someone mentions the RCIA or the catechumenate or becoming Catholic. They want to be sponsors even before they’ve gotten the Chrism smell off their pillow case.

They’re the neophyte evangelist, those newly-initiated who are not only living breathing proof of the resurrection but also walking billboards for the RCIA. They are your greatest fans and your number one supporters.

The RCIA process is not a one-way street that shapes only the catechumen into a disciple. It’s a mutual formation in the life of Christ that changes both the catechumen and the parish. That mutual relationship is evident when a neophyte feels called to share his experience of transformation with others. Essentially, this neophyte is doing faith-sharing, exactly what the catechumenate taught him to do and what all the baptized are called to do.

Some parishes invite neophytes to share their experience with the rest of the parish some time after their initiation. It’s best to give a neophyte time to process for himself or with a small group what he experienced and what it meant (mystagogy) before you ask him to speak to the assembly at a Sunday Mass about his experience. They might speak during the announcements or before Mass begins or even at coffee and donuts after Mass.

But don’t limit yourself to just the Sunday gathering as the venue for evangelization. Neophytes who are more comfortable writing their thoughts can provide a brief reflection for the bulletin or your parish Web site. Or better yet, record their reflection and put it on your parish Web site or blog just like Saint John the Evangelist Parish in Davison, Michigan, did with their neophytes.

Click the audio button above to listen to one of their neophytes, Michael McCarty, talk about his initiation experience.

(Thanks to Michael McCarty and Elaine Ouelette, Director of RCIA and Family Faith Formation for their permission to include this testimony on TeamRCIA.com. Go to Saint John the Evangelist’s RCIA Web site to hear more testimonies.)

Imagine an entire CD filled with reflections like Michael’s from your neophytes, sponsors, team members, and parishioners who witnessed the transformation taking place in your catechumens and in themselves!

Do you have other ways you invite your neophytes to share their experience with the community? Have you included reflections from your neophytes on your Web site? Click the comment link below and share your ideas.

A song Rory Cooney wrote, called “Christ the Icon” (WLP 2005), is well worth listening to and meditating upon. The first time I heard it, on the CD of the same name, I didn’t take much notice of it, to tell the truth. The music was fine, but I didn’t really hear what the song was saying. Then, some time later, I listened to it again with attention, and now I’m finding it thought-provoking.

It’s a hymn to Christ, the image of God. Beginning with the Philippians’ hymn, and moving through Jesus’ ministry, passion, death and resurrection, the composer shows us “the image of the unseen God” in a way that is true to the revolutionary core of the Christian message. He captures bits of the scriptural witness that testify to Christ’s humility and to the divine mystery hidden in people and things that are lowly, poor and forgotten. God remains “unseen” not just because God is “pure spirit” or some such thing, but because the lowly with whom he has chosen to identify himself are themselves “invisible” in this world.

The gospel ought to direct our gaze to things we would otherwise miss, and our hearts to things we would not otherwise long for. The gospel is revolutionary. Yet the core of it is so easy to forget as we get caught up in the institutionalization of the message. Most of us—and I include myself in this—have either consciously or unconsciously integrated the gospel into the way things are—arranged according to human priorities that create and reinforce the established order. The announcement of God’s reign is about reversals. It turns our assumptions upside down, if we let it. But sometimes we listen to the gospel and don’t really hear it. Or, hearing it, we don’t quite believe it. This is why so many people, when faced with the uncomfortable need for evangelization, would much prefer a process of education.

Listen to “Christ the Icon,” and let its gospel message percolate in you. See if it doesn’t make you rethink a few things about your catechumenate process. Click on the play button below (the large black triangle) and listen to a bit of “Christ the Icon.”

Was your liturgy memorable today? Chances are, there was someone in the assembly who was visiting your parish for the first time. If not this week, then next week or the week after, for sure. When they get home, will they remember your parish? Will they return?

It’s not difficult to create a lasting memory among the visitors and potential inquirers, but it does take a commitment to a consistent effort. The trick is to get everyone in the assembly thinking about what they can do to create a memorable experience. It can start with everyone on your RCIA team and gradually extend out to the rest of the parish. Take a look at this inspiring video to see what one bag boy did to transform the grocery store he worked in.

[via Your best just got better]