Catholic and Loving it!

The following blog entry consists of notes I have hammered out as I thought of them. It isn't in any particular order and it doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense. If any of the following is totally stupid, kindly let me know so I can kick myself and correct it.

What is Evangelisation

What is the difference between evangelism and evangelisation? I have no idea, except that when you say "Evangelism" Roman Catholic priests exhibit a sharp intake of breath and when you say "Evangelisation" they say "Well, it depends what you mean by Evangelisation..."

Fortunately, the most important part of either word is the Evangel- part. Eve meaning first. Angel meaning messenger. First-messenger. Evangelisation is giving a message, "the" message, to those who have never heard it before.

Not so very long ago, a group of students from the St. Patrick's Evangelisation School came up from Soho in London to help us with Evangelisation in Hull. It was a wonderful week and I learned a lot. This blog entry is an attempt to throw all my thoughts together before I forget about them.

The Importance of Prayer

It is easy to fall in to the trap of thinking too scientifically about Christianity. Despite popular opinion Christianity is a very rational faith and I personally find it very easy to think about it in almost mathematical terms. If A is true therefore B is true add this to C means that D is true. But... Christianity is not just about facts and knowledge, knowing everything gets you nowhere if you don't know Him. Christianity is about a person. Jesus Christ. Evangelisation is about introducing people to the person of Jesus Christ and if we do not know him intimately ourselves then how can we introduce him?

The St. Patrick's Evangelisation School start and end every day with the divine office. I thought that praying the divine office took only ten to fifteen minutes and even I should be able to find that on a morning. Ella and I have been trying to pray the office together each morning this week and it has never been more than ten minutes (more like six). It is an excellent way to start the day, especially when you follow it up with four Weetabix.

They also spend (what seems to me like) immense quantities of time in adoration, in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. An hour here, an hour there... I am not used to spending more than twenty minutes and this full hour business seems pretty hardcore to me. It is however really really important and I feel I have gained a great deal from those hours this week. One of the really good things the St. Patrick's people did was this, while they were out doing street evangelisation there were always two people back in the Church praying in adoration. Two people praying intently before the blessed sacrament while others went out in to the world. Going out in the streets is scary and it is a great comfort to know you have those people praying back in the Church.

Another thing is this, just as Jesus instructed the disciples to go out in twos, so also the St. Patrick's people go out in twos. While one person is talking the other is praying.

The Sign of the Cross

On the first day we walked from Saint Charles and Canon Loughlin lead us on a route around the busier parts of the city. Through Victoria Square, past the St. Stephens centre and on to the area in front of BHS. We quietly prayed the rosary and at the front Marcus held high a beautiful golden cross from St Charles. The mere presence of the cross had a huge effect on many people. The first person we passed was a Chinese lady who stopped and made the sign of the cross. Other's stared at it, unsure what to think, while a very small minority made derogatory comments suggesting. Those who stopped and stared were soon approached by some of the Spes Students (esp Mirela) who explained that we were praying for the people of Hull and offered a leaflet inviting them to an event that we were to hold on Saturday.

It was only in the afternoon when we went out without the cross that I realised what a difference it had made. It was hard for us to walk in procession without a clear point of focus, when one of us stopped to hand out a leaflet and chat they very quickly lost sight of where we had gone. The other problem was that nobody saw us coming... with the cross, people stopped and stared which gave an excellent opportunity to approach them and explain what we were doing. Without the cross nobody noticed us at all.

From the point of view of the people in the street, the difference is stark. Imagine seeing a group of young people walking behind a golden cross praying. Your pace slows as you stop to look at this bizzare sight and one of the young people notices and comes over saying "Hi, we are praying for the people of Hull. Can I offer you this leaflet and invite you to...". It's a smooth transition that makes a lot of sense and we end up talking mostly to the people who are at least curious. Now imagine wandering along minding your own business when a strange youth steps up and starts talking to you. Most people were saying no before before we had even said a word (though I am told Sister Brenda had far more luck).

Talking to People

For me, this week was about learning as much as I possibly could. Walking through town behind a cross was an experience in itself, but I knew that an element of street evangelisation is talking to people in the streets. How does that work? What do you say? Over the week I shadowed a couple of the students from St. Patrick's and saw very different way of doing things. I think it was Anthony who said something like, there's no perfect method that fits all people and you don't get to find out unless you try and you don't always get it right.

The first person I shadowed was Mirela. I think Mirela is absolutely wonderful but she frightens me. Her Christian faith is incredible and she fearlessly approaches people and talks to them about anything. I think she is able to get away with a lot because she is clearly from a foreign country and she is so smily and nice. People are happy to talk to her.

She points somebody out in the distance and says "let's talk to that lady" and then she practically runs over. I found some of her 'targets' a bit awkward because they were sat reading a book or eating lunch and I felt I was intruding. She says "Hi, We are a group of Catholic's and we are in the city today praying for the people of Hull" and they look at her funny and she says "Are you praying?" and they say "Er?" and she says "Are you praying to God, in your home, before you go to bed?" and then "Why not?" She asks all manner of questions.. "Are you baptised?", "Is there anything you would like us to pray for?", "Shall we pray together now?". She was persistent too, if people kept walking, she walked alongside them and continued talking.

The most awkward moments were when she said "We are holding a meeting in the St Charles Centre, do you know where that is?" and people said "No" and she said "James? Can you tell them...". Explaining the location of the St Charles Centre is hard enough when somebody is interested and as soon as I speak I betray my englishness. Quite a few peoples faces change instantly. The loud and clearly for a foreigner voice stops and I get a kind of impatient "when will you finish talking" look that has me almost apologising for Mirela's direct questioning.

She was, if I am honest, what I would consider quite pushy, bordering on rude. I kept wanting to cringe. I think if I approached a stranger and said "Do you pray to God? - Why not?" I people might feel I was being a bit rude. But time and time again she got away with it. Mirela told me that she knows that when she has pushed people in the past they have opened up and talked with her about God. So she always wonders, if she doesn't push them, has she let them down? What might they have said.

Mirela is so friendly and nice that people do acually respond. People tell her about their cousin with cancer or their nephew in hospital. She prays with them and gives them leaflets and miraculous medals. Many of them walk away smiling. She's a wonderful girl doing wonderful work and I wouldn't change her for the world, but I don't think I could ever do what she does.

I found the main difference between the foreign students and the english ones was the method of targetting. The foreign students tended to pick somebody and approach them, the English ones tended to look for people who were already looking at the cross with an interested expression on their face. I didn't see many English people approach anybody who didn't look like they were already thinking "who are these people with the cross? what's going on?"

Telling people we are praying for Hull and asking them if they would like anything praying for people was a common theme with many of the students from St. Patricks. I don't know what non-Christians think of it, I worry they think "who the hell are you to pray for me? ...are you saying you are better than me?" but if people were thinking that none of them said so. The nuns from St. Wilfrid's seemed to have a great talent in this regard... "I am a Roman Catholic nun and we are praying for people in Hull" sounds like it makes a lot of sense. Nuns pray, it's what they do.

I think the most important lesson I learned about talking to people is that you don't have to do it. I spent quite a lot of the time watching the others and standing praying.

Something I thought was badly missing in the conversations I heard was apologetics. Maybe I like apologetics too much, but there was basically none of it. If a person said "I don't believe in God" the response from us was generally "Oh right, well, um, we do... can we pray for you?". I would have liked to have been able to do more in the way of "Have you thought about X, Y and Z?

Giving out Leaflets

Over the week we gave out a lot of leaflets inviting people to our meeitng on the Saturday. I think this was a bit of a faliure on our part. A leaflet inviting somebody to an event tells them about the event, this is not evangelisation unless they come to the event which, let's face it, many people will not. Out of some 300+ leaflets we gave out, barely anybody came to our event. Lets be generous and call it 1%. Quite a few people, however, took the leaflet and looked at it. They read the text and got the message. Unfortunately, the message was not "the" message.

There is a bit of a trade off here. As one of the students rightly pointed out, if you give somebody a leaflet it is impersonal. If you talk to them then you give them your time and they get a far more attention. Talking to people seems more effective, however... on the day I went around with Mirela we probably spoke to about twenty-five people in two hours. On the last day I stood with Michelle and gave out leaflets for one hour and reached well over fifty. It's a numbers game, you can reach a few people well or a lot of people less well.

On that last day when I stood with Michelle we gave out not just the original invite but prayer cards from CASE with a "God, I don't know if you exist but if you do..." type prayer. We challenged some of the youth (of the below 18-35 variety) and they gave out leaflets also. The great thing about giving out leaflets is that anybody can do it, you don't have to be confident and the people you talk too don't need to feel interrupted or preassured to talk to you.

Events

Over the week we ran a few events, we varying levels of success. The first event was for the parents of first communion children, these are adults who are right on the edge of the Church. Some of them are at the "I resent having to do this to get my kid in to Catholic school" variety but many of them are far closer to the "I keep meaning to start going to Church and this is really interesting" end of the scale.

The event for parents of first communion parents was excellent. The students from SPES lead an hour of guided prayer in front of the blessed sacrament. If this is not evangelisation then I don't know what is... come in, this is Jesus, let's talk to him. I have no idea what the parents made of it, I was in the wrong place to overhear their remarks as they left the Church, but it was a beautiful time of prayer and I expect for many of them a new experience of Gods presence.

The next event was for the youth. I this was a success by many measures (loads of kids, happy kids, pizza etc) but I think we need to recognise some faliures as well. I think the video we showed was a bit old for the kids. Also, I didn't feel the video we showed really explained anything. Maybe something from That Catholic Show would have been more age appropriate?

It's always difficult with youth, because we want it to be fun. We don't want to be miserable boring serious people but I think we failed to have a clear goal. We didn't really tell give them anything but fun. There was a "grill a priest" session planned with the kids questioning Fr Massie but it fell through.

Our final event was the big event on the Saturday. This event was for people we had met in town during the week and so as you might guess it was poorly attended. Pretty much nobody took a leaflet and thought "yeah, alright, I'll find the St. Charles Centre and check this out". We played the video again, and again I wasn't sure it really worked very well. Then the students from St. Patrick's each gave a short talk about an area of Catholicism. Ella and I agreed to talk about marriage.

It's not exactly surprising that our talks were a bit scatty, we had about 30 minutes to research and write them and everybody did really well. However, I think one thing the talks did was to highlight what I was saying earlier about example of what I was saying earlier about the lack of apologetics. The students at Spes are a wonderful witness of Christian life, but I was surpised at how unsure many of them were about why they believe these things. I'm not being mean. I'm being realistic.

The apologetics thing was, I confess, a bit of a dissapointment for me. I am a huge fan of apologetics (always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you) and one of the challenges in street evangelisation is the huge constraint on time and complexity. I have read books and books of apologetics, but when somebody asks in the street, "how do you know God exists?" You have a few sentences to reply. You have to keep it simple. What do you say?

Conclusions

I had a wonderful, fulfilling, educational week with some great people. I made, I hope, some friends for life. I learned a lot.

I sent Fr Massie an email asking if there would be a meeting to discuss how the week went and how we move forward. There was. It happened during the day so I couldn't go. Perhaps people with jobs are not called to evangelisation, I must re-read Lumen Gentium 35 and double check.

Prayer...

For me, Evangelisation has always been about introducing people to Christ. Christ must be at the centre which means prayer must be at the centre. I think as a matter of urgency we need regular prayer for Evangelisation in Hull. I don't think it's enough to just say "we will be praying", I think there needs to be regular timetabled prayer. Perhaps the priests could say a mass a week for the evangelisation of Hull? Perhaps we could have a regular hour of adoration for evangelisation?

Getting out more...

Regardless of whether our methods are optimal, we need to keep at it. I have know idea whether it's better to praying with people, talk with people, argue with people, give people leaflets or just wander around with a cross. I know this though, we need to get out and about in Hull again ASAP before lose our momentum and forget all about it. Surely Fr Massie or Canon Michael and the Sisters can agree a saturday when they are free for two hours.

The Message...

I think it would be really helpful to figure out exactly what it is we are trying to tell people. Our core message when the SPES people were here was "We are Catholics who are praying for people in Hull and we would like to invite you to our event on Saturday...". That might not have been the intended message, but it's what I heard people say to people over and over. We then handed over an invite to the event on the Saturday.

I think it's nice to tell people we are praying for them, but I wonder if there are not other important messages that we missed. For instance, did we tell anybody why we pray? did we tell them that they can pray themselves? what did we tell them about the God we are praying to? did we tell them why we think this God exists?

Here's something that might surprise you... I don't think apologetics is a good basis for evangelisation. I don't think you can "talk people in to it". But... I do think apologetics is an important tool for evangelisation. On not a few occasions somebody said "You don't know God exists though do you" and our response was generally to stutter a bit and move on. Our response to those sorts of questions needs to be better.

The Response...

What exactly are we asking people to do? I felt like when people were interested we left them with no way to respond. They could come to our meeting on Saturday but even then, the best we did for anybody was have them give their address to Fr Massie so he can send them details of Faith Forum meetings.

If the response we wanted was contact details, we could have done that better. We could have said "if you're interested we can take your email/address and send you information on what's going on", I reckon a couple of (as in maybe two) people might have been up for that.

We need to give people ways of responding. Case have a great prayer card with a "God, I don't know if you exist but if you do I wan't to know you..." prayer. That sort of thing allows people to respond on their own in their own time. We should give people details of how they can find out more. Websites, groups, books, churches. People are going to want a way to hover on the edge for a while looking in. Do we provide that? Do we make it easy for someone who knows nothing about religion to find out more?

Preparation and Resources...

Personally, I think I would have felt far more confident with some kind of cheat sheet on my person. A kind of "say this, this and this" list to keep conversation going. One of the things the CU in Exeter used to do was give people a clipboard with a survey and they went around saying "I'm from a Christian group and we're doing a survey...", it gives a reason to talk to somebody, something to say and probably makes it easier to college contact details (if we want to) so we can send out leaflets about faith talks later.

It would have been good to have had more pertinent leaflets, a "who are we and what are we doing" one or a "basic explanation of the gospel" one. Ick. "explanation of the gospel"... That sounds so evangelical protestant. I'm not talking about 2 ways 2 live but while that may be too simple, a piece of paper with the creed on it would be too hard. There has to be something in between... maybe we need to invent it.

Getting out more...

It's worth saying again: Regardless of whether our methods are optimal, we need to keep at it.