Evangelization

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The ancient concept of the ministry of evangelization has been reintroduced and redefined since the Vatican II Ecumenical Council and the 1975 Apostolic Exhortation “Evangelii Nuntiandi” (“The Gospel Must Be Proclaimed.”) by Paul VI.  With this new emphasis on evangelization has come both innovation and confusion. Evangelization is not yet a household word for most Catholics, whether clergy or laity. Where there is familiarity with the term, there is often confusion concerning its meaning.  Quite often, we hear Catholics using the term “Evangelization” or Evangelism” as something Protestants do. Catholics are not traditionally trained to do for instance street evangelization or Evangelization rallies, as the Protestants regularly do.   At other times, Catholics call Evangelization any teaching of Catholic doctrine to Catholic children or adults, who have been away from the Church for a long time. And in these case they believe that it is a job to be done by priests, religious or specialized people.  Fortunately, today the concept that Evangelization is not a Protestant phenomenon and that it is not a specialized activity reserved to a few experts, but it is the basic right and duty of all believers, is spreading fast among the Catholic community.  It is precisely in this newly defined role that may Catholics find both challenge and frustration. In the opening paragraphs of his exhortation to the whole Church on evangelization, Pope Paul VI writes:  “May these words succeed to give a fresh impulse to everyone, the whole People of God assembled in the Church, so that each one of them may follow ‘a straight course in the message of the truth,’ and may work as a preacher of the Gospel and acquit himself perfectly of his ministry”(EN 5) “Later on, he quotes the Vatican II document Ad Gentes, writing, “The whole Church is missionary, and the work of evangelization is a basic duty of the People of God” (EN 59).   If evangelization truly is our basic duty, then perhaps it would be helpful to come to grips with exactly what is expected of us.  What is evangelization? Where do we fit in? How do we do it?

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Evangelization Defined :   The official definition of evangelization comes from Pope Paul’s document Evangelii Nuntiadi: For the Church, evangelizing means bringing the Good News into all the strata of humanity, and through its influence transforming humanity from within and making it new….  The purpose of evangelization is therefore precisely this interior change, and if it had to be expressed in one sentence the best way of stating it would be to say that the Church evangelizes when she seeks to convert, solely through the divine power of he message she proclaims, both the personal and collective consciences of people, the activities in which they engage, and the lives and concrete milieu which are theirs (EN 18).  Quite a mouthful, eh? Evangelization can become a complex and complicated issue, and it is this complexity which currently causes confusion and even disagreement among the leadership in the Church and among the leadership of the evangelization movement itself.

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Incomplete Approaches  In the last decades, the main trends of Catholic Evangelization can be grouped in five types, none of which is complete in itself.   (1)   Some say that evangelization only means inviting people into membership in the Roman Catholic Church; we can call this the affiliative approach to evangelization.  For these people, effective evangelization occurs when new members join the Church or when inactive members return. The criterion for success is based on the fact that new or lapsed members are now officially on the roster and have been incorporated into the Body of Christ, the Church. (2)   Other evangelizers say that the only determiner of effective evangelization is that the person evangelized has accepted the invitation to receive Jesus into his or her heart in a personal relationship. We can call this second approach the foundational approach. The emphasis here is strictly on the individual’s personal, private response to Jesus’ invitation.  (3)   The third type could be called the specialization approach: in it, everything the parish does is considered as evangelization. Each separate ministry – whether it be liturgy, catechesis, social justice, youth, or any other ministry – views itself as an evangelizing ministry. Evangelization is becoming compartmentalized and creates competition and confusion rather than collaboration and unity among the various ministries within a parish.   (4)        A fourth type, which because it is passive, is not really a type of evangelization, is the historical or traditional approach.  Proponents of this non-approach method say that we have always evangelized, so let’s just keep doing what we have been doing. This non-approach to evangelization represents a passive attitude of people uninterested in change or pastors and staff who are tired, overworked, and who view evangelization as just another program or another project in an already over-crowded schedule.  Evangelization is not a priority for them, and it is not on their agenda.  (5)   A fifth type, the social action approach, is proposed by those who consider apostolic acts of charity and justice as works of evangelization. These include people who advocate the right-to-live; those who are anti-nuclear activists; soup-kitchen workers or even those housewives who care about their neighbours.  In other words, all social workers are evangelizers. While all of these approaches have some merit, they have obvious weaknesses. What we need today is an integrative model of evangelization which combines the positive aspects of all five of these approaches. An integrative model would include affiliation, personal relationship with Christ, and continuation of tradition.  This model would operate on the diocesan and parish levels where all of the ministries would coordinate their pastoral planning. Finally, this integrative model would result in social action and commitment. These approaches are being debated in the Church today by the theologians and professional ministers of evangelization and hopefully they will arrive at a consensus.

4.	Grass-roots Definitions of Evangelization Many experienced grass-roots evangelizers have their own practical definitions of Evangelization: a. “Evangelization is loving people into the Kingdom!”   b. A second possible and more functional definition is, “Evangelization is inviting people into a loving and personal relationship with Jesus Christ, which is then nurtured by a loving and caring Catholic faith community.” c. Including both an individual and communal responsibility: “Evangelization is the process of extending oneself in order to nurture the spiritual well-being of another person.”   d.  One simple definition of evangelization, however, is simply this: “One blind beggar showing another blind beggar where the bread if and both of them being healed in the process.”    This definition includes the twofold necessity of both possessing and sharing the Good News, presumes that the participants agree to work together in a spirit of mutuality and esteem, and results in ongoing conversion for both the evangelizer and the evangelized.
5.	Components of Evangelization Evangelization has several components: first and foremost, love, love of God, love of others, love of self; then, invitation into a personal relationship with Jesus, ongoing conversion, conscious, active extension of ourselves and our communities and the nurture of spiritual growth within the context of a worshipping faith community, and the ministry of loving service to others. Pope Paul VI, in Evangelii Nuntiandi, offers a summary of all the ingredients of an effective Evangelization: Proclamation, Conversion, Incorporation and Service.   (1) Proclamation: The Gospel must be proclaimed by witness of lifestyle … which includes presence, sharing solidarity … the wordless witness of a Christian life” (EN 21). “Nevertheless, this always remains insufficient…. The witness of life sooner or later must be proclaimed by the word of life.There is no true evangelization if the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God are not proclaimed” (EN 22).   (2)   Conversion: “But above all, each individual gains this kingdom and this salvation through a total interior renewal which the Gospel calls metanoia; it is a radical conversion, a profound change of mind and heart” (EN 10)   (3)   Incorporation: “In fact the proclamation only reaches full development when it is listened to, accepted and assimilated, and when it arouses a genuine adherence in the one who has thus received it…. Such an adherence, which cannot remain abstract and unincarnated, reveals itself concretely by a visible entry into a community of believers…. Thus those whose life has been transformed enter a community which is itself a sign of transformation, a sign of newness of life: it is the Church, the visible sacrament of salvation” (EN 23).   (4)   Service: “How in fact can one proclaim the new commandment without promoting in justice and in peace the true, authentic advancement of man? We ourselves have taken care to point this out, by recalling that it is impossible to accept ‘that in evangelization one could or should ignore the importance of the problems … concerning justice, liberation, development and peace in the world.  This would be to forget the lesson which comes to us from the Gospel concerning love of our neighbour who is suffering and in need’” (EN 31).
6.	Evangelization and Pastoral work a.  In order to clarify the concept of Evangelization, it is worth stressing the difference between “Evangelization” and “Pastoral work”. The word “Evangelization” by itself means proclaiming the gospel to those who do not know Jesus Christ yet or to those who know Jesus Christ but do not believe yet.  We call “Pastoral work” all activity of the Church for the care and faith-formation of the baptized. The two terms clearly define two basic responsibilities of the Church:  “Evangelization” aims at proclaiming Jesus Christ to those, who are outside the Church (to the sheep that do not belong to Jesus’ sheepfold yet). “Pastoral work” aims at the faithful within the Church (the sheep that already belong to Jesus’ sheepfold), to strengthen their faith and make them fervent evangelizers or to lead them back to the sheepfold that for various reasons they had abandoned.   b. In recent years, both theologians and Church documents have used at times a new term “New Evangelization” to describe the activity of the Church in traditionally Catholic countries, where a great number of Catholics, having been baptized as babies, had no further faith formation. They do not know much about Jesus Christ and can be called “the baptized” who live outside the Church. They never had a first Evangelization. The term “New Evangelization” describes the first proclamation of Jesus’ Gospel to these “baptized”, who ignore their faith.  But even in this case “New Evangelization”, being an activity addressed to people who still believe and have been baptized (even though not practicing their faith), can not be considered identical with “Evangelization”, which addresses people who do not know Jesus Christ yet and were never baptized. The two terms, Evangelization and Pastoral care should be kept distinct.    c.  “The evangelizer is the first to be evangelized”.                   This or similar expressions, “Evangelization of the devout”, “Evangelization of the Church goers”…are today often used. In these cases, the word “Evangelization stresses the idea of an on-going process of proclamation and conversion. Each time the Gospel is proclaimed, it brings the grace of conversion in the hearer’s heart. Having said all that, it remains the fact that the first proclamation of the Gospel to those who do not believe in Jesus Christ yet, is the typical and primary concept of Evangelization.