Evangelization/Parish Renewal

Welcome!

Welcome to the Office for Evangelization/Parish Renewal. Guided by the Holy Spirit, we walk with our parish leaders, helping them to intentionally focus on the mission of the Church, evangelization. We do this through offering best practices, tools, resources, and coaching to support parish teams in their efforts to create a culture of evangelization.

A parish with a culture of evangelization is a place where people feel a deep sense of welcome and belonging and are accompanied on their faith journey. The parish has in place resources that help a person encounter Jesus Christ, deepen their relationship with him, and are challenged to grow into well-formed Missionary Disciples. It is a community of deep prayer, where relationships are forged. And the community sends its Missionary Disciples outward to make a lasting impact in the greater community in which they live and work. They return to be nourished, challenged, and formed through the Sacraments.

Many people interpret evangelization in different ways. We have come to define evangelization in this way:

Evangelization is a journey, a process. It is the sharing of one’s experience of how Jesus transformed his/her life and giving witness to the Gospel — who Jesus was, what he did for us, and who he is in our lives today — to help a person come to their own encounter with Jesus. We evangelize by sharing our story as a witness to the Gospel and by the way in which we live our lives.

This is also a key factor to a culture of evangelization – people sharing their faith stories with one another. They share the good news of where God is working in their daily lives so that others can see how God is working in theirs. By creating an environment where people can easily share their faith with one another, this practice becomes natural in all areas of their life, evangelizing through their sharing.