Forming Intentional Disciples

1. Forming Intentional Disciples

2. b

6. The Examen (Review)

7. Linda Woodhead & Catherine Pepinster article • In the west, ‘No religion is the new norm’ • Nones are being hatched and Christians dispatched • RC numbers shored up by migration • 2013 37% said no religion. • Feb 2015 42%. • Feb 2016 46%.

9. haemorrhaging of Christians away from the Christian faith (in the west) • very few young people

10. Perhaps one reason is that often we do not show the way to having a personal relationship with God.

11. necessity of a personal relationship with God and especially Jesus • If we wish to draw others into a meaningful religious life then we have to show the way towards this personal relationship by our own example as well as through our pastoral programmes

12. Sherry Weddell was interviewing the president of the local Catholic women’s group and not getting anywhere . . .

13. “Her stories were so vague that I wasn’t hearing any evidence of how God might be using her . . . I reasoned that if she could tell me about a spiritual turning point in her life, I would be able to focus on the years since that turning point. So I asked her a question that I had never asked before: Could you briefly describe to me your lived relationship with God to this point in your life?

14. After thinking carefully for a few moments, she responded, ‘I don’t have a relationship with God.’ ”

15. We learned that the majority of even ‘active’ American Catholics are still at an early, essentially passive stage of spiritual development. We learned that our first need at the parish level isn’t catechetical. Rather, our fundamental problem is that most of our people are not yet disciples. They will never be apostles until they have begun to follow Jesus Christ . . .”

16. Evangelicals are more likely to be intentional disciples but even in evangelical churches the proportion might be less than we expect. They do, however, put a higher priority on personal relationship with Jesus. • Many mainstream churches (RC, C of E, Methodist) are in the same boat. • Many RCs are uncomfortable even using the name, ‘Jesus’.

20. (p46-7) “A few years ago I was having breakfast with an archdiocesan vocation director. On impulse I asked him, ‘What percentage of the men you work with – men discerning a possible call to the priesthood – are already disciples?’ His answer was immediate: ‘None.’ ‘Why do you think that is?’ He was very clear: ‘They don’t know how. No one has ever talked to them about it.’”

21. 183-4 Often diocesan and parish leaders are not yet intentional disciples. Helping them is a priority.

22. (p46) JP II Catechesi Tradendae (On Catechesis in Our Time): • It is possible for baptized Catholics to be “still without any explicit personal attachment to Jesus Christ; they only have the capacity to believe placed within them by Baptism and the presence of the Holy Spirit.”

23. P62 Asked hundreds of pastoral and diocesan leaders “What percentage of your parishioners, would you estimate, are intentional disciples?

24. To our astonishment, we have received the same answer over and over: • Five percent.” • Note that this is 5% of practising Catholics.

25. Why do Catholics leave their church?

26. Not enough to keep them there. Feels boring and irrelevant.

27. Because their faith has come alive and there seems to be no one who understands them. They often say something like, “my spiritual needs were not being met.” (p28) • Or, “I never met Jesus in a living way. . .”

28. Eg of this p56-7 of a woman who had a mystical experience that led her to explore Catholic faith in the RCIA

29. “About six weeks into the programme, I met with Sister and told her that I thought maybe I was missing something, because we didn’t seem to be talking much about getting to know God or Jesus. I didn’t feel like I had a good understanding of who Jesus was to me. I assumed that this was because I was coming from a non-Christian background and everyone else already ‘got it.’ . . .

30. I had to go out and ask Catholic friends to talk to me about these things, one-on-one. Some were willing to tell me, sort of- but all but one of them also got visibly upset first and didn’t know why I’d want to know about their experiences. I had a sense that they resented being asked.”

31. (p34) “Since the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Catholic retention strategy has been (a) childhood catechesis and (b) sacramental initiation.” • Four hundred years ago this was cutting edge.

32. “But the evidence suggests that what worked in the seventeenth century does not work in the twenty-first.” • “In the early twenty-first century, among Americans raised Catholic, becoming Protestant (evangelical) is the best guarantee of stable church attendance as an adult.” (p35)

33. (p39) “We can no longer depend upon rites of passage or cultural, peer, or familial pressure to bring the majority back.”

34. Cultural Catholicism is dead as a retention strategy • If we want people to stay we must help them to be intentional disciples of Jesus

35. One of the most fundamental challenges is that a large number of even church-going Catholics not even certain that a personal relationship with God is possible.

36. Only % of practising Catholics believe in a personal God. (p43). And only % were absolutely certain that it was possible to have a personal relationship with God.

37. Only 60% of practising Catholics believe in a personal God. (p43). And only 48% were absolutely certain that it was possible to have a personal relationship with God.

48. (p54) Christianity involves three spiritual journeys

49. 1 personal journey of lived relationship with Jesus leading to intentional discipleship

50. 1 personal journey of lived relationship with Jesus leading to intentional discipleship • 2 ecclesial journey into the Church through sacraments