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Introduction

We have been blessed to travel the country speaking about the joy of spreading the Gospel and training individuals, parishes, and dioceses how to effectively evangelize. We have had the opportunity to meet many Catholics who are truly living the Gospel dynamically. Those who are actively sharing their faith with family, friends, neighbors, and strangers seem to have the most joy. We see in them the experience that we have felt in our lives as well: living the Faith brings joy to our lives, sharing the Faith brings joy to other people’s lives, and that in return increases our own joy.

We designed Casting Nets to help you reach out in joy and love to those you want to draw to Christ and the Church. We base our vision for evangelization on the story of Jesus and the great catch of fish in Luke 5. He instructed His fishermen friends, who had fished all night with no success, to “put out into the deep” and cast their nets for a catch. And they caught so many fish their nets were breaking. Jesus used this experience to announce that from then on His disciples would be fishers of men (and women). That’s what we want to help you achieve. We want to inspire you to put out into the deep in all your relationships and “catch” people for the Lord with your joy and love.

In Casting Nets we present seven essential—tested and easy-to-implement—ways of bringing others to Christ. For more than a decade we have taught thousands of people these “Seven Pillars of Effective Evangelization.” We have shown them that successfully sharing the Faith depends on our understanding and application of these principles, or “Pillars”: Prayerful, Invitational, Hospitable, Inspirational, Sacramental, Formational, and Missionful. Casting Nets explains the principle and the practice of each of these Pillars.

If you have picked up this book then you must have some sort of desire to evangelize others. Maybe you have already decided to share the Good News with a particular person, family member, friend, or co-worker. Maybe you just want to be able to spread the Faith to anyone who God might bring to your attention.

The Seven Pillars of Effective Evangelization will help you with either of these desires. But first we need to reflect on this desire to share your faith, a desire that was placed there by the Holy Spirit. This desire is something very good, something that must be grown. And it is something as true disciples of Jesus Christ we have a moral obligation to respond to.

Scripture and the Moral Obligation to Evangelize

Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, became man with one very specific goal in mind: the salvation of humanity. However, after Jesus suffered, died, rose from the dead, and before ascending to the Father, He gave His Spirit to the apostles. And He commanded them to continue His mission, saying, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (Jn 20:21), and “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19).

Thus the task of bringing salvation to the world was given by Christ to the apostles and through them to all members of the Church. The laity, in particular, fulfill their Christian vocation by participating in this apostolic mission within the world. That mission includes not only living in holiness according to the teachings of Christ and the apostles (see Acts 2:42), but also bringing the Good News of Christ’s salvation to others.

St. Paul stands as the first and finest example of this mission of evangelization. He understood the urgency of sharing the Good News with others. As he said: “For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16). Likewise, all the faithful within the Church must do their part in this mission according to their unique role within the world. “Woe to [us] if [we] do not preach the gospel!”

In the Gospels we read a story of Jesus coming upon a fig tree while walking toward the city of Jerusalem (see Mt 21:18-22; Mk 11:12-14,20-25). Apparently Jesus was extremely hungry, because when He found no figs on the tree He cursed it, saying, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” (Mt 21:19). This curse proved to be the death of the fig tree.

Why was Jesus so severe with the fig tree? What was so terrible about it? After all, wasn’t it a living tree? Perhaps it provided shade from the hot, summer sun for passersby or a home for birds to nest. However, this fig tree lacked one very important thing: figs. This tree failed to produce fruit.

The fruit of Christ’s salvation grows when we live a life of prayer, follow the teachings of the Church, and live a sacramental life. This life is a gift of God and is itself a proclamation of the Gospel to others in our social environments. However, we must always strive for more. Can we ever say that we love God enough, that we give enough glory to God, or that we are holy enough? We must challenge ourselves to more. We must do our best to produce more fruit. If this new life in Christ is truly “the pearl of great price” (Mt 13:46, NABRE), we can expect to want to share it with others both in word and deed. Our proclamation sheds light on the cause and significance of this new life in Christ.

The Gospel of Mark provides us with another interesting detail to this story: “it was not the season for figs” (Mk 11:13). So what does that tell us? Jesus expects us to bear witness to our faith, to produce fruit in season and out of season. We must share our faith when it is easy and when it is difficult, to the stranger and to the friend, at work and in the home, times when we feel close to Our Lord and times when we feel distant from Him. There is no vacation from the obligation to evangelize, for we never know when the Savior of the World will be walking by to check our branches for fruit.

The Bishops and the Moral Obligation to Evangelize

The Church has always understood this mandate to sanctify humanity as the reason for her existence. However, in recent decades the pope and bishops have called for a new awareness of the need to evangelize and the universal call to every member of the Church. As Pope Paul VI wrote: “The presentation of the Gospel message is not an optional contribution for the Church. It is the duty incumbent on her by the command of the Lord Jesus, so that people can believe and be saved. This message is indeed necessary. It is unique. It cannot be replaced. It does not permit either indifference, syncretism or accommodation. It is a question of people’s salvation.”¹ Indeed, salvation is on the line, especially if we are not willing to offer Christ’s saving grace to others.

Our very identity as followers of Christ is connected with our willingness to bring others to Him. St. John Paul II once said, “No Christian community is faithful to its duty unless it is missionary: either it is a missionary community or it is not even a Christian community.”² If a person does not participate in the evangelization mandate then he or she will be, as declared by the Second Vatican Council, “useful neither to the Church nor to himself.”³

If we are ever looking for a measuring stick for our own personal faith, then Pope Benedict XVI offered our desire to evangelize as the marker: “Indeed, every Christian community is born missionary, and it is precisely on the basis of the courage to evangelize that the love of believers for their Lord is measured.”⁴ Thus, when we look at the saints, we see them constantly working to bring everyone to Christ. Our love for God can be directly measured by our willingness to evangelize.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church also connects evangelization to our own salvation: “The disciple of Christ must not only keep the faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it: ‘All however must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow him along the way of the Cross, amidst the persecutions which the Church never lacks.’ Service of and witness to the faith is necessary for salvation.”⁵

A challenge that Pope Benedict XVI set before us is the question of whether or not each one of us has done the most for our own salvation: “As Christians we should never limit ourselves to asking: how can I save myself? We should also ask: what can I do in order that others may be saved and that for them, too, the star of hope may rise? Then I will have done my utmost for my own personal salvation as well.”⁶

Are we ready to do everything we can for our own salvation? Are we ready to do everything we can for another’s salvation?

The Seven Pillars of Effective Evangelization

We have seen that evangelization is at the heart of the Church’s identity; it is the reason she exists, and it is a task given to all its members. Therefore, evangelization cannot be put into a formula such as “do A, then B, and finally C, and then we will have effective evangelization.” The bishops of the United States wrote: “The New Evangelization offers hope. Our hope is not in a program or philosophy but in the person of Jesus Christ, who comforts those who are burdened.”⁷ Thus we are offering “pillars” and not “steps.” “Pillars” create the foundation that make “steps” possible.

The Seven Pillars are meant to be foundational attitudes or principles that will allow effective evangelization to take place. They show us what evangelization requires in order to work properly—namely:

• a certain level of awareness that the time to spread the Gospel is now and the place is everywhere;

• a heart that listens to the movements of the Holy Spirit and is ready to act upon those promptings;

• a mind that is formed by the teachings of the Church and is prepared to share those teachings with the world;

• and a will that is obedient to the Church and humble enough to bear sufferings in order to witness to the love that Christ has for humanity.

An individual, a family, a parish, a ministry, or an entire diocese—anyone can use The Seven Pillars. We can incorporate them into our current programs or our new programs. The pillars can shape the practice of a family or a parish council. Most importantly, they are foundational principles that must shape each of our lives.

We believe these principles are universal. We have seen them at work in every program or individual that was able to successfully bring the Good News to others. And we can find all of these pillars in the life of Jesus. Indeed, we ought to learn from the Master how we can best love people into the kingdom of God.