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Introduction

Whether it is academics, business, or athletics, everyone wants to excel in his area of performance. We want to get better. Athletes or sports teams that desire to improve look to the best in their sport. Remember the Gatorade ad campaign of the 1990s, “Be Like Mike?” Many argue that Michael Jordan is the best basketball player to ever dribble a ball. So basketball players studied how he played, what he ate, and how he worked out, all with the hope of playing the game as well as he did. Startup businesses do not look to companies barely keeping the doors open but instead investigate successful Fortune 500 companies. If you are a student looking to improve your grades, you are not going to ask the “D” student to tutor you—you ask the valedictorian. If you picked up this book, then you want to improve your efforts as an evangelist. So where should we begin to look for help?

It is always exciting when friends, family, or people I encounter around the country ask me for advice on how to share the Gospel. Evangelization has become what I am passionate about, and that passion is matched only by my zeal to help others become the best evangelists they can become. Because of my theology degree, line of work, and love of the topic, people perceive me to be an expert on evangelization. But I must admit that my expertise has been gleaned not just from Scripture, the magisterium of the Church, the great popes of the New Evangelization, or learned theologians, but especially from the saints.

The saints remain the experts on evangelization. When studying the lives of the saints, it becomes evident that they were oases of conversions. The saints are who I look to for inspiration, guidance, and practical lessons for effectively communicating the Gospel. Pope Francis encourages us to do the same:

It helps us to see that the Church’s history is a history of salvation, to be mindful of those saints who inculturated the Gospel in the life of our peoples and to reap the fruits of the Church’s rich bimillennial tradition, without pretending to come up with a system of thought detached from this treasury, as if we wanted to reinvent the Gospel. At the same time, this principle impels us to put the word into practice, to perform works of justice and charity which make that word fruitful. Not to put the word into practice, not to make it reality, is to build on sand, to remain in the realm of pure ideas and to end up in a lifeless and unfruitful self-centeredness.²

There is no need to reinvent the principles of evangelization when we have two thousand years of saints who have done it so well. Look to the road map that the saints have laid out for us to effectively engage our culture with the Gospel.

Some may be thinking, “Today’s culture is so radically different from the past. How could learning how a saint shared the Gospel in the thirteenth century add to our efforts in the twenty-first century?” First let us hear how Pope Francis answers the same objection:

We do well to keep in mind the early Christians and our many brothers and sisters throughout history who were filled with joy, unflagging courage and zeal in proclaiming the Gospel. Some people nowadays console themselves by saying that things are not as easy as they used to be, yet we know that the Roman Empire was not conducive to the Gospel message, the struggle for justice, or the defense of human dignity. Every period of history is marked by the presence of human weakness, self-absorption, complacency and selfishness, to say nothing of the concupiscence which preys upon us all…. Let us not say, then, that things are harder today; they are simply different.³

Yes, every point in human history is different. However, human nature never changes. Ways of sinning may change, but sin and the remedy for it remain the same. The Eternal God who transforms the human heart never changes. Therefore, the saints, whether in the last century or the first century, were communicating the Truth that is the “same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb 13:8).

Saints shine not just as teachers by example of evangelization but also as participants with us. Our brothers and sisters in heaven are presently interceding for us. They are cheering us on and praying for our salvation. If they are doing this for us, you can also be certain that they are praying for those we are trying to evangelize.

This book presents the wisdom of fifty-six saints and how they evangelized. I encourage you to do two things while you read it. First, think about which saints speak personally to you. Their background, circumstances or personality may remind you of yourself. Follow up with those saints you feel an attraction to. Study them and begin to form a relationship with them in your prayer life. Let those saints become your missionary partners. Let them become the Michael Jordan that you want to “Be Like” when it comes to evangelism.

Secondly, I am convinced that the saints in heaven play a major role in every conversion story. As you share the Gospel with someone, begin to pray for the saints and angels looking over this person to guide and assist your efforts. Many times while engaging a person with the Gospel, a particular saint jumps into my thoughts. Immediately I will begin to ask for that saint’s intercession. I will study that saint’s life to see what could be useful in sharing the Gospel with this particular person. It is amazing how different my evangelization is when this happens. But none of this will be possible if we continue to ignore our heavenly brothers and sisters who want to help our evangelization.

The fifty-six saints are divided into two parts of this book. The first part is The Seven Pillars of Effective Evangelization. Tony Brandt and I introduced The Seven Pillars in Casting Nets: Grow Your Faith by Sharing Your Faith.⁴ These pillars comprise universal principles necessary for evangelization to produce fruit for any individual, parish, diocese, or institution. They are not steps to evangelization, nor do they constitute a program. Instead they are foundations that methods and programs can be built upon. In that first book we taught the principle of the pillar and then demonstrated it through personal stories from our combined forty-plus years of experience. In this book, the saints demonstrate the pillars.

In the second part of the book I focus on The Seven Characteristics of an Effective Evangelist. Like the pillars, these characteristics are both universal and necessary. These characteristics are manifested in individuals, but they also are evident in communities that are sharing the Gospel well. To become the best evangelists that we can be, we must work to acquire all seven of them. While the saints whom I cite illustrate one particular characteristic, you can rest assured that they possessed all of them — and that must be our aim as well.

The work of evangelization is too important not to do it well. Souls are on the line. Let us pray to all the holy men and women who have preceded us to intercede in our efforts of spreading the Gospel, so that the lost will be found, and there will be rejoicing in heaven today (cf. Lk 15:9–10).