Greenville-Ephrathah 8: New Evangelization

In the Grey Building on the Left

One of the themes that I draw out of the New Evangelization thing is that ya can't sit around whinin' about why Faddah a Sistah ain't takin' care a dis a dat. That is, lay Catholics have to take responsibility on their own initiative, without the hierarchy having to pre-plan and hand-hold. Here's a nice recent example of what I'm talking about:

For a few years, there have been informal lunch circles among Catholic men [both lay and clergy] here. But last week one of my KofC brothers sent out an email to all the Catholic men he knew who did that sort of thing to come to one place for lunch on a given day. Here's the edited text of the email:

"Once a month Catholic men from around Greenville, especially the ones that work close or can make it for lunch downtown will be meeting for some lunch and fellowship. No sharing of feelings needed just come and shoot the breeze, meet some fellow Catholic men and practice being Catholic. This will be a great time to meet some new guys and foster some old friendships.

There are no rules, just a couple of suggestions. Keep the talk charitable and business (work related, business schemes, money making ventures) should be conducted at other times.

Please, I hope you guys can support this. The following bulletin column should be in all the local Parish bulletins soon.

"Friends,

We are starting a monthly Catholic Men's Fellowship Lunch for the Greenville area. The hope is that it will bring Catholic men together and help build up and strengthen our local Catholic community. Our hope is to foster some small groups to meet at lunch in between our monthly lunch that will study scripture and our deep and rich faith. This is not a replacement to any of the current groups already meeting in your parish but a broader outreach to all the Catholic men in our community as one Church. We will send an invite to all respondents the Monday before the lunch as a reminder. Our plan is to rotate the restaurant to other downtown Catholic-owned establishments based on our turnout and who is willing to host. We appreciate any help and most importantly all the prayers you can provide. Hopefully, we will see you there."

28 showed up that first time. Not bad.

BTW this ties in with Forming Intentional Disciples by Sherry Weddell, which I expect to be reviewing presently.