8 tips for growing the Gospel

Friday, December 13th, 2013

“Refreshing” is how I’d describe Pope Francis’ recent letter to us.

This is a man who walks the talk, and true to its title, The Joy of Gospel (Evangelii Gaudium), I found a joy to read.

A considered piece, there are some great one liners too.

There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter.
Goodness always tends to spread.
An evangeliser must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral.
It is not by proselytising that the Church grows, but “by attraction”.
Evangelisers take on the “smell of the sheep”.
Everyone needs to be touched by the comfort and attraction of God’s saving love, which is mysteriously at work in each person, above and beyond their faults and failings.
It is imperative to evangelize cultures in order to inculturate the Gospel.

The pope also saves a couple of pastoral tips for priests.

“I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy which spurs us on to do our best”, he wrote.

And in terms of the homily, the Holy Father tells priests

to keep in mind that we should never respond to questions no one asks
keep the homily short
be positive.

Refreshing? Yes. But in case I’m creating a false impression, the document is not a series of one-liners, Pope Francis is writing an apostolic exhortation, encouraging us in our mission as church and our involvement in modern society.

Evangelii Gaudium is a challenging document; the Jesuit Pope seems unafraid to take on some big issues. It’s a document encouraging Christians to embark on a new chapter of evangelisation, encouraging us to go beyond our well worn, beaten tracks and forge ahead down new paths.

As well as Evangelii Gaudium, I also found challenging a recent piece in CathNews, by another Jesuit, Fr Michael Kelly. He too wrote about about the future of the Church’s involvement in society.

Using a quote about the Archdiocese of Brisbane, by its former Archbishop, John Bathersby, “the future has arrived a little earlier than expected”, Fr Kelly quickly dismissed the notion that it was all over for the Church.

He also pays no heed to the idea of being happy with the Church’s decline in the Western world so as to scale back the church to a faithful remnant; a spiritual and doctrinal elite.

The future “is not hidden away behind sacristy doors and locked into conversations with the already signed up membership”, he maintains.

“Elitism is for the birds,” Fr Kelly says.

While we know the future will be different, no one quite knows what the future holds, however it’s not stopping Pope Francis showing how a future Church might behave and look.

Giving it his all, Pope Francis, a seventy plus year old, a man with only one lung, is breathing hope into the ancient organisation.

Francis’ synchronised walk and talk have captured the imagination of the world.

All of a sudden, almost free from humiliation, the Church, well at least this man and his approach, can be a topic of conversation.

There’s a time for everything

My 88 year old mother using her iPad knows Google, and for children Google is part of the life fabric as they grow up, it’s almost in their modern day genes.

Everyone knows Google.

However not everyone knows that before Google there was Yahoo!

Yahoo! was the one-stop-shop, for searching the web, email, news and advertisements.

Some time back Yahoo! stumbled and now struggles to find its place in a Google world.

CEO’s at Yahoo! came and went, some quite quickly, while others needlessly hung on after their use-by date.

With its most recent change of CEO, Yahoo! seems to have a new lease of life, once again it’s growing its market share.

CEO Marissa Mayer is not looking to recreate the past, rather she is using Yahoo’s traditional strengths to build a tomorrow.

Mayer spoke at a recent conference, and the following are eight takeaways from her presentation.

Make a commitment to simplicity.
Constantly think about the customer’s experience and what it’s like for them.
Distinguish usable from useful.
Make the move to mobile.
Reinvent your products that have always been useful for modern use.
Empower your employees.
Mark your priorities from the get go.
Surround yourself with talent.

Admittedly the Church is not just an ordinary organisation, but I can’t help but wondering if Marissa and Francis have similar organisational advisors, or read the same authors.

Evangelii Gaudium is a good read, and if you read it or have read it, I hope you see some of the parallels between what Marissa Mayer outlines as Yahoo! strategy and Pope Francis’ encouragement to the Church.

– John Murphy is a Marist priest working in digital media at the Marist Internet Ministry, New Zealand.