Reading Francis

One other thing I want to get out there early for all of my fellow Christians who aren’t Catholic is who Francis thinks we should be evangelizing. Some of you may have read the last post and thought it sounded pretty similar to Protestant evangelical Christians like Billy Graham, or Rick Warren, or David Platt, or Francis Chan. And you’re right. Francis talks at some length about being in unity with Christians of all stripes and in solidarity with fellow believers of other religions, especially Judaism, and even open to collaboration with committed non-believers of good will. (More on all that later.)

But early on (paragraph 15), he lays out who we should be evangelizing: 1) current Catholics who show up in the pews but could grow in faith. Like me. 2) “Fallen away” Catholics who were raised in the Church but left it at some point. 3) those who have never heard this good news about God before.

That’s it. This isn’t a call to proselytize (meaning steal members of other churches). It’s a call to reach those who are already part of the Catholic Church and those who have never found out what church is about at all.

OK. With that out of the way, we can really dive in to the major themes of the work next time, which might be a few days.