Ash Wednesday is a good day to share your Catholic faith with others. In fact, Ash Wednesday Masses generally have more people attend that even Christmas and Easter - which shows a high level of engagement. Below are some suggestions on how to evangelize on Ash Wed.

Many Catholics traditionally do something like give up a favorite food, watch less TV, etc. for Lent. These are good ideas, but below are some more unique ones that we have crowd-sourced.

Beauty bypasses the intellect and goes straight to the heart. This is why it is the secret weapon of Catholic evangelization. It entangles you in an invisible net that you don’t even know you are caught in. I first experienced this as a child, while attending one of the most beautiful churches in the USA...

Everyone needs an ultimate reason for their existence. This hard-wired reality in humans can be seen in the multitude of ways that we try to answer the questions about our existence with meaning. This includes...

Nobody intentionally welcomed us in. Nobody reached out to us. Nobody initiated a relationship with us. We tried to get our foot in the door and were pushed out. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon experience for those trying to crack into a new Catholic parish. Even so...

In my last post, I asked Catholic lay professionals what they wanted their pastors to know. So, I thought it only fair that I let the priests have a turn. Therefore, I recently surveyed (anonymously) some of the priests that I know and asked them the following question: "What do you want your staff (lay Catholic professionals in parishes / dioceses / schools / etc.) to know, but either you have never told them or you don't think you "could" say it?"

I recently crowd-sourced others who work in parishes, dioceses, Catholic schools, and apostolates. I asked them the following question: **What do you want your pastors (bishop / parish pastor / boss) to know, but either you have never told them or you don't think they have "heard" you say it?** Below are the responses

She no longer went to church, yet she told me, “I don’t believe, but I miss having a church community.” She may not have believed any longer, but she still missed the support of a church community and the friendships that came with it. I believe this is not only a problem, but an opportunity.

The Catholic Church has many methods of discernment for individuals. Yet, few modern Catholic institutions have a way to discern together what God’s will is for their organizations. Working with Catholic leaders for many years now, I have found ...

The meeting started like a lot of meetings at Catholic dioceses (or parishes, schools, ministries, etc.) - with a prayer. We bowed our heads and the leader said, “Lord, please bless our meeting as we pray, Hail Mary…hour of our death. Amen.” The closing prayer was an Our Father. In between, we took care of the REAL business....

Several of my friends and family are what you could describe as high-achievers. Still, some of these high-achievers cross over into being workaholics too. In conversation with one of them recently, I mentioned that even Jesus took a day of rest every week (he took the Sabbath rest very seriously). The response of my friend was that Jesus didn’t have kids....

The National Eucharistic Congress (NEC) is going to be the seed planted, which I believe will grow and ultimately bear untold fruit. This fruit will ultimately transform the Catholic Church from a Church of decline, maintenance, and lukewarmness into a unified Eucharistic Church on mission.

Our life of discipleship should be the primary marking in our lives. It should be our very identity as disciples (followers) of Jesus. Below are several of these characteristics or marks of discipleship.

**What should your parish do?** Ask a Mass-going Catholic this question and you will have a very very wide variety of answers! You probably have a lot of thoughts about this yourself. Many Catholics want a parish to...

If you want to talk about Churchy language, then the word, “kerygma” is at the top of the list. In modern times it is only used in Christian circles and even then, not widely. This is unfortunate, because a lot of the answers to our problems lie within understanding what the kerygma is an how we ought to be using it.

For many years we have had the same plumber (George). He is no longer a young man and we have had several conversations through the years about the lack of young plumbers (and young people taking on other trades). In one visit to our house, George had a new apprentice, who had recently graduated from High School. I told George that I was happy to see he had a new apprentice, but he responded by saying...

I have a charism that causes problems for me periodically. It can feel like I am tossing a spiritual hand grenade into the room and walking out before it goes off.  But, before I tell you more about it, I want to make sure we all understand charisms the same. A charism is...

Most Catholics rarely evangelize and when they do, it may not be in the most effective manner. If you are a Catholic disciple and would like to become a better evangelist, then hang on to your hats, because I fully believe in the tactic I want to explore with you below. Is it full-proof? Of course not....

I have seen hundreds of folks I know burnout in ministry. While it is neither cheap nor efficient to have turnover, sometimes we can’t control the fact that people move on. Is there anything we can do about it?

My friend is a Southern Baptist pastor and his statement about the Catholic Church floored me and it wasn't about what you are probably thinking it was. He told me a story about when he was in seminary in the 80s. One of his seminary professors was teaching a class on missiology, which is the study of Christian mission. They did an exhaustive historical study on the spread of the Gospel. Toward the end of the class, one student asked...