is a commandment Christ gave to all of his disciples. That means every one of us! Every baptized Christian is called to communicate the inconceivable good news of God’s love, revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ, to others. It is at the heart of the Christian faith. Jesus is saying to every one of us who are baptized, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (Jn 20:21).
Church teaching
Since the end of the Second Vatican Council (known as Vatican II) in 1965, all of our popes have been calling all Catholics to embrace the mission of evangelization. It is a radical re-emphasis of the mission Jesus entrusted to us 2,000 years ago.
At the conclusion of a Synod of Bishops on evangelization ten years after the close of the second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI wrote, “‘We wish to confirm once more that the task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church.’ … She exists in order to evangelize.”6
Saint John Paul II wrote in his 1990 encyclical Mission of the Redeemer, “God is opening before the Church the horizons of a humanity more fully prepared for the sowing of the Gospel. I sense the moment has come to commit all of the Church’s energies to a new evangelization and to the mission ‘ad gentes.’ No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church, can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples.”7
Learn More About the New Evangelization
Download a free booklet on St. John Paul II’s teaching on the new evangelization entitled Characteristics of the New Evangelization at christlife.org/sharechrist.
Personal desire
Most of us, once we experience the love of God personally, are anxious to tell others about it. It’s like Peter and John in the Acts of the Apostles, “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). It’s a natural reaction to share what excites us, much like when we’ve seen a good movie or a new TV show; we want to tell our friends about it. There is nothing more exciting to share with others than the good news of what Jesus has done for us.
Word and Witness of Life
The glossary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) offers the following definition for evangelization: “the proclamation of Christ and his Gospel by word and testimony of life, in fulfillment of Christ’s command.”8
I would like to highlight three key points from this definition:
1. First, we proclaim Christ and his Gospel in word, talking about Jesus and what he has done for us.
2. Second, we share Christ through the witness of our lives, which should be increasingly growing in harmony with God’s will.
3. Third, we evangelize because our Lord commands us to do so.
This simple definition clarifies what it means to share Christ. Simply put, both words and witness of life are required. Evangelization, furthermore, is a command the Lord gives his Church, not an optional extra for “really holy Catholics.”
Personal Encounter with Jesus
When I was a young man searching for the meaning of life, a friend shared with me the change that occurred in his life because of the Lord Jesus. I was impacted by not only his joy in telling me that Jesus had changed his life but also the undeniable transformation of his life. He was different. I had known him for years, but now he had a joy and peace about him that wasn’t there previously. He was noticeably free of a lot of behaviors I had been trying to get free of on my own power. He attributed his changed life to Jesus, and he told me that Jesus could change my life as well. He offered a witness both in words and testimony of life.
It is worth mentioning that he evangelized me shortly after his own conversion. It’s easy to fall prey to thinking you need to get your life together and receive a theology degree before you can share Christ. Evangelization is not apologetics. It is simply sharing with a friend the love and joy we have found as we continue to grow with Jesus as the center of our lives. If we wait until we become saints, we may never enter into the wonderful mission Jesus has given us.
The Church teaches that the starting point of all evangelization is a person, Jesus Christ, and our relationship with him. This is essential and the very foundation. Evangelization isn’t simply sharing what we know about Jesus. It is sharing our lived experience of a personal relationship with Christ. We cannot give away what we do not possess. The popes in recent years have spoken about this truth many times.
Saint John Paul II said, “The starting point of such a program of evangelization is in fact encounter with the Lord.”9
Pope Benedict XVI said, “We cannot bring to the world the Good News, which is Christ himself in person, if we ourselves are not deeply united with Christ, if we do not know him profoundly, personally, if we do not live on his Words.”10
Pope Francis said, “Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus.”11
A personal encounter with Jesus is where it all begins. We come to know Jesus personally, and then we are sent forth to live as his disciples and share him with others.
The Foundation of Evangelization
When Saint Paul established the first local churches, he made it clear that Jesus Christ must be the foundation of any church community. “According to the commission of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and another man is building upon it. Let each man take care how he builds upon it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 3:10–11). Saint Paul wanted the Church in Corinth to be absolutely clear that there is no other basis upon which the Church can grow than the Person of Jesus Christ.
Consider this: You want to build a house with a limited budget, so you discuss cost-saving options with the builder. You’re told that building without the foundation is not an option. Without a solid foundation, the house will not last very long against the wind, rain, et cetera. You can’t build the first and second floor and forget about the foundation.
While it makes sense to us when it comes to building a physical structure, frequently we want to build up the Church without the foundation. We want to bring people into the first and second floors — teaching on the sacraments, apostolic succession, Mary and the saints, morality — without first laying the essential foundation everyone needs: a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. A huge pastoral problem facing the Church today is the many Catholics who have been catechized but never evangelized. While catechesis is important, it is not the foundation. The Second Vatican Council explains, “In Catholic doctrine there exists an order or a ‘hierarchy’ of truths, since they vary in relation to the foundation of the Christian faith.”12 The foundation of the Christian faith is a relationship with the Person of Jesus Christ. All evangelization must begin with this core doctrine, which the Church calls the kerygma. Pope Francis explains how the Church has recently rediscovered the centrality of this message: “In catechesis too, we have rediscovered the fundamental role of the first announcement or kerygma, which needs to be the center of all evangelizing activity and all efforts at Church renewal.”13
Whenever people encounter the Lord Jesus personally, they want more. They hunger to enter more fully into life in the Church. They desire to mature in their faith and seek to tell others the good news they now know personally. We at ChristLife have witnessed the unbaptized received into the Church. We’ve seen the baptized who haven’t been part of the Church, nor living a Christian life in years, become a vital part of their parish. The foundation of the Church and her mission is the person Jesus Christ and relationship with him. That has to be clear to each of us. This is the basis of effective evangelization.
Step into Mission
Jesus tells us that “apart from me you can do nothing”