Below are two situations someone who works in a parish might encounter today. Give them a read and then ask yourself how you would honestly respond. Not the way you ‘should’ respond - but how you would actually respond if they happened to you this week.

1 - A 20-something man calls the parish and self-identifies as an agnostic. He is willing to spend a year examining the claims of Jesus. He sounds open and honest. It doesn’t sound like he is looking for an argument, but a discussion. He wants to know if Jesus is true, and he is giving you a year of his life to help him find out.

**What do you do? Be specific.**

2 - A 50ish woman approaches you after Mass. She tells you that something happened to her. For the first time in her life she believes Jesus is real and she has decided to follow him. She is somewhat shaken by this and yet joyful. She asks you “what do I do now”. 

**What do you do? Be specific.**

I have asked various versions of these questions to thousands of Catholic leaders over the years. Most answers I have hear back are programmatic. 

Sign him up for OCIA. 

Get her into a Bible study or on the retreat team. Give her some books to read.

Those answers might be right for some folks. But notice that they were given before anyone asked where they actually are, what they actually need, or who is going to walk with them. Most reach for the program / process / activity / resource / event - because those are what most know and use.

And underneath that, for many good and faithful Catholic clergy and lay ministry professionals, is a sentence they rarely say out loud.

“I don't know how.”

YOU WEREN’T FORMED FOR THIS

If that sentence describes your own situation, I want to say something before anything else. Admitting it is a good thing, but if you stop there, it will stop being a good thing. If it is an accurate description of the formation you received - then you need to continue to be formed for something more.

Seminary, grad school, professional development, etc. -  may have formed you in philosophy, theology, Scripture, liturgy, canon law, homiletics, pastoral counseling, and even the concepts of evangelization and discipleship. All of it is good and necessary. Yet, none of it teaches us how to:

• start a spiritual conversation with a stranger, 

• listen and then discern where someone actually stands with God, 

• proclaim the kerygma and invite a response, 

• give a compelling testimony of how God has worked in our lives,

• pray intentionally with someone,

• walk a new disciple through the years it takes to reach maturity,

• etc.

The folks in ministry were supposed to learn those things the way every apprentice learns - by being guided by a more mature Catholic missionary disciple. The problem is - most of the older folks in ministry (including our priests) were formed in the same system, for the same Church, with the same gaps. That means few are ABLE to form others, which gives us the Catch-22 we are currently in. We need more mentors for formation in hands-on pastoral work and have too few that can do what is required.

A program-based model can only reproduce itself. So we find ourselves with a generation of good folks that have responsibility for a mission nobody formed them for. They were trained faithfully and well for parishes that no longer exist.

That is not your fault. But, it is now your problem, which is a different thing entirely.
What are you going to do about it? 

THE GAP

Here is why so many priests and lay ministry pros go an entire lifetime without ever confronting this. Nothing in the ordinary operation of an ordinary Catholic parish will help bring it to the surface.

Mass gets celebrated. 

Confessions get heard. 

The sick get anointed and the dead get buried. 

Programs run on the fall and spring calendar. 

Sacramental preparation happens. 

The bulletin goes out. 

Nothing breaks.

The way we measure our metrics will not bring it to the surface either, because we measure attendance, sacraments, and involvement - and all three can look perfectly acceptable in a parish where few have been converted in a decade.

A parish staff may not bring it to the surface, because most of them were formed the same way you were. If they have never been discipled themselves, they are not capable of evaluating anyone else’s competence at discipleship. They are mirroring the same gap and calling it normal.

Which means nobody is coming to tell you. There is no moment where this becomes obvious. A parish can operate for decades without anyone ever asking whether disciples are actually being made. Who would ask that question and if it is asked, most blow it off as meaningless.

The only way this reaches the surface is if you go make it happen. That is what those two scenarios at the top are for. They take about thirty seconds to expose where you actually stand, and almost nothing else in parish life does.

YOU DO NOT LOSE AUTHORITY BY SAYING IT

Before I go further, I want to address an underlying fear that may be lingering.

Many Catholic leaders are threatened by the sentence "I don't know how." It feels like an admission that undermines their authority. If you are the pastor, the presupposition is that you are ‘supposed to know’. Saying otherwise seems to give up authority.

It does not.

Authority does not come from your competence. It comes from God. That is not contingent on having a skill at evangelization, and no honest word about your limitations, inadequacies, problems, sins, etc. has ever taken them from anyone.

Consider how easily you already admit limitations in other areas. 

• When there is a serious question about canon law that you aren’t sure of - you call the chancery and talk to a canon lawyer. 

• When a pastoral counseling case starts to get into mental health issues you refer to a counselor.. 

• When the roof is leaking, you hire a roofer or engineer rather than climbing up there with a theology degree and good intentions.

Nobody thinks less of you for any of that. In fact, most would think less of you if you faked it.

So why does this gap feel shameful? Why is "I don't know how to lead someone to conversion" harder to say than "I don't know how to fix a roof"?

It is because we have a Catholic culture which tells us that a Catholic leader (and especially our clergy) must be integrated and formed for it all - spiritually, intellectually, pastorally, all of it. That is not a bad goal. But, it can also be cruel to those who believe in it, can’t face it themselves, and therefore hide from it - because it turns an ordinary human limitation into a feeling of being disqualified.

Furthermore, notice what pretending costs us. A person who cannot say "I don't know how" will reach instead for what they do know how to do. Buy the program. Run the video series. Launch the initiative. Looking for the silver bullet fix. Silver bullet syndrome is not laziness. It is what "I don't know how" looks like when someone won't admit it.

So, admit it what you need help with. I’ll start. I am not that good at numerous things. I am terrible at details. I miss them all the time. I am inadequate at fundraising for our apostolate. I am not that great at administration. I need help with these things and therefore I hire others who can help me in these areas and I get mentored and coached for areas I am weak in. 

But, there is more. 

WHAT I DID

I should tell you that I am not writing this as someone who has always been proficient as an evangelist or disciple-maker.  

There was a point, after years of working in ministry and being reasonably good at it by every measure anyone was using, when I realized I was not actually raising up missionary disciples. I was running things. I was teaching. I was gathering people. But if you had asked me to name the disciples I had personally formed who were now forming others, I would have struggled.

That realization made me repent. It hurt because it meant admitting I had been operating the wrong way for a long time, and that a lot of good effort had gone into something other than the mission.

So I went looking for a few people who knew more than I did. I put myself at their feet. I asked them to help me, mentor me, guide me. I applied what I learned and I made a mess of it more than once, and God was gracious with the mess.

I still do not know everything. I am still a sinner and still learning. In fact, I still don’t consider myself a “good” evangelist or disciple-maker, but I try. That is all God asks of us. 

Lord, I’m sorry.
God help me do better.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

Say it to God first. Before you say it to anyone else, take it to prayer and mean it. This is not just a problem to be solved. It is an honest word to the Lord about the work he has given you and the tools you were handed for it.

Then say it to one person. Not a staff meeting. Not the pulpit. One trusted person who will not flinch and will not gossip.

Then find someone who actually has the skill. This is the whole thing, and it is the step people skip. Not a book. Not a conference. Not a podcast. Not a blog, including this one. A person who can watch you work, tell you what you did wrong, and let you try again. 

Accept being a novice. This takes humility and is the hardest part for a priest or ministry pro in their forties or fifties with a title on the door. You may even be bad at this at first. Being bad at something new is not the same as being a bad Catholic.

Do not confuse learning about it with learning to do it. Reading another book on evangelization is the most comfortable possible substitute for actually evangelizing someone. I say that as a man who has a book written on evangelization!!!

Tell those around you eventually. Not as a confession of failure - but as a model. Someone who can say "I am learning how to do this and I am not good at it yet" gives every person who works with them permission to say the same. That does more for a parish culture than any pretense of competence ever has.

ONE LAST THING

Go back to those two scenarios at the top.

The agnostic who gave you a year. The woman who just met Jesus and does not know what comes next.

They are going to show up. Maybe not this month, but they will show up, because God keeps sending people to parishes whether or not the parishes are ready for them.

The question is not whether you know how to help them today. Most do not, and that is not a scandal. The question is whether you are willing to say so, and start learning.

I will pray for all who read this.