May 24 2024 A Pastor Invites His Flock to Discovering Christ Fr. Chris Argano, pastor of St. Mary’s Church in Washingtonville and St. Columba in Chester, NY, recorded a simple, heartfelt invitation for his flock to attend Discovering Christ. Every parish running the ChristLife Process should consider this powerful type of invitation.
May 24 2024 How to Make Your Discovering Christ Course Fruitful I love hearing testimonies from people whose lives have been transformed through Discovering Christ, and I love sharing them when we have a training conference! Testimonies give glory to God and they inspire all of us to keep evangelizing! I often have future ChristLife leaders ask me, “How can we get testimonies like you shared for our parish?” If you put together a bookshelf without following the instruction manual and found a spare piece of wood when you finished, would you trust it to function properly? Similarly, if you take the time to pray and plan for Discovering Christ without following the manual and leave out key pieces, do you believe it will be as fruitful as it can be? If you want to see many lives transformed, my advice is to read the manual. Then read it again. And read it again every week prior to each session. Follow all the instructions we have provided. We created this guide for you! We want your courses to be successful. We want you to bear much fruit for God’s glory and we don’t want you to worry about how to make it successful. When we evangelize, we fully rely on God’s help, but there are things we need to do in order to be genuine to the Discovering Christ course. Over the years, a few parishes have called us and told us their courses didn’t have the same results we have witnessed. As we talk to them more, we hear things such as: They forgot to play the video parable. (It is on a separate DVD and should be played right after the teaching on week 3.) They weren’t able to book a room the same night for the entire course, so they alternated nights each week. (We recommend you plan ahead and book the parish calendar with the same day of the week for 8 consecutive weeks plus the retreat day.) They didn’t feel the team needed to be trained. (Yes they do! And everyone from hospitality, facilitators, helpers and technology should all be trained!) We’ve even heard some parishes chose not to offer the Holy Spirit retreat the way we designed. I spoke with one pastor who didn’t think his parishioners would be open to the prayer time. When he didn’t hear of any testimonies, he realized he neglected an indispensable part of Discovering Christ! He ran the course again and followed the manual and the course exceeded his expectations! He had so many testimonies and he was really thrilled. These tips and more are outlined in the Discovering Christ How to Run the Course guide. The How to Run the Course Guide was prepared by ChristLife team members and experienced parish practitioners, all of whom run ChristLife at their parishes. We’ve been running Discovering Christ since 2007. Over the years, we’ve all tried new things to improve the course. Some things worked well and some… let’s just say, didn’t get the results we expected! But the bottom line is the How to Run the Course guide contains the best of the best tips from our experienced practitioners. So, what are some things you can do to prepare your team for a fruitful course? 1. Give each core team member a copy of the How to Run the Course Guide. You can read through it together as a group or have people read it individually and come back together to discuss how to implement each area. For example, your parish may decide to ask volunteers to prepare meals. You can browse some of our best recipes for easy bulk meals. Or get the meals catered if your parish has a budget for meals. The main point is that you need to provide a free meal for your guests! Please don’t eliminate the dinner, because it’s a vital part of Discovering Christ. This is the time people get to know one another. Week after week, they are building trust so that when it comes time for small group discussion, they feel comfortable opening up with each other. We also don’t recommend changing people from one table to another or adding new guests after week three. All of this is shared in the manual. 2. Another area is training your team! It’s really important for your entire team to be trained. You may even want to have an additional training session for facilitators and helpers. You can play a Discovering Christ video for them and have small group discussion as a team. In addition to the Small Group Facilitator Guide, give them each a copy of the Small Group Situations download. These are only a few of the things we cover in the How to Run the Course Guide. Our website also has a lot of information and is updated regularly. We are confident that if you follow the manual and pray regularly, your courses will be successful! We are here for you if you need to talk with anyone on our team. Be assured of our prayers for you, too!
May 01 2024 5 Keys to Attracting New People to Discovering Christ By: Dianne Davis So you’ve just purchased the Discovering Christ kit, or maybe you’ve already been running the series at your parish for a few years, but the BIG question is the same: “How do we get people to sign up?” All of us on the ChristLife staff are practitioners, which means we all volunteer to run the ChristLife courses at our own parishes. We’ve been running it for years and we’ve experimented with many different ways of inviting people. Some ways didn’t turn out the way we expected, but others worked really well. I’m going to draw on our successes and share 5 keys to attracting new people to Discovering Christ. 1. Pray together as a team regularly. No invite method will work if you and your team are not united together in prayer. Evangelization is the work of the Holy Spirit, and we cannot evangelize without Him! So make sure your team has regular times to pray together, as well as individually. As a staff we regularly intercede together for the fruitfulness of our evangelization efforts. One resource that you may find helpful for these times of prayer is the Discovering Christ team prayer. 2. Mobilize your entire team for the invite. As a team, it’s everyone’s job to evangelize! So that means the set up crew and hospitality, facilitators and helpers, technology and emcees are all evangelizing! Have everyone on the team start thinking and praying about the people they know in their families, their neighborhoods and people in places they encounter often, like the coffee shop, the gym, or sitting in the stands as your kids are playing soccer. These are all opportunities to invite someone to explore the meaning of life! And that’s one of the best ways to invite them. I usually get to know someone first and build a friendship. And as we talk about life, our jobs, our marriages, our children, the news, I wait for the Holy Spirit to give me an opening and I ask, “do you ever wonder about the meaning of life?” I’ve found that almost everyone says yes to this question if they don’t already have a personal relationship with Jesus. That’s when I say “My church is doing a course all about the meaning of life and we are even going to serve a free dinner. Do you want to come!?” This was a little out of my comfort zone when I first started, but after extending a couple of invites, it got easier. I’ve gotten some declines to this offer, but I don’t let it get me discouraged. It’s my job to step out and invite them and it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to give them the grace to say yes. I’ve even had some people decline, but a few years later show up for the course! So don’t get discouraged, just keep on praying and inviting! 3. Leverage your next Sharing Christ course. If you’ve already run the ChristLife process at your parish, the people who have come through Sharing Christ are your missionary disciples! Saint John Paul II said “only from a personal relationship with Jesus can an effective evangelization develop.” By the time people have signed up for Sharing Christ, they will have already had the opportunity to hear and respond to the Gospel in Discovering Christ. In Following Christ they learned about developing their relationship with Jesus and how to follow him. In Sharing Christ, they will be equipped and inspired to evangelize. You should schedule Discovering Christ within a few months of ending Sharing Christ. At the Sharing Christ retreat, we always give out both business card sized invite cards that can easily be slipped in a man’s wallet or pocket, as well as postcard sized invites to Discovering Christ. I like to challenge people to invite 5-8 people each, but to aim for filling their seat at a minimum. The weekend of the Sharing Christ retreat we all attend one of the parish-wide Masses together. During Mass our Pastor concludes with a commissioning rite for all the Sharing Christ graduates. As they stand for this special blessing, they are a witness to the rest of the parish for committing to and completing all three ChristLife courses, and to the importance of being missionary disciples. It’s always so inspiring to see them all stand up throughout the church as our pastor prays over them. This is also a great opportunity after Mass for them to speak to the person sitting next to them and tell them about how Discovering Christ helped them to find the answers to the meaning of life AND invite them to the next Discovering Christ course. They are prepared and ready to give away their invite card! 4. Be creative with your marketing campaign. As your parish begins it’s marketing campaign to promote Discovering Christ, think out of the box! Use fresh, new, creative ideas to reach people. Marketing with religious symbols might be meaningful to those of us who already have a personal relationship with Jesus, but we want to use marketing that will attract the attention of people who may have been away from church for years or may have never even been to church! In my local area, we’ve had over 2,000 people who have come to Discovering Christ. We’ve reached people in the pews, people who did not go to church regularly, people who were former Catholics, agnostics, atheists and other non Christians. How did we do it? We captured their attention and it made them want to check out what our course was all about! In an intentional effort to reach people on the margins, last year, we asked our local Christian radio station if they would give us a 60 second spot to promote Discovering Christ. They said yes and invited us into the studio to record it! We began the spot talking about some of the struggles people have in life as they navigate busy lives with family, careers, bills, health issues which all lead them to asking about the meaning of life and their purpose. The spot ended with a description of Discovering Christ, the free dinners, the dates and times and how to register. We also created lawn signs, bumper stickers and billboards all around town. We were able to reach many people who were outside the pews to join us. 5. Adopt God’s definition of success. I think it’s important to end with our definition of success. At first thought we may think success means that our courses are filled to capacity, or that they keep on growing. But after 10 years of running ChristLife courses, I’ve learned that the true definition of success in evangelizing is seeing lives transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. On our ChristLife team we’ve run courses with 5 people to as many as 500! But our greatest rejoicing is when we hear about lives being changed. Jesus says that all of Heaven rejoices when just one sinner repents (Luke 15:10). When I think of that verse I imagine a big party with all the angels and saints cheering for the one lost soul who has been found. Your next Discovering Christ course may not have as many people attend as you had hoped, but if just one person turns to Jesus, have a celebration just like the one that is happening in Heaven! Further Resources Listen for free to Dianne Davis’ workshop at the 2019 ChristLife National Conference “Breaking the Plateau: Reaching New People.” Have your entire team watch Pete Ascosi’s training talk “Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Making the Invite” available with the All Access Pass.
