The Answer: Simple. But not easy.
Sent Evangelization provides Catholic pastors with the method and tools to reach all the souls living within their parish boundaries (Christus Dominus no. 30.1). And does so by equipping parishoners with a neighborhood evangelization method, based on baptismal identity and focused on charity.
"Whom shall we send?"
In the words of St. Paul, "Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, but how can men believe in him in whom they have never heard and how can they hear without a preacher and how can men preach unless they are Sent."
But who will be sent? And sent not to distant missions, but within our own parish territories, to the vast and largely forgotten majority of our brothers and sisters who do not yet know Jesus, yet live surrounding our churches.
Sent Evangelization:
Here to serve.
It began in 2016 on a whiteboard at the Saint John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization in Denver, where a visiting priest drew a large rectangular border with a church at its center and some little houses drawn around it. “This,” he said, “is the parish territory, of which all the souls living within it the parish is responsible for.”
Then drawing a much smaller circle around the church, he said, “And this is how many people within that territory who actually exist within the Church’s walls as Catholics. In the Archdiocese of Denver that’s only about 15%, so what are we doing for everyone else?”
No one had an answer, because to be honest, many of us had never heard the question before. So after a long pause he said, “Well, we just go knock on their door.” Sent Evangelization was born.
Today, out of its headquarters in Denver, Colorado, Sent coordinators travel across the country equipping Catholic parishes (free of charge) with the tools they need to be "Sent." And sent not to foreign missions but to the vast majority of souls who live within their parish boundary yet are outside its spiritual walls.
IDENTITY BASED. CHARITY FOCUSED.
Priest
Prophet
King
I invite everyone to be bold and creative in this task of rethinking the goals, structures, style and methods of evangelization in their prospective communities...the important thing is to not walk alone but to rely on each other - Pope Francis