When I was first asked to write this piece, my initial thought was, “I’m not an evangelist!” I can worry a lot about ‘pushing’ my beliefs on others, about upsetting them. However, in spite of that, over the last few years I have been involved in an Easter conference known as ‘Celebrate’, a family conference organised by Catholic Charismatic Renewal. I am part of the planning team who plan, co-ordinate and run ‘Joel’s Bar’; the latter is the youth stream for 15-22 year olds. Joel’s Bar encompasses a huge variety of young people from all different stages of faith and knowledge of God. My time has been spent chatting to those who sit right at the back (or even on occasion outside!) thinking we’re all off our rockers, and to those who are really keen, getting as involved as possible and eager for more of the Spirit. Joels’ Bar is a forum for young people to experience and learn of Christ in a direct, personal and intimate way, building a deep and real friendship with Him through the Holy Spirit who brings a fresh experience of the Father’s love.
In my mind, evangelisation is helping people to move deeper with God, irrespective of where they or we are with Him. Some of us may be called to help people make those first baby steps, while others may be asked to help others to mature in their faith. Evangelisation is what happens when we place our services in God’s hands, allowing Him to put us to work for His glory. What he desires most is for all to know Him and love Him, and to accept His knowing and loving them in return.
Our theme at Celebrate was, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” - a challenging notion indeed, but one that sums up the Christian life perfectly. In order to explore this, Joel’s Bar got to try their hands at some new and exciting things. Witnessing through action, we had a Joel’s Bar day out at the beach, with en-masse games and praise and worship. We also had a morning of service, with all the small groups serving the community around us, helping the larger conference, doing physical tasks for the John Fowler site, the local college who host us, and cleaning the local church.
As brilliant and fulfilling as this was, we wanted to communicate to the participants of Joel’s Bar that witnessing and service are not complete without speech and sharing. Talks and seminars addressed various topics, whilst in small groups, space was given for sharing and friendship and key questions of faith were explored. This year we set aside time for a closer look at Biblical and Church teaching on challenging and central areas such as the Eucharist, Mary, contraception and the afterlife, and then we brought it all together in “The Debate” where a team from Joel’s Bar went head-to-head with the ‘Devil’s Advocates’ (a specialist team chosen from the wider conference!), with the rest of the Bar rather loudly voting the winners.
‘The Debate’, fun as it was, revealed, to me, a shocking level of seeming ignorance about the faith. However, what I enjoyed most about this activity was that it was a way of unpacking all the beautiful richness of seemingly dusty documents, and of God bringing them alive for His children.
Many of these young people are on fire for God. They have an awesome desire to know Him further, to walk closer with Him. And they long to talk about Him. Their enthusiasm and love for Him bubbles over. They do not need my stereotypical concept of evangelisation, ‘pushing’ one’s beliefs and ‘introducing’ them to Christ. But they do need someone to walk with them, bringing the richness and depth of God to them, just as we all do.
For general information please see: http://www.ccr.org.uk/events.htm