i spoke, by invitation, at a friend's home church a week ago about my ex-husband walking out on me and how that horribleness brought me to a deep - and meaningful- faith.
i had never been to a home church before.
i don't know if all home churches are like this one but this one was sorta like doctors without borders. well, without doctors, too. :)
it was in a living room and everybody just sat wherever. and the kids - i believe there may have been literally 10,000 of 'em - alternately listened, played, drank juice, wandered around, played, wandered around some more, and were cute as Christmas.
there were, as my friend the minister pointed out, no stained glass windows. no candles, no hymnals, no altar, no sacraments, no liturgy. not even a Bible......which i found surprising.
what there was, however, was glory to God, amazing music, deep testimony, and a boatload of love - for Christ and for each other. bigger hearts of gold i will never find anywhere.
pope john paul II, in several of his encyclicals, homilies, and a buncha other stuff, talked about "the new evangelization" and how all catholics - not just the priests and the deacons and the nuns - but all catholics - are commanded to participate in it. what is the new evangelization? basically, bringing people - most of whom in this day and age probably already know of Christ - to Christ. moreover, bringing them to Christ via the Catholic (capital "C") church.
as with the "first" evangelization - the one which the apostles undertook - the "new" evangelization is not easy. stepping on people's toes - especially the toes of good people - is not fun - for the step-ee or the step-er. (and stepping on toes is the least of it.)
our world does not tolerate stepping on toes and it especially does not tolerate evangelization - unless it's the kind of stepping on toes and "evangelization" that the new mayor of new york city, bill de blasio, favors, i.e. radical left/anything goes stuff. now, that will win you some friends. (as long as part of the anything that goes stuff doesn't include......
religion.)
especially not Catholicism.
(the mormons don't fare any better.)
