The Making Disciples Today Blog has reflections to help you grow in your journey of missionary discipleship, reviews on recommended Catholic evangelization resources, and practical insight on how to evangelize in your daily life.
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- Written by: Kristin Bird
After Everything Settles
The Triduum ends the same way it always does. You move from the intensity of those days—the silence, the cross, the waiting—into a liturgy that feels almost disorienting in its brightness. Music returns. The lights come up. People who haven’t been there in weeks are suddenly back in the pews. And for a moment, it feels like something has shifted.
Then Monday comes.
The emails are still there. The same conversations pick back up. The same limitations, the same people, the same patterns.
If anything, there’s a drop-off – even a cynicism – that no one names. Attendance dips. Energy settles. What felt sharp and real just a few days earlier starts to fade into something more familiar.
Which is where the question sits, whether we ask it or not: What difference has Easter made?
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- Written by: Kristin Bird
A pastor once walked out of a parish pastoral council meeting visibly unsettled.
Voices had been raised. People had disagreed openly. The conversation had grown intense in a way that made the room uncomfortable.
Afterward he pulled me aside and asked me whether the meeting had "gone badly.”
But what had actually happened was something very different.
For the first time, the council had begun wrestling honestly with mission. They were asking real questions about discipleship. They were naming programs that had been running for years but no one could clearly point to them bearing fruit in evangelization. They were noticing the gap between what the parish said it valued and what was actually shaping parish life.
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- Written by: Burning Hearts Team
Before you launch something new this Lent, before you tweak the calendar or add another activity, pause...
Ask yourself first: Where is the Gospel unmistakable in my ministry? Where is Jesus named clearly as Savior – not implied, not referenced, not embedded – but announced?
A gentleman in his late sixties pulled me aside after an Alpha session and said to me, almost embarrassed: “I’ve been Catholic my whole life. Catholic school. Daily Mass. And no one has ever explained to me that God really truly loves me.” He wasn’t angry or deconstructing. He had clearly been moved and was hungry for more.
I’ve seen that look before – the look of someone who knows the mechanics of Catholic life but has never been personally confronted with the Gospel.
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- Written by: Kristin Bird
When we sit down with diocesan and parish leaders to talk about mission, there’s usually a lot of energy in the room. They know something isn’t working. They feel it. And when we start naming mission clearly — when we start talking about actual discipleship — the Holy Spirit ignites something in us.
Ideas come quickly, people lean forward, and discussions get animated (and often louder). You can feel the possibility in the room.
I’ve sat in rooms where every staff member was on board. Not just nodding — genuinely willing to wrestle with hard questions about moving from maintenance to mission.
And then all too often… the decisions freeze.
