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
Holy Week is rich with meaning, emotion, and spiritual depth. For Catholic evangelizers, it offers some of the most natural and powerful opportunities of the year to walk alongside others—not with pressure or programs, but with prayer, presence, and personal witness.
Holy Week isn’t just a sacred time for personal renewal—it’s a built-in opportunity for mission. For parish leaders and evangelizers seeking to move from maintenance to mission, this week offers countless ways to accompany others through the real-life thresholds of conversion.
Whether you're a parish leader, catechist, or simply someone seeking to live as a missionary disciple, these seven ideas will help you share the Gospel during Holy Week. Consider sharing these suggestions with volunteers, small group leaders, parents, family members, or others you serve. Better yet: choose one and practice it together.
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- Written by: Kristin Bird
We live in a world where personal experience holds more authority than rules, doctrines, or even experts. That means that if we want to reach people, if we want to bring them into a deeper relationship with Jesus, we have to start with something more powerful than apologetics or theological arguments—we have to start with our stories.
The Power of Story to Reveal Truth
Have you ever noticed that some truths are so hard to accept? This powerful story reveals why storytelling might be the key to making truth more palatable:
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- Written by: Kristin Bird
Lent calls us deeper. Deeper into prayer. Deeper into fasting. Deeper into generosity. Lent calls us to a generosity that stretches us beyond comfort, beyond obligation, beyond the extra we happen to have.
When Jesus watched people putting money into the temple treasury, He didn’t praise the ones who gave large sums out of their abundance. Instead, He pointed out a poor widow who dropped in two small coins—everything she had to live on.
"Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on." (Mark 12:43–44)
She gave everything. And that’s exactly what Jesus asks of us.
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- Written by: Kristin Bird
Two Parishes, Two Paths
I recently had the opportunity to work with two different parishes, both filled with faithful, dedicated people who love their Church. But their approaches to ministry—and more importantly, to evangelization—couldn’t have been more different.
One parish’s leadership made a bold decision: they committed to freeing up their staff and clergy’s time so they could focus more explicitly and intentionally on evangelization priorities that lead to true parish renewal. Rather than being consumed by administration, their goal was to build a culture where evangelization wasn’t just another task—it was the heart of their mission.
They asked tough questions about how their parish could shift from maintenance to mission. They restructured meetings, re-evaluated programs, and asked, “Does this serve our mission to make disciples?” before committing to anything new. They weren’t just trying to keep things running; they were actively creating a culture where every baptized person understood their role in evangelization.
The other parish, however, was stuck in the weeds. Their leadership was exhausted from trying to manage internal complaints, keep existing programs running, and maintain a fragile sense of peace among those already in the pews. Instead of focusing outward—on reaching the lost and forming missionary disciples—they were caught up in being a Church focused on Pope Francis calls “self-referential navel-gazing.” Their energy was spent keeping those who already belonged happy (or at least minimizing complaints), rather than equipping and sending people to share the Gospel.
Both parishes were filled with good, faithful people. But only one had truly the mission of evangelization.
So I have to ask: which kind of parish are we building?
