Objective:
The goal of this session is to get the middle school youth excited about their faith and create in them a desire to share it, while also providing a background of what evangelization is and practical ways to do it.
Overview:
For many years the word “evangelization” had a negative and almost scary connotation for most Catholics. Many Catholics immediately think of evangelization as either something that made them very uncomfortable, something that the non-Catholic Christians do, or something reserved for missionaries in faraway lands. While most of these views of evangelization have been changing within the Church, many Catholics still shy away from the call to evangelize. Pope Paul IV defined evangelization as “bringing the good news of Jesus into every human situation and seeking to convert individuals and society by the divine power of the Gospel itself.” The word evangelization comes from the Greek term “euangelion,” which means “glad tidings” and was a word used to describe the action of sharing good news. The disciples were instructed by Jesus to share the Good News of the Gospel with the entire world in the Great Commission found in Matthew’s gospel.