Vancouver takes up Pope Francis’ missionary challenge

Two years ago, Pope Francis challenged the Church to renew its focus on evangelism in 2019. Half a world away, in Vancouver, his words are being taken seriously.

The Pope announced that this October would be an Extraordinary Missionary Month, and for two years the gears have been spinning in the Archdiocese of Vancouver to take on the task.

“We exist to evangelize. So, let’s get a shot in the arm, a shot of hope, a vision, and clarify why we do what we do,” said Brett Powell, the archbishop’s delegate for development and ministries. “This is a relaunching of the perpetual mission to which the Church has always been committed.”

Powell is one of the key people behind Proclaim, a Catholic movement set to launch at a brand-new evangelism conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre Saturday, Oct. 26. The focus is on equipping Catholics who have a personal relationship with Christ to go into their communities to spread the Gospel.

“It’s always exhilarating to rediscover your purpose, no matter what you are or who you are. That’s what this month allows the Church,” said Powell.

The Oct. 26 conference Oct. 26, titled Upper Room, features speakers including Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and Sister Miriam James Heidland of the Abiding Together podcast. It will be followed by what Powell hopes is a flurry of activity by several hundred evangelizers on fire with the Holy Spirit and equipped to use recommended tools from Alpha and Catholic Christian Outreach.

A person’s first step toward faith is “having a trusted relationship with a believer,” said Powell.

“We’re not inviting people to start conversations with complete strangers,” but urging them to offer family members, friends, co-workers, or neighbours a chance to speak about God.

The strength of the resources is in their ability to do just that. Alpha and Discover Discipleship are not new to the Archdiocese of Vancouver, but they have seen a renewed interest over the last few years.

Clara Lum helps run Alpha at St. Augustine’s Parish in Vancouver. Confirmed only four years ago, Lum said she knows what it’s like to be on the “outside” of the Church. Her conversion was unexpected and life-changing, “as St. Paul on the road to Damascus.” She hopes to offer other people looking for answers the chance to have their lives transformed, too.

An Alpha series involves an 11-week series of meals, videos that raise questions about faith and the meaning of life, and opportunities for conversation about those deep subjects. In the last 1 1/2 years, St. Augustine’s has run two seasons of Alpha, and in the most recent, a third of participants were not Catholic.

“It’s such an amazing platform,” said Lum. “I’ve had so many people say: ‘I want to come back to the Church, but I don’t know how to. Alpha gives me an easy way of coming back.’”

St. Augustine’s introduced Alpha as part of a parish renewal strategy. Lum said the rekindled focus on evangelism had nothing to do with Pope Francis’ Extraordinary Missionary Month, but it also proves it was meant to be.

“God works in mysterious ways. It just confirms for all us and gives us reassurance that we’re all on the right track, we are moving forward together, and we are united.”

Mary and Randy Tabada run three Catholic Christian Outreach faith studies and the Alpha program at St. Patrick’s Parish in Maple Ridge – in addition to raising their five children. They also feel assured in their efforts when they hear about the Upper Room conference, and other renewed calls for evangelism.

“The Holy Spirit is definitely masterminding everything that’s going on here,” said Mary.

Alpha is simultaneously experiencing its own renewal. It launched a new campaign called Life.Shared in July aiming at the same thing Proclaim is hoping to do: equipping Christians to start conversations about faith and invite their friends and neighbours to an encounter with God and the Church.

“A culture of invitation needs to happen in a local parish to get lay people engaged in mission,” Alpha Canada director Shaila Visser told The B.C. Catholic back then. “We’ve tried to tackle that.”

Ed Zadeiks sees it as “serendipitous” that Alpha, the Archdiocese of Vancouver, and various parishes across the Lower Mainland have in the last few years independently switched their focus to one of evangelism. “It’s funny how the Holy Spirit is working with this,” he said in July.

At Pentecost this year,  Pope Francis said the Church needs a “constant and ongoing missionary conversion” if it’s going to do the job right.

“The missionary mandate touches us personally: I am a mission, always; you are a mission, always; every baptized man and woman is a mission,” he said.

“As far as God’s love is concerned, no one is useless or insignificant. Each of us is a mission to the world, for each of us is the fruit of God’s love.”