@ddbrandt
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Registered: 7 years, 10 months ago
• Berkley, CA team leader • Started with SPSE in 2014 David gathered together a small handful of friends from his parish in Pinole, California. Then others who heard about SPSE sought him out and joined the group and now there are about 10 on the team. You can find them evangelizing about once a month. They work mostly on the streets of Berkeley, a college town across the water from San Francisco. How do you build up your team so they can be better evangelists? First of all, every outing starts with prayer. I have a St. Paul Prayer that I found on line that I printed out and hand to the team members to start. We also may just start with other forms of brief prayer. While out in the street, we have mini-debriefs and discuss interactions after an encounter is passed. My focus with team members is that if they trust in the Holy Spirit, that whatever was said and not said in that interaction was the result of that trust. I remind them that our simple presence is extremely powerful, but not because of us, but because of the hunger out there for God. If team members have suggestions or ideas, I do not counter those ideas, but try to go along with them. Positivity is important. I also try to hold team meetings once a month. Meetings give us a chance to share stories, meet new people who want to join, and plan the next month’s outings. We also discuss best approaches in certain situations and we always read one of the pamphlets out loud all the way through. My focus with the team in meetings is to help them learn how best to get people they meet talking. Once true dialogue starts, a team member will learn enough about the soul they are encountering to know how to invite or challenge that person to come to Christ. They will also know what materials to provide to them. We also look for opportunities or to engage in offering prayer. What’s it like to evangelize in Berkeley CA? Before starting my team, I spent a lot of time and effort on learning to be a Catholic Apologist. My focus was on protestant vs. Catholic issues. It turns out that Berkeley is an ardently secularized city. Although we do encounter many Christians and Catholics when we go out, we also encounter many people who have had no faith background at all. In these cases, we are starting from ground zero. I also expected that people would be openly hostile with us. When hostility is expressed, it is the way people say no. But for every rude no, there are 3 or 4 very polite ones followed by a thankyou. What motivates you to evangelize? A while back, I started reading through a little child’s missal that my grandmother gave me for my first communion. I found a beautiful communion prayer called “Promise of Allegiance to Christ the King”. My favorite line in the prayer is ” . . . Divine heart of Jesus I offer you my poor efforts to make your kingly power known and loved in every human heart.” This prayer means a lot to me and reflects my main motivation. I have had the most powerful experiences of Christ’s presence through His Church. I want others to meet Christ in his Church too. I also love the idea of actually trying out and using the gifts of the Holy Spirit to reach people at the level of their hearts. I remember listening to passages in the Gospel in Mass when I was young where Jesus promises to give you the words you need and thinking, “I wonder if I will ever be in a situation where I will try this promise out.” Street evangelizing gives you those situations. Trusting in Christ and letting go of my fears as I do this work has dramatically helped me grow closer to Christ and to trust in the Holy Spirit. How does prayer impact evangelization? Prayer helps me maintain my sense of connection to Christ and helps me stay open to his mission for me not only as an evangelist, but also in all the other aspects of my life. I would say that the two most important aspects of my prayer life when it comes to street evangelization would be adoration and the Rosary. Adoration is where I receive a great sense of peace and focus. I can also present to the Lord things that I am not sure about or to find out what I need in order to do things better and to get new ideas. The rosary is critical because when I am giving someone a rosary, I give a testimonial about how I have had some of the most beautiful spiritual revelations while meditating on the mysteries while praying it. The closer I am to those events happening, the more genuine my recommendation is for the person to try it out. Do you have any evangelization heroes? Yes. One of my favorites is Mother Theresa. Two things I get from her really light my fire. The first is doing small things with great love. When I am on the street, a genuine smile shared with somebody who does not stop to talk means a lot. The second thing is her response to a reporter who asked her to compare the poverty in the USA to the poverty in India during her visit here. She said the poverty in the USA or the west was worse because it is a spiritual poverty. This comment inspires me to embrace the spiritual works of mercy that are such an integral part of our efforts and that are not focused on enough in our culture.
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