@nhoyt
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Registered: 7 years, 10 months ago
• Philadelphia / Lower Bucks County team leader • Started with SPSE December 2016 • Co-leader with Deacon Mark Kuhn Nancy and Deacon Mark have an active team that evangelizes every two or three weeks. Their primary location is downtown in Center City Philadelphia. They occasionally evangelize by going door-to-door in suburban parishes where they have permission. In the summer and fall they also jump in and evangelize at local parish carnivals. There are about 25 evangelists on the team email list. Some join in occasionally and others are interested but still waiting to test the waters. (Be not afraid!) Nancy has also helped new teams get started by welcoming evangelists to join one of their team outings so they can “get their feed wet” before starting their own teams. (Come and see – Jn 1:39) – What motivates you to evangelize? I am motivated to evangelize because so many are not aware of God’s incredible love and desire to be in relationship with us. I think that the degree of despair and hopelessness in our society, magnified by the current opioid epidemic, and a desire to declare for oneself what is good and what is evil, drives many Christians to leave their faith roots behind. These reasons are a call for all faithful Christians towards active evangelization work. If the apostles all stayed in the upper room and waited for people to come to them to learn of Jesus’ saving grace, then we would all be suffering the consequences of it. We need to get out in the public square and witness to the love of God. – What is the relationship between evangelization and your spiritual life? I have found an extraordinary relationship between evangelization and my spiritual life. It is directly proportional. If I do evangelization work, I am prompted to do particular spiritual exercises much more, such as going to Mass more, confession, adoration, more prayer time, read more scripture, study more religious topics. It feels like I am training to ensure that I am “on my game” with the Lord when I need to bring His love to others with street evangelization. If I do not do much evangelization work for a while, I can start to feel fuzzy or rote in my prayers, instead of having clarity. I can get lazy in sacrifices, instead of giving to God with certainty and pleasure. I tend towards thinking cranky thoughts instead of hopeful ones. Street evangelization has been a great outlet in helping me grow in docility and spiritual exercises, seeing with clarity how “little me” can be an instrument of God’s love, and I am so thankful for it!
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