lent Podcast, fasting, Your Love Never Fails

After about a month or so, we released our latest podcast today, CL55 - Lent is Here! Yes, were in the great season of the Church that orients us to encounter Jesus Christ anew and ponder his AMAZING love he displayed for us through his cross and resurrection. So check out our podcast, it's short and includes a bit about our meeting with the Archbishop and a few more updates!

Another Lenten resource I wanted to share is a sermon from St. Peter Chrysologus on fasting. It's excellent. He talks about the three things the Church calls us to do especially during Lent:

They are prayer, fasting and mercy [or almsgiving]. Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives.... When you fast, see the fasting of others. If you want God to know that you are hungry, know that another is hungry. If you hope for mercy, show mercy... If you ask for yourself what you deny to others, your asking is a mockery...

Finally, I watched this video today, it is a live music video of a song called "your love never fails" by a group called Jesus Culture, who is doing some great things in the non-Catholic Christian world to bring youth and young adults closer to Jesus through worship concerts. Enjoy the video, very powerful lyrics, inspiring if you are in a time really needing His love!

News & Lenten message

Hey blog readers! I hope you are well. In case you aren't subscribed to our e-updates, here is the latest news from our Director Dave Nodar:

February 24, 2009

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ our Lord,

Just wanted to touch base with you today and make you are aware of a few things.

Our current newsletter is now available on line and for those of you who receive hard copies it should arrive any day now (if you don't get the hard copy and would like it, please let us know) We have lots developing and we would love to bring you up to date in the newsletter!

We just returned from meeting with Archbishop O’Brien, our bishop here in Baltimore. He was very gracious and encouraging our work and very concerned to see the mission of evangelization moved forward in all the ministries of the Archdiocese. Please pray for him.

Also, since we begin Lent tomorrow, I am including a link to Pope Benedict’s Lenten Message. It is a wonderful message on fasting.

Finally, as you will read in the newsletter we are very busy with the Discovering Christ course and are preparing to video produce the course this summer, with the course aimed this time at young adults. Would you fervently join us in prayer for this project? We need committed intercession for every aspect of the course, for young adults to come as guests, for the grant money for the video production (please consider making an online donation), for team workers, for the teachers (Fr. Arnold and me) for the Lord’s anointing!

Thanks for standing with us in our passion to spread the news of the love of our Father!

Your brother,

Dave Nodar
Director

2 evangelizing courses being used in Catholic parishes

For over 10 years ChristLife served as the U.S. Catholic office for Alpha. We are so grateful for the the Alpha course and what we have learned about parish evangelization through it!

Alpha is remarkable and extremely effective evangelizing course that began in an Anglican parish, Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) in London, England. The course is a 10-week introduction to some of the basics of the Christian faith. It was developed as a parish based course that introduces people to the good news of Christianity at the essential level of personal relationship with God in Jesus our Lord through the Holy Spirit.

While it started in an affluent section of London – Kensington - it has spread to most areas of the world, and is effective cross culturally. It’s having impact in the bush of South Africa, in inner cities, in prisons, at business luncheons and, is being used in most Christian traditions. Some 11 million people have gone through the Alpha course since it began back in 1990!

Learn more about Alpha on our website. Also check out this remarkable article in Time Magazine, International version. Alpha has incorporated many essential elements to provide an effective evangelizing dynamic. The course presents basics of the Gospel message and explains how this is relevant to our lives today. Additionally it explains how to take it from teaching to personal application. The course explains how I can enter into this relationship with God. In addition the pastoral dynamics of the course provide the relational context so essential for helping people to enter into his new or renewed life in Christ within the context of the church. Having a dinner to socialize as well as small group discussions where people are free to ask questions as well as share how they feel and what they think about the talk they just heard is outstanding as a means of helping people. Brilliant and it works, bringing many to new or renewed relationship with the Trinity within a parish.

As a result of training conferences that ChristLife presented for Catholic parishes and organizations, we estimate conservatively that over 60,000 people went through Alpha courses that were held in Catholic parishes here in the U.S. How is that for good news! And those attending are people we know and - not only people who attend church – but our family and friends who are dropped out Christians, agnostics and atheists !

As a ministry our mission is to equip Catholics to evangelize, and over the years we recognized that for a variety of reasons not every parish or (Arch) diocese is open to using Alpha, and so we determined that in order to fulfill our mission we needed to develop a Catholic course that would also proclaim the kerygma - the basic good news of what God has done in Jesus of Nazareth and help people to encounter the Lord through it. So we developed Discovering Christ (DC). Over the last few years we have been presenting DC in parishes and at a Newman Club at University of Maryland Baltimore County campus. DC is a seven- week course and we are very encouraged by the transformed lives we are witnessing among those who attend! If you want to learn more about Discovering Christ , check it out here. Contact us if you are interested in learning how you can bring DC to your parish!

ChristLife continues to provide the all the Alpha course resources.

As parishes, campus ministries & home meetings these courses provide ways to intentionally evangelize our families and friends in a relational setting. These courses provide a means for more fully incarnating the new evangelization. Blessed be the Lord!

"At least we both like tea"

“At least we both like tea,” I quipped slightly awkwardly as the student leader of the “tea club” let me know she was an atheist. I was at the UMBC student involvement fest, helping out at the Newman Club’s table (Catholic Campus Ministry). I decided to walk around a bit and meet some people and maybe even invite them to our upcoming Following Christ course.  

“Well,” I continued, “are you involved in an atheist club or something?” This threw her off a bit as I think her disclosure of being an atheist was more of a way to decline my invite to the Following Christ course.

Her response was a bit indicative, “Well, I’m not really a hard-core atheist, I’m more agnostic, you know, I’m actually looking into some different religions a bit, like, mainly eastern religions.  I kind of like Hinduism, but I’m not sure, and Buddhism is cool, but they don’t believe in love.”  

So, suddenly her “atheism” was going away a bit... I responded, “well, what about Jesus? You know, Gandhi liked Jesus, he didn’t really get down with the whole Christian thing, but what do you think?”  She retorted, “He’s cool... I actually grew up Catholic but I don’t like organized religion anymore.”  Thinking on my feet, “well I grew up Catholic too and got away from my faith, I was practically atheist, but things changed, and the only reason I’m Catholic is because of Jesus...”  Ha, it’s true :0

As I saw that she was thinking a bit and our short conversation was coming to an end, I switched subjects back to the “unifying factor” of tea!  My wife found this quite funny later when I told her- “At least we both like tea!” Anyway, I went back to the “Catholic” table, which led me to walk past the Hindu table, gay & lesbian table, the Asian Christian table, and the Libertarian party table – quite a modern day Areopagus.  

I had to get going, but I remembered that as I walked into the “fest” I was given a free Nalgene bottle.  Yeah!  Pretty nice!  Anyway, I knew I didn’t need it and I looked at the side of the bottle and there was a Web site in small letters, http://www.notyourmamasreligion.com A Web site I just found out that points students and young adults to make faith in Jesus their own.  

So, as I left, I stopped by the “tea club” again and asked my new “atheist” friend if she wanted a Nalgene bottle.  “Wow, yes, I actually have been wanting one of these, thanks!” she responded as she happily took the bottle.  

As I left I said a prayer for her and asked Mary to pray for her as well... that the Holy Spirit would continue to stir a search in her for “true religion” and “love” - found in the person of the God who self-disclosed himself to us most wonderfully in Jesus Christ.

May our gracious God and Father continue to use us to be instruments of Jesus’ love and truth. Amen!

What about you? Have you had a random experience like this? Has God used you lately to “plant a seed,” even just a little one (think of the mustard seed’s capability!)?  Please comment below!