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    Messy & Foolish: How to Make a Mess, Be a Fool, And Evangelize the World
    Messy & Foolish: How to Make a Mess, Be a Fool, And Evangelize the World
    Messy & Foolish: How to Make a Mess, Be a Fool, And Evangelize the World
    Ebook54 pages53 minutes

    Messy & Foolish: How to Make a Mess, Be a Fool, And Evangelize the World

    By Matthew Warner

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    About this ebook

    Pope Francis says he wants “a mess.” Are you foolish enough to make one?

    We Christians claim to have a great message for the world. But if it’s so great, why are more people leaving the Church than joining? The message clearly isn’t getting through. We must be doing something wrong.

    Matthew Warner has spent the last twelve years passionately sharing the life-changing truths of the Christian faith with others. As a student of the Information Age, he is eager to use every means of communication at his disposal to help the Church share her message. In his attempts, he’s reached millions of people by developing faith-based websites, blogs, and email lists, and engaging a large audience through social media. And as the creator of his own innovative communication tool used by thousands of churches worldwide, he's experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to evangelization.

    Along the way, he’s made a lot of mistakes trying to share the faith with others — but he’s also seen what works. That's what this book is about.

    Messy & Foolish presents a fresh vision for evangelization that will inspire you to quit the lesser pursuits of your life and accept nothing less than the joyful, adventure-filled, contagious life God intends you to live.

    Pope Francis was right. It’s time to make a mess. It’s time to change the world. And we are just the fools to do it.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateNov 16, 2015
    ISBN9781942611561
    Messy & Foolish: How to Make a Mess, Be a Fool, And Evangelize the World

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      Book preview

      Messy & Foolish - Matthew Warner

      Notes

      INTRODUCTION

      (and the Goal)

      There were no pews or seats, only cold, wet sand. But that wasn’t going to stop three million energetic young people from celebrating Mass that day on Copacabana Beach in Brazil.

      Go! said Pope Francis. You have been able to enjoy the wonderful experience of meeting Jesus, meeting him together with others, and you have sensed the joy of faith. But the experience of this encounter must not remain locked up in your life or in the small group of your parish, your movement, or your community.

      As the 2013 World Youth Day festivities came to a close, the pope was kicking everyone out — but not without marching orders.

      I want a mess. I want trouble in the dioceses! I want people to go out! I want the Church to go out into the streets! I want us to defend ourselves against everything that is worldliness, installation, comfortableness, clericalism, being shut in on ourselves. The parishes, the schools, the institutions exist to go out!

      IT’S TIME TO MAKE A MESS

      When you know you have something really special, you can’t help but want to share it with everyone you meet. And when that something happens to be God’s honest truth — the gospel, the secret to a meaningful and joyful life — you’d think it would be spreading like wildfire.

      But it’s not spreading like wildfire. In fact, the fire seems to be going out. We must be doing something wrong.

      In the next generation, half the pews will empty. And not because of something that will happen, but because of something that has happened. A generation is already missing and so are their children. And they show no signs of coming back any time soon. The inertia alone ensures that the situation will get worse before it gets better. It’s a crisis of massive proportions, the severity of which has been masked by positive personal anecdotes and clouded in an ambiguous hope that, in the end, things will turn out fine anyway.

      Sure, we can point to many bright spots worth celebrating within the Church today, but the bleeding continues. None have yet reversed the mass exodus of modern man from church.

      We’re in the midst of an identity crisis. We’ve forgotten we were made to live courageously. We’ve forgotten who we are. We’ve forgotten we’ve been charged with a radical mission — a mission to turn the world on its head.

      There is indeed hope. But it’s not a vague, passive hope, where we stand on the sidelines and wait for God to swoop in. Rather, it’s a hope intimately tangled up in our human messiness and fueled by our weakness. It’s a fool’s hope.

      It is time for big, bold changes. It’s time to get out of maintenance mode and go on a mission. It’s time to go! You exist to go out, to be shared, to love and be loved. The Church exists

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