Revised and Expanded Paperback – Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus
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How can we transmit a living, personal Catholic faith to future generations? By coming to know Jesus Christ, and following him as his disciples.
As we emerge from a pandemic into a post-Christian world, these are times of immense challenge and enormous opportunity for the Catholic Church in the United States. Consider these statistics:
- Fully 10 percent of all adults in America are ex-Catholics.
- Nearly three-quarters of young Catholics think that they could be a good Catholic without going to Mass every Sunday.
- Catholic marriages have declined by almost two thirds since 1969, even as the number of Catholics in the United States has grown significantly.
- Only one third of Catholics believe that the bread and wine actually become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ at the consecration during Mass.
If the Church is to reverse these trends, the evangelizers must first be evangelized. In other words, Catholics in the pew must make a conscious choice to know and follow Jesus before they can draw others to him.
Ten years after it was first published, Forming Intentional Disciples is still helping scores of Church leaders, parish staff, and all Catholics transform parish life from within. World-renowned author and speaker Sherry Weddell leads you through the steps that will help Catholics enter more deeply into a relationship with God and the river of apostolic creativity, charisms, and vocation that flow from that relationship for the sake of the Church and the world.
Forming Intentional Disciples Ten Years On
In this tenth-anniversary edition of Forming Intentional Disciples; I take an extended look at our situation in 2022, beginning with the really significant changes in the Catholic understanding and practice of evangelization which have taken place over the past decade in the United States. I briefly discuss the new and continuing challenges we face in both in the United States and in other parts of the West. I explore how we can not only stem our losses but make disciples and from apostles of the millions of Catholics and non-Catholics who are searching for identity, meaning, and hope at this very moment. As always, I draw upon the wisdom of the Institute’s international network of teachers and collaborators and all we have learned together over the course of twenty-five years spent working directly with hundreds of thousands of Catholics in over 1,000 parishes in 214 dioceses.
