YOUTH MATTERS: Geelong Cats & Evangelisation
By Sam Clear, Director of the Office of Youth Evangelisation
As a teenager there would be a distinct knot in my stomach even at the hearing of the word ‘evangelisation’ let alone any attempt to physically engage in it. I saw it as nothing more than imposing beliefs on others and treating them like mindless fools.
What I didn’t realise was that I was involved in a type of evangelisation nearly every day of my life. I had teachers evangelising me to the beauty of mathematics and physics. I was constantly evangelising friends to the beauty of climbing mountains and white-water rafting.
Gary Ablett Senior was constantly evangelising me to the beauty of football. We evangelise others to what we love. I would have been more than happy, feeling no guilt what-so-ever, to share with my teenage mates why I thought Geelong was indeed, ‘The Greatest Team of All’.
It was a confronting day when it dawned on me that I didn’t like ‘evangelisation’ because I didn’t love Jesus, nor the Church. I believed in God, but I didn’t trust God, and I had more questions about Jesus and the Church than I did love for them.
The thought of evangelising was no different to being asked to help with the Collingwood Magpies’ membership drive. I’d almost rather sabotage it (I apologise to the Collingwood fans and will admit that for the first time ever I actually like your team at the moment).
In recent years I’ve even heard a priest, a brother, and a nun each confess that they couldn’t rightly admit to loving God, so I know I wasn’t alone in that journey.
Perhaps like many in the Church I was happy to love my neighbour as myself, and to promote it, but to, “Love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” (Matthew 22:37), felt like awkward lip-service.
I most certainly wasn’t excited to introduce others to God, not in the same way I’d attempt to introduce others to watching one of my favourite movies: “If you get the chance, you just have to watch it.”
I’d never said anything remotely as succinct or positive to a non-Christian about God, prayer, or the Mass.
To love requires dedicated time, deep questions, deep listening, and likely a lot of forgiving, and once we’ve begun to fall in love with Jesus we begin to resemble the woman at the well (John 4:29-30), who runs to the village yelling, “Come and see a Man who told me everything I’ve ever done! Could this be the Messiah?”
Are we falling in love?