“…to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” Eph 4:12 As the Archdiocese continues to move forward into this apostolic age, we are blessed to have renewed clarity on what we call Mission Anchors. As the name suggests, these anchors help protect the Archdiocese’s work from drifting away from what’s most important right now and losing sight of our primary mission: “So that in Jesus Christ, all might be rescued and have abundant life, for the glory of the Father.” What will keep us anchored in this mission? Focusing on forming and supporting Holy Priests, having Equipped Leaders for Mission and a Missional Curia. Though these anchors primarily inform and guide the work of the team at the Pastoral Center, we are excited to share them with our brothers and sisters throughout the Archdiocese in a spirit of transparency and as an invitation and encouragement to join us in our mission. As our Archbishop so powerfully said in his letter Our Apostolic Moment during Lent in 2021, we are in a spiritual climate that more closely resembles the time of the apostles than it does the early 20 century (I highly recommend a rereading of this short Pastoral Letter!). Part and parcel to this reality is the truth that many, if not most, people have yet to make a clear, personal and direct decision to become a disciple of Jesus and live under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We all feel this reality acutely in our spheres of influence. I don’t know a single Catholic whose entire social network of family, friends, neighbors and coworkers are “evangelized and committed disciples.” All of us know at least one person who needs to be reached with the hope and joy of the Gospel and brought into a life-changing relationship with the person of Jesus. Though obvious, the reality that Jesus’ mission in northern Colorado cannot be accomplished without your participation is a truth we constantly need to be reminded of. We heard this loud and clear from the Holy Spirit during the local phase of the universal Synod process. “You are the plan” was a clarion call to take seriously the reality that we can’t be passive recipients in the work of sharing the Gospel with our family members and neighbors. As our Holy Father has reminded us regularly, “It would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients” (Evangelii Gaudium, 120). “You are the plan,” “You Matter” and “You are the Missionary” are phrases I hope you have heard from the Archbishop and taken to heart over these past few years. However, we know full well it is not enough to say that everyone should be personally involved in the work of evangelization and Jesus’ “rescue mission.” I can remember my experience growing up when I heard that occasional homily that called for the congregation to share their faith more actively. If you are like me, as soon as I realized what the message of that particular homily was about, it was my cue to sink low in the pew and avoid all direct eye contact with the priest! Though I felt the weight of my responsibility to share my faith and agreed it was important, I was never seriously active in personally evangelizing others. I didn’t know the first thing about how to do it! I had not been equipped for the mission. This is what our second Mission Anchor is all about. If the mission of Jesus, “to seek and save the lost” (Lk 19:10), is to succeed, we all need to be equipped for this work. We all deserve the opportunity to be formed in the attitudes, knowledge and skills that make taking an active role in sharing our faith easier and more fruitful. Although the idea of equipping our leaders for the work of ministry has been a foundational objective of the Archdiocese for decades, we have a new focus and clarity on both the specific mission we are called to accomplish today within this “change of eras” and the formation necessary for that mission. Team members in our Office of Evangelization and Family Life Ministries have spent the past few years creating and piloting several new workshops and initiatives to equip leaders for this mission. To highlight two new initiatives that have been bearing fruit in equipping leaders, the Evangelization and Family Life team has been hosting “Introduction to Relational Evangelization” workshops around the archdiocese and forming local leaders in the art of intentional accompaniment through a partnership with Catholic Christian Outreach, an apostolate based in Canada. It would be insufficient to focus solely on equipping individual Catholics for the mission God calls them to participate in. We feel it is also crucial to work with pastors and their leadership teams to equip them in their unique work of renewing our parish structures, which need to be transformed to better support the individual efforts of everyday Catholics to share their faith. To this end, the Archdiocese has been piloting an “Institute for Apostolic Leadership” for the past couple of years. As we continue to press into this Mission Anchor as an Archdiocese, we’ve identified three specific next steps in the process of equipping our leaders for mission. First, we feel called to define and promote the universal call to holiness and mission, which all the baptized have received. Secondly, we intend to continue developing formation for our leaders in missionary discipleship, which includes understanding and exercising charisms. Finally, we plan to invest in and build up our Institute for Apostolic Leadership so that our pastors and their teams have the support they need to renew our parishes. Without your ongoing support, my sister or brother in the faith, none of this work would be possible. We truly rely and depend upon your prayers for the Church's work and this mission's success. I challenge you to begin (or continue) praying that the Holy Spirit would form in you the heart of a missionary disciple. It’s with sincere gratitude that I offer you my thanks on behalf of the Archdiocese for all the ways you partner with us in this mission, especially through participating in the Archbishop’s Catholic Appeal. Without your support, we would not be able to continue our work “…to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”
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