I was brainstorming in adoration today about what I could do to invite more people to sign up for adoration and come and adore Jesus regularly, and the thought occurred to me: “Why not write an article for our parish’s newletter/publication, the Spirit of St. Louis?”.
So I called the church and spoke with Evelyn, the editor, and she said she would love for me to write an article.
“Great,” I thought, “this is cool”.
But now I have been trying to figure out what approach to take with the article. The end goal is to invite people to come to adoration and sign up for a weekly hour, and to reach out to the people that I believe God will inspire to do so.
There is a part of me that wonders why people have not come to adoration in the first place. After all, we have had it for five days a week for almost 3 years. We have had numerous sign up drives, 40 hour devotions, etc., and yet still we have few people signed up. Isn’t the fact that Jesus is there wanting you to come and spend time with him reason enough to sign up?
Well, apparently it is not, so God must desire us to reach out more to invite more people to come. Here are the approaches I have thought of:
1. Shaming approach: Focus on numbers: Only 0.5% of parishioners go to adoration. That’s sad! Do you not want to spend time with Jesus or something?
2. Positive/appeal to benefits approach: Your life will be transformed and blessed by God. Saints X, Y, and Z all received these awesome graces at adoration. Be happier, more peaceful, and more patient by going to adoration.
3. Personal stories/testimonials: This one woman who went to adoration told me about some prayers God amazingly answered during her adoration time. I myself have had many prayers answered, though not my one for meeting my future wife, so you should come to adoration, too!
4. Educational: Adoration is where we adore Jesus, really present in the Blessed Sacrament. His body and blood, soul and divinity are sacramentally there, pouring out grace upon us, desiring to spend time with us. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament began in XYZ year and ….. we have adoration at St. Louis. Please join us.
What approach do you think is best? Are there others I am missing?
Monday, 8. August 2005
Dev-man,
I think I would go with the positive approach, in a way where you ask a question where the obvious answer is “yes” to adoration. One example would be to the effect of,”If you could sit down in a room with Jesus right this minute, would you?” “If you could spend quality personal time with your Lord and Savior to keep him company, wouldn’t you want to take that opportunity?” Then of course, you would answer the question and tell of the awesomeness of Eucharistic Adoration.
I think that the shame method may get some initial responses, but would not yield long-term committments. While I think that personal stories and testimonials should be sprinkled into the article, there may be people who do not relate or cannot make a correlation if that is all the article is based on. And of course the educational side will also naturally be rolled in as you answer the questions. If nothing else you can challenge everybody to try it and see if it does not make a difference in their lives.
Another way to maybe address this situation would be to write a sheet of FAQs with the answers posted. Just a few ideas. Good luck and God bless on the article.
-REB
Tuesday, 9. August 2005
I agree with the positive approach and the testimonials. And you might ask, “Wouldn’t you spend an hour with someone you loved if you got a chance?”
Tuesday, 9. August 2005
Thank you for the advice. I will post the article here when I write it and get your opinions.
Tuesday, 16. August 2005
I’d go with #s 4 and 2. educational (a friend of mine didn’t learn until college that the Eucharist is the Real Presence…)and positive. I have definitely experienced the phenomenon of time being multiplied because I sacrificed it for Christ– I never had to pull a single all-nighter in college, but I always made daily mass, adoration, women’s group, service, whatever… so especially for parents who are always on the go, just reassure them that if they trust and give of the time they don’t have, it will be returned 100-fold!
Friday, 26. August 2005
I am myself most affected by an appeal of the educational variety, but as Robert suggested
on 8/8, a combination of types would probably yield the greatest number of participants.
Good Luck! You have a great site!
Friday, 26. August 2005
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Thanks for the suggestion and encouragement, Jen.