One of the defining characteristics of our age (and of our families!) has been the dramatic decrease in the number of people who go to Church. It is not so much that people have lost their spiritual yearnings. Rather, they don’t find those yearnings being met in organized religion. There is even an acronym of them: SBNR, Spiritual but not religious. As we think about the new evangelization this is a target audience. However, there was another group that description could fit: the demons that Jesus expelled. “Whenever unclean spirits saw him they would fall down before him and shout, “You are the Son of God.” That should alert us that knowing and even confessing Jesus as the son of God does not lead to saving faith. The first steps in evangelization are not learning the catechism or reading the Bible. The first steps are hearing someones hopes and fears, inviting them to share life together in community, helping them to experience themselves as beloved. That’s an organized religion people can relate to.
