V. Conclusion

In the past year, I have spent many hours rocking my newborn daughter to sleep to the sounds of contemporary lullaby music. As I listened to the songs (over and over and over again), I was struck by their sense of hope, optimism, imagination, and what some may consider naïve faith. We may encourage our children to dream, but many of us lose that ability, particularly when it comes to imagining what the Church can do.

This is ironic, as our faith is built around stories of a God who uses grace to break through fear, doubt, and disbelief to make the "impossible" happen—typified in the Resurrection. If it were up to us mere humans, it would be impossible for us to change the world and bring about the Kingdom of God. Fortunately, that's God's work. All we're called to do is to cooperate and allow God to use us to make it happen.

Our call as Christians is not only to believe in Christ, but to follow him. Whether we use the term discipleship, evangelization, stewardship, or lay apostleship to refer to it, following Jesus involves how we live our everyday lives. Following Jesus is hard work that does not happen without a lot of learning, discussion, discernment, practice, and encouragement. This is where parishes should help, doing as much as they can to support their lay members in this work.

Changing the focus of a single parish may seem daunting to parish leaders, but it can be done. Transforming the world may seem impossible, but our faith teaches us that the Kingdom is already breaking through. Our call is to imagine how we fit in to that new vision of Good News.