Becoming a Missionary Disciple

When I first met Ablaze, I was already a disciple: I was living my life in an intentional way, listening to and talking to the Lord, in order to know Him better as a friend and discern His will for my life. When I heard about the Intentional Discipleship Series,  I prayed about whether I should participate, given my busy schedule, and I heard the Lord telling me I should attend it. 

My hope going into the series was to grow in my ability to be an evangelizing force. I have a pretty prominent role as a Catholic administrator here in town, but I also wanted to be ready to evangelize in other aspects of my daily life. I wanted to be able to share my story in such a way that people could see God through it, and then see how He can work in their lives just as He has worked in mine; and how He can bless their lives just as He has blessed mine in so many subtle and not so subtle ways. 

I thought: Now that I have a friendship with God, how can I help others grow in their relationship with Him as well? I wanted to transition into being an apostle. But I had no tools for what evangelization would actually look like in the real world, or how to best convey my story, and the story of salvation. 

Participating in the series, it was almost like I was going to teaching school again and I was in my first year of classes, learning how to share a message effectively and how to boil it down into a concise message if you're just meeting someone off the street. Those are really practical tools – great training for the evangelizing and apostolic work we may be called to do after the series is complete.  I also really appreciated that we learned how to recognize where people are at by assessing stages in their faith journey, so we can begin to build a relationship of trust with them wherever they are and begin to lead them to the Lord. 

Apart from didactics, IDS was first and foremost a great communal experience. Through sharing our testimonies with one another, we got to understand one another at a deeper level: where we come from, who we are, how God has worked in our life, struggles we're facing, God's grace in our lives, and how we hope to move forward in our faith journey. It's always crucial to have that community, fellowship, and mentorship.

At its conclusion, I left the series looking forward to continuing to journey with the Ablaze community, to finding more mentors, and to stepping into an apostolic role.  I’ve started praying differently: asking God to put me in the position to share my story and be an evangelizing force. I also began to  approach sharing with others differently, having learned through participation in the series that the vulnerability of sharing one's story leads one to make genuine, intentional, trust-filled relationships with others and from there God begins to take the wheel for both the storyteller’s story and the person who is listening to the story as well.

I’m excited to see what the future will bring.