Evening of Evangelization: the Church is Apostolic

On Friday, July 3, our local team of missionary youth, Ugandan lay missionary Dennis Kiyimba and I attempted our first monthly Evening of Evangelization since the visiting team left three weeks ago and exactly a month since the Week of Evangelization in Torit at the beginning of June. We decided to continue with the overall theme of “Why Be Catholic?,” and chose the specific topic: the Church is Apostolic, because earlier in the week on Monday we celebrated the patronal feast of the diocese: the Apostles Peter and Paul, and Friday, July 3, is the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle.


We had no musician and so had to sing accompanied by recorded background music. It worked out better than I expected, although it was also clear that we needed more practice to correspond to the recorded arrangements. Dennis directed the youth team in a skit in which a man invites Jesus into his new car, but then as he welcomes others into the vehicle Jesus gets pushed further and further back and finally out of the car; then the car crashes and Jesus picks everyone up. The crowd got the point right away.




I followed with a prayer and a brief message about the apostolicity of the Church, apostolic authority and apostolic succession. That led into an introduction to the film for the evening: A Man for All Seasons, which relates the martyrdom of St. Thomas More for the sake of the apostolic authenticity of the Church. The film was a little difficult to follow for those who don’t speak English well, but again the central point was clear.


All in all the evening went very well. Several hundred people turned out with not a whole lot of advance publicity, and we learned a few things to incorporate into our future efforts.