How are we going to build up the Church of the Third Millennium? Everyone who is in any position to help take on the challenge of evangelization in the modern world should pay heed to the call to update our methods of evangelization by taking advantage of our modern technology.
It's time, indeed it's overdue, for the Church (that's all of us) to use the technology God has blessed us with in this exciting new millennium we are entering. For example, parishes should finally catch up and use the desktop publishing programs that have already been inexpensively available. With a little reading on layout and design, staff or volunteers can create professional quality flyers that more effectively attract people to important events. The same computers that handle this could produce newsletters that catch parishioners' attention so that they actually take the time to read them. Pamphlets could also be designed as bite-size teaching tools on topics of particular interest to that parish. Desktop publishing is a cost-saving tool that can produce materials that are taken far more seriously by those we're trying to reach.
On the diocesan level, each Office of Evangelization should have a Media Resource Director whose responsibilities include providing training on how to use computer technology for evangelization. The Media Resource Office could also offer its own products created with desktop publishing, such as pamphlets and professional quality flyers for both diocesan and parish programs. It could also be a library of video and audio tapes, and a clearing house where parishes could find good speakers and music ministries that evangelize with lively presentations that remain true to Church teachings.
And finally, this Media Resource Director could train speakers, catechists, and parish leaders on how to get people excited about the value of already existing diocesan radio and TV programs, Catholic videos, Christian music tapes, Catholic Web sites, and other spiritual resources available through modern technology.
In every parish, there are people with skills in writing, computers, video-taping, speaking, music, advertising, public relations and other fields that, when added to parish and diocesan programs, could help accomplish this job of evangelizing in the modern world. Let's get to it!
