Catholics and the call to evangelize: An interview with Steve Dawson

We are all called to spread the Good News, the Gospel (the euangelion). We are called to evangelize. There are, of course, many schools of thought on the best approach to evangelization, and it’s safe to say that effective evangelization is not a one-size-fits-all matter. There has been an encouraging growth of organizations and apostolates in the past several decades taking up the call to evangelize in many different ways and in various contexts.

One such group is Saint Paul Street Evangelization (SPSE), founded by Steve Dawson in 2012. Focusing on spreading the faith through conversations on the street and at public events, Saint Paul Street Evangelization quickly grew into hundreds of affiliated groups around the country. In 2016 Ignatius Press published a book of stories from across the country, which showcased the profound impact SPSE has had on so many people. The book was titled Catholic Street Evangelization, and I spoke to Dawson about it when the book was released.

Ignatius Press recently released a new edition of the book, now called Catholic Evangelization: Stories of Conversion and Witness.

Dawson recently spoke with Catholic World Report about his book and its recent re-release, the work of Saint Paul Street Evangelization, and all Catholics’ call to evangelize.

Catholic World Report: How did the book initially come about?

Steve Dawson: Before founding Saint Paul Street Evangelization in 2012, I knew that I was called to evangelize but I didn’t know how to go about doing it. There was a lot of talk in the Church about evangelization but I personally didn’t see any tangible implementation by Catholics that I knew of. So I began thinking of ways to evangelize people in my daily life that I encountered whether it be friends or family or coworkers. It was extremely awkward for me but I did the best that I could and my efforts did bear some fruit.

It was around this time that I heard the story of Saint Maximilian Kolbe and his favorite method of evangelization, which was to pass out miraculous medals. I loved that idea, so I went ahead and bought a thousand miraculous medals and started passing them out to people that I met. This resulted in many amazing stories, some of which can be found in the book. Around this time, when I got serious about evangelization, I’d be out on walks with my wife and we’d encounter other faith groups doing public evangelization. First, we come across the Mormons, and then a block later the Jehovah’s Witnesses were out there, and then a few minutes later we’d see some Protestants doing evangelization. There was even a group of atheists “evangelizing” people out of faith in God.

I often asked my friends, “When was the last time you were out somewhere in public and you saw Catholics evangelizing? The answer was always the same regardless of who I posed the question to: never. And I realized that that was a problem. Throughout the history of the Church, in biblical times and afterward, public evangelization had been engaged in by Catholics throughout the ages. In the Old Testament, you have Jonah going through Nineveh, calling people to repentance and conversion. In the New Testament, John the Baptist is evangelizing in public in the wilderness. Jesus is constantly evangelizing in the public places. Think of the woman at the well or the Sermon on the Mount. Then Jesus sends the 72 disciples into the towns and squares and villages to evangelize.

Then of course in the Acts of the Apostles, there are all sorts of public displays of evangelization by the disciples: Peter and John in the temple, Paul in the Areopagus, etc. And then in post-biblical times, there have been public evangelists in every age. St Francis of Assisi, St Dominic, St Vincent Ferrer, the Jesuit missionary martyrs of North America, St Francis Xavier. And the list goes on and on.

So my wife and I decided one day to go out with some friends and pass out rosaries and miraculous medals and just see what happened. We didn’t know what to expect, but we had so many incredible encounters and saw so many conversions that we realized we needed to do something to bring this aspect of public evangelization back to the Church. And so we started sharing our experiences with people through social media and other avenues and within a year, our little group of evangelists turned into dozens of teams throughout the country.

We had a core group of evangelists in different parts of the country with amazing stories, many of them with powerful conversion stories of their own, and we thought that these stories of conversion would benefit the Church and inspire other Catholics to get involved in evangelization in various ways. So we wrote the book.

CWR: The book was initially titled Catholic Street Evangelization, but this reissue is under the name Catholic Evangelization. Why the change? Why the removal of “street”?

Dawson: The book is about so much more than street evangelization. First, it’s a story of conversion. My own personal conversion story and that of many of our evangelists.

Secondly, it shares our experiences of evangelization out on the streets, but these experiences of evangelization are useful for even those people who don’t feel called to do street evangelization. This is especially because most people’s conception of street evangelization is someone standing on a street corner with a bullhorn preaching the Bible at no one in particular as people pass by.

Our approach is much different. It focuses on one-on-one conversations with those people who wish to engage us in faith discussions. As such, we found that having street evangelization in the title caused people to misunderstand what the book was about and ultimately scared people away from reading it.

CWR: Why evangelize, anyway?

Dawson: Jesus calls all disciples to evangelize primarily for the salvation of souls. First, for the salvation of those who how far from God and who do not know him. And secondly, for the salvation of the individual evangelists. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that for the disciple of Christ, service of and witness to the faith is necessary for salvation (par 1816). That is, evangelization is necessary for one’s own salvation!

This is something that most Catholics don’t give much thought to but it can begin to make sense if one reflects on the principles at hand. First of all, in order to be saved, we must keep the Commandments to the best of our ability. And the two great Commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor. Love of neighbor means willing and working for their good, and the ultimate good of every human being is that they come to know God, come to love him, and are enabled to receive his love, and ultimately, that they are united to him both in this life and into eternity.

If a Catholic believes what the Church teaches about God and salvation, and yet they don’t share that knowledge with those who are in need of it, then it would be hard to say that they truly loved their neighbor.

Think of a scientist who discovers a cure for cancer but refuses to share it with those who are in desperate need of it.  Think of all the little children that he allowed to die that he could have saved. We instinctively know, that whatever this scientist might think of himself, he is truly not a good man.

Well, we have something infinitely greater than the cure for cancer. We don’t simply have the cure for some cause of natural death. We have the cure to eternal death, and the keys to eternity with God in heaven. This is why evangelization is necessary for salvation.

CWR: Is there an advantage to face-to-face evangelization, rather than other methods?

Dawson: Absolutely. Evangelizing someone face-to-face has many advantages over many other forms of evangelization.

First of all, there’s so much noise in our culture, and conflicting information, that the message of the Gospel can be distorted or drowned out. Also, in face-to-face evangelization you can gain trust and you can also speak directly into the situation that a person finds themself in.

Finally, believe it or not, there are many people out there who have never heard the gospel. Many people have never had a one-on-one conversation about Jesus. This might be because the people in their lives are not religious, they watch mostly secular television or other types of media, and they’re simply not introduced to religious topics. Our presence out there gives people a chance hear the truth about God and his saving gospel who would have never heard it if we had not been available.

CWR: Have your own methods (or the methods that Saint Paul Street Evangelization recommends) developed and changed over the years? In other words, have you learned much about how to evangelize?

Dawson: Sure, and we continue to learn to this day. When we first started, I just set up a picnic blanket and sat on it and had some pamphlets and some rosaries. I just allowed people to walk by and if they stopped I would offer them a rosary and try to engage them in conversation. Oftentimes, early on, I will try to engage in apologetic arguments or debates. We’ve learned that most people aren’t at the stage where they’re ready to hear proofs for the existence of God or Jesus’s resurrection or the inerrancy of the Bible or the biblical foundations of the Catholic Church.

We’ve learned you got to get to know people and get to know where they’re at before you can speak into their situation. We’ve also learned that personal testimony—our own personal experiences with God and how he’s changed our lives—are often much more powerful than debating the truth of God or the Faith with people.

CWR: A lot of people are intimidated by the idea of street evangelization. Does Saint Paul Street Evangelization have ways of helping people overcome that hesitation?

Dawson: Our mission is to train equip and mobilize Catholics to do evangelization, so we founded an online school of evangelization that helps people learn how to evangelize in the ordinary circumstances in their life, and also in public places like our street evangelization teams do. Just going through these trainings helps people to realize that evangelization isn’t as scary as they thought it might be; it gives them courage to step out and just try it. It’s also helpful to just go out with a team and observe. Most of the time when someone goes and observes they’re talking with someone before they know it.

CWR: Is street evangelization for everybody?

Dawson: It depends on what you mean by street evangelization, and I also think it depends on what you mean by everybody. We consider street evangelization any form of evangelization that occurs with someone that the evangelist is never met before, usually in a public place. It could be in a grocery store, on a street corner, at the gas station or the local mall. If a person just hands a Miraculous Medal to someone and ask them if they needed prayer for something, that’s street evangelization. I think most disciples of Jesus are called to evangelize those in their daily lives, both people that they know as well as people that they’ve never met before.

That being said, formal street evangelization on one of our teams isn’t for everybody. I have five children under 11, the youngest being nine months old. Right now my wife’s state of life she just doesn’t have time to do street evangelization on a team. But, she is still called to be an evangelist in whatever way she can.

A cloistered nun clearly isn’t called to be street evangelist. But she still called to help her fellow religious growing holiness. So, for those of us living in the world, we should all be on the lookout for ways to evangelize those that we encounter, as stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Lay people also fulfill their prophetic mission by evangelization, “that is, the proclamation of Christ by word and the testimony of life.” For lay people, “this evangelization . . . acquires a specific property and peculiar efficacy because it is accomplished in the ordinary circumstances of the world.” This witness of life, however, is not the sole element in the apostolate; the true apostle is on the lookout for occasions of announcing Christ by word, either to unbelievers . . . or to the faithful. (CCC 905)

CWR: What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

Dawson: We already know that the book has inspired many Catholics to take their responsibility of evangelization more seriously and has given them the motivation to actually begin or step up their evangelization efforts. My hope is that this will continue to inspire Catholics to respond to the call of Jesus to preach the gospel to all nations for the salvation of souls and restoration of the Church and our culture.

CWR: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Dawson: To join a team, or our online school, or just to learn more, you can visit us at Streetevangelization.com.

Catholic World Report