By Belza Elia Ramos

In this 2013 Year of Faith and following Pope Benedict’s call to a New Evangelization in the Catholic Church, a group of parishioners at St. Brigid Catholic Community San Antonio, Texas, USA is in the process of starting a School of Evangelization using the St. Andrew Pastoral Project model.  These parishioners have participated in two of the courses of the St. Andrew School of Evangelization — New Life and Emmaus — that have been offered once a year at St. Brigid for the past four or five years.  While there may be other models to choose from, we chose St. Andrew because there is a local National Office here in San Antonio, Texas, USA that will provide assistance, resources and easy access to training.  St. Brigid has a Core Team that coordinates and presents these courses.  This team is now coordinating the formation of the school. Members of Small Christian Communities (SCCs) are involved.

Our goal in establishing a School of Evangelization at St. Brigid is to form an evangelized church who evangelizes with great power, with the strength of the Gospel and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  This entails training interested parishioners to become evangelized by learning the fundamental of Christian Life.  They in turn become evangelizers.    Finally the parish must establish evangelizing teams for continued evangelization of the whole parish.  

After the initial organizational phase, the school consists of offering 21 courses which are divided into three stages:  “The Fundamentals of Christian Life” (7 Courses), “How to Evangelize” (7 courses) and “How to Form Evangelizers” (7 Courses).  The school utilizes well researched and effective methodology and pedagogical principles to provide participants an opportunity to experience a personal encounter with the person of Jesus Christ. Only then can we learn to be evangelizers.

Mrs. Belza Elia Ramos, Interim Project Coordinator
St. Brigid Parish
San Antonio, Texas, USA
Cell: 210- 415-1540
beram_4027@att.net