Make It Real
A Practical Resource for Teen-Friendly Evangelization
Overview
Every Catholic teen will be evangelized in the coming year. That is a fact. The question is this: Who will evangelize our teens, and to what will they be converted?
Ironically, most "evangelization" is being done not by the Church but by contemporary American culture. Various voices are vying for the attention and allegiance of our youth. Many of those voices, often electronically piped into our unsuspecting households, proclaim relevantly, creatively, and persuasively a message contrary to our Catholic faith.
Yet the Church possesses a message that addresses the most significant hunger of every teen's heart. We have exactly what young people are searching for. We struggle, however, in constructing an environment that teens find attractive, and we often fail to proclaim the Gospel in a creative and culturally relevant manner.
Make It Real: A Practical Resource for Teen-Friendly Evangelization is all about building evangelistic ministry that not only is worth teens' time but also addresses the issues that are real in their lives. This book provides fresh, clear, and test-driven principles for building an effective and teen-friendly ministry for evangelistic outreach. The fully designed sessions help the busy youth worker implement dynamic and spiritually powerful evangelistic gatherings.
Product Details
Copyright: Oct. 21, 2004
Format: Paperback
Size: 8.5 x 11
Length: 184 pages
Item number: 3306
ISBN: 978-0-88489-817-7
ISBN-10: 0-88489-817-2
Editorial Reviews
YouthWorker Journal, May/June 2005
A thorough exploration of the weekly evangelistic youth meeting, the book is a solid tool for a new youth leader or for the veteran looking for a more systematic model. A recurring theme is the reality that a youth event must be worth students' time, otherwise they won't make room for it in their schedules. Towards that end, Mercadante lays out an effective model, providing instruction and the means for implementation, along with six complete lessons with games, talks, and dramas.
Midwest Book Review, December 2004
The executive director of Cultivation Ministries, a non-profit corporation that supports adult and teen leaders among Catholic youth ministries, presents Make It Real: A Practical Resource for Teen-Friendly Evangelization, a straightforward guide for Catholic evangelists seeking to compete for teenager's attention against the tidal wave of popular culture. Chapters cover how to grow an outreach program, building a foundation that can endure the turbulence of teenage needs and life, and walk the reader through how to set up sample sessions to get across the Catholic message. Such sessions include teaching young people about God's plan for sexuality, raising teenager's self-worth by letting them know of God's love for them, understanding who God really is, and more. A superb, hands-on practical resource filled with ideas and test-driven principles for creating a teen-friendly ministry.
Review by John Taylor
