(OSV News) ─ Recent study results from the Barna Group ─ a leading marketing research firm focused on the intersection between faith and culture ─ confirm what the Gospels already tell us: Faith grows best in fellowship.
As Jesus Christ himself reminds his listeners in Matthew 18:20, "For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."
"Christians who experience relational discipleship ─ through mentors, small groups or spiritual friendships ─ are significantly more likely to remain resilient in their faith," Barna noted on Sept. 3. "In fact, these believers are more engaged in Scripture, more consistent in prayer and more active in their churches. The evidence is clear: Discipleship flourishes when believers walk together."
Barna found that an overwhelming number ─ 56% ─ of Christians engage their discipleship community in church. That said, 2 in 5 Christians are not involved in discipleship.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "Those who accepted Jesus' message to follow him are called disciples."
That applies to all Catholics ─ and, as the catechism adds, "The disciple of Christ must not only keep the faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it."
That's discipleship.
But what does it look like in a Catholic context?
"The whole concept of discipleship in many ways has been imported from the evangelical world -- the language and the idea," observed Sherry Weddell, co-founder and executive director of the Catherine of Siena Institute and author of "Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus," published by the Our Sunday Visitor publishing company (the parent company of OSV News).
"And it does, in fact, fit our theology. The last four or five popes talked about it in great detail," she continued. "But to form disciples, you need to be a disciple. And most of our people aren't yet there. So the need for this kind of formation ─ and the ability to provide it locally ─ becomes fairly rare."
So rare, in fact, Weddell said, that even after working with thousands of parishes around the world, "very, very few of them in our experience have anything along with the lines of intentional discipleship in a small group formation process."
Weddell reflected on the reasons behind this.
"Part of it is because we don't evangelize our own. We tend to presume that if they're present and active and attending Mass regularly, they are disciples in essence," she explained. "And that's where most of our energy goes -- it's liturgy, sacraments and sacramental prep at the parish level."
"So for adults, we give enrichment ─ if we're lucky and somebody's enthusiastic, one of the laypeople in the parish says, 'I'd love to run a little course on this or read this book together,'" she said. "But it's seldom systematic in any form."
Weddell is emphatic that authentic discipleship "is more than just culturally inherited faith. And it's more than just inherited institutional engagement. This has to do with your living relationship with the living God," she stressed. "And a lot of our people, for various reasons ... have grown up presuming that, functionally, God was a long way away."
That spiritual distance resulted in a distorted image of God for many, she said.
"They didn't feel God cared. God was mostly an enforcer. And the church was mostly something you were born into, and you inherited a series of rules: This is what you do; this is what you don't do, or something bad is going to happen," Weddell shared. "I've had many people say to me, 'You know, I was 60 years old before I realized it was a relationship with God, and not a bunch of rules.'"
Even as awareness among the faithful grows, challenges remain.
"The fact that actually a quite small percentage of the Catholic population are disciples makes it hard for us to formally provide a lot of formation for discipleship at the local level," Weddell noted. "But that's changing -- we're seeing that begin to change, as this language is no longer as unfamiliar as it once was."
Jason Kidd ─ national director of Alpha in a Catholic Context, which brings seekers together in churches, homes, cafes and online to hear talks and have honest faith conversations ─ also senses change.
"The church is experiencing some challenges, you might say. We are getting to a place ─ especially in the U.S. ─ where it's literally no longer possible to do it the way we've always done it," Kidd suggested. "We heard at Mass just a little while ago, John 15 and the vine, and how we need to be connected to the vine. But Jesus talks about pruning, and that's ─ I think if we're honest ─ that is happening in the Catholic Church."
In 2024, an estimated more than 2,200 Alpha courses were held across the U.S. in Catholic contexts, engaging approximately 73,400 participants ─ participants, Kidd said, who are looking for something that satisfies.
"They're asking these questions ─ and sadly, there's not a place in many Catholic churches for these people to go and have that conversation," he observed. "So they're going to TikTok; they're going to ChatGPT ─ that's where they're going."
Kidd posed many questions of his own ─ and offered an answer.
"How does the church engage those people, instead of just self-serving the people that are in our database? How does the church begin to realize the reality we're facing? How do we begin to make changes where we prioritize evangelization?" he asked. "We have to have that heart of the Good Shepherd that is willing to leave the 99 to go to the lost sheep -- because there's more rejoicing over one repentant sinner than there is for all the righteous. This is the shift that we're being called to."
Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, who led the three-year National Eucharistic Revival, emphasized the essential role of the Eucharist in discipleship.
"The Eucharist is a big part of that, because the Eucharist is the sacrament of Communion that makes us all one. As we discovered in the Eucharistic Revival, if people sometimes come to the church, maybe they discovered Jesus in the real presence in the Eucharist, and that draws them to the church. Other times -- in fact, more frequently -- they discover the church, and then through that they discover Jesus' presence," he said.
"The point is, you can't have one without the other. You don't have the church without the Eucharist, or the Eucharist without the church. And you can't have discipleship without the support of the community."
The National Eucharistic Revival produced a small group study of the Eucharist used by 11,000 parishes, Bishop Cozzens shared.
"One of the things we did emphasize in the Eucharistic Revival was small groups. We encouraged small group study of the Eucharist," he recalled. "This was because we understand that people grow in discipleship through friendship. And so creating small and intentional communities is really essential for people to grow in discipleship."
Marcel LeJeune, president and founder of Catholic Missionary Disciples, predicted the lay faithful will be the ones to move the church to a more active evangelization.
"I think the next generation of real growth in the Catholic Church is going to happen when the laity take up their baptismal call to go and be evangelists to the people that are around them," he said, "and they do so through relationships."
There's a necessity, LeJeune suggested, to just step up.
"The Catholic culture is not friendly to people who want to evangelize," he noted. "And so, we really have to get over ourselves and our own Catholic culture. ... We kind of have a 'don't ask don't tell' policy when it comes to spiritual matters. And that holds us back from sharing our faith in a natural, organic way that leads to evangelization that works."
It is, LeJeune suggested, a bit of a reclamation project.
"The teaching of the church is that the church exists to share the Gospel; to help people come to faith; to go to heaven. So as Catholics, we have to reclaim our identity as traditionary disciples; as evangelists," he said.
"And when we do that, guess what ends up happening? The world rejoices because they come to faith. They get salvation as a gift from Jesus Christ," LeJeune said. "So this is the thing ─ we have to kind of reorient ourselves away from our fears, and our wounds, and our problems, and our Catholic culture that holds us back ─ and start to orient ourselves towards that which leads to heaven and goodness and salvation."
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Kimberley Heatherington is an OSV News correspondent. She writes from Virginia.
