“The Church exists to evangelize.” One hundred and fifty college students from all over the state heard this message at the Catholic Campus Ministry State Convention at the LaQuinta Inn in Little Rock Feb. 26-27.
Marcel LeJeune, assistant director of campus ministry at St. Mary Catholic Center at Texas A&M, gave students the tools needed to evangelize. He said in order for the Church to continue, Catholics must evangelize. He told the students it was done in two ways. One was to live the faith out and the other was to speak it out.
He told the students in order to live it out is to be the best versions of themselves. To realize, God’s plan is so much better than whatever they could have planned and to let him have control.
“We are made to image God,” LeJeune said.
LeJeune has been working in campus ministry for 10 years. Before working with students from Texas A&M, he was director of campus ministry at St. Elizabeth University Parish in Lubbock, Texas, from 2002 to 2006. He has a master’s degree in theological studies from Ave Maria University.
The husband and father of five also said they must gift themselves to others. For example, LeJeune set a 30-day challenge for himself to love his wife better. He started by simply doing the dishes, a chore he had hated all of his childhood and in part of his marriage. Throughout this 30-day challenge, he also began giving his kids their baths and taking out the trash. By the end of the challenge he began to love doing the dishes and from this learned to love his wife better, to gift himself to his wife.
In order to speak it out, LeJeune encouraged students to realize that it’s not about gun-slinging Bible verses. It’s about creating a dialogue between people. He said evangelizing is not about them; it was about the Holy Spirit doing the work. He told them just because they have been baptized in the Catholic faith and have the name does not mean that their work is over.
He also told the students they are commanded to evangelize.
“Evangelization is not a choice, it’s an obligation. It doesn’t always have to be as extreme as going door to door or shouting at people on college campuses. It can be as simple as inviting someone to go to church with you,” Ashley Gammill, student at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said.
LeJeune told them that success is about being faithful and not about winning or arguing.
Lizzie Spain, a student at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, said, “Marcel really reminded me … it’s best to get to know where they are coming from and present your view and values in a polite and kind manner. Chances are that yelling at someone or trying to ‘one-up’ them in the faith just shuts them down even more to your views.”
He wanted students to have the courage to get out of the boat, just like Peter did in Matthew 14.
“I challenge the students to go and make disciples,” he said.
He challenged students to overcome the excuses for not getting out of the boat. As part of this challenge, he gave five excuses for not getting out of boat: “Who am I?” “What do I say?” “What if they don’t like what I say?” “How do I speak to them?” and “I don’t want to.”
With those excuses, LeJeune gave reasons for getting out of the boat. He told them, “We are not alone. We are all one. We have each other. We are called to greatness. We just have to get out of the boat,” he said.
By getting out of the boat, “Faith is exercised, faith is examined, faith is enhanced. We find the fear, go to Jesus and we overcome the fear,” he said.
At the end of the weekend, he said “I love my job. I enjoy being able to watch the students grow in the faith, take hold of it as adults and make it their own.”
