(57) Promoting the 2014 Men's Conference: Ideas to Consider

AMDG

            Crucial to the success of our Men's Conference at St. Mary’s Church in St. Clairsville on Saturday March 22, 2014 from 9 am to 3 pm is the Parish Representative.   The theme is “Get Connected: Let Christ be Your Light.” with St. Joseph, model of a true man of God, as its patron.  The main speaker, is the well known Dr. Ray Gaurendi, who hosts his own national radio and television show on EWTN”.   He is also the author of numerous books on his specialty, families.  Dynamic and very entertaining, he will talk on the topic: “Becoming better connected with your wife and kids with Christ as a beacon of light for the family to follow now and in the future” especially as spiritual leaders of their families.  If we can mobilize an average of 10 men from every parish in the diocese, this event would be a smashing success!  This is a hard sell for many men, but the Lord will help us.
  
           This is evangelization at its best as we complete our God given mission in little ways in fulfilling Christ's command to teach all nations.  The priests and religious cannot do it alone; we must help them and do our part, especially considering the scarcity of vocations.  Evangelization today is more important than ever before, considering the crisis that Christianity is in all over the world.......drifting and fallen away Catholics, broken families, laxity in practice, poor knowledge of the faith, the international spiritual/cultural war with secularism, and the multitude of evils that our society must confront.  Our country desperately needs a revival.  Why not start in your parish with the Diocesan Men's Conference and be on the front line as the Lord's instrument?  Don't just keep the faith; spread it.......in little or big ways by prayer and example, word and deed.

            You might want to consider the promotion ideas below and then adapt them to your own personality and parish culture.

• Word of Mouth is the most effective form of advertising.  This is especially true in parishes since many go over the bulletin quickly with little thought or simply put it aside and don't read it at all.  You could get others in the parish to help through an informal committee or simply enlist the help of friends.  You may want to canvas every man one-on-one in the parish with a little sales pitch and record their answer as:  yes, no, or maybe.  I'm getting mostly maybe's but that gives me an appropriate excuse to ask them again.  Of course, be careful not to badger them, which I sometimes do without realizing it.  Ask the local K of C to help & mobilize their men to attend.
   
• Ask the Men to bring their teenage sons, thus making it a father and son day as well for stronger bonding. 
   

• Inform the men of the objectives and what they can gain from the Men's Day of Renewal.  The goal of the Men's Day of Renewal is to focus on the spiritual development of the men of our diocese. Having spiritually strong men of faith and character translates into more solid families, more dynamic parishes, and better communities. These are crucial to the Church, now and in the future, not to mention the critical need of nurturing vocations.  Hopefully, the men will become closer to God, learn more about their faith with a deeper understanding and thus become stronger Catholics.  Life will then become happier and more meaningful with purpose.  It will be a day of enjoyable fellowship and spiritual invigoration.
   

• Challenge the Men without rubbing them the wrong way.  The Lord's kingdom on earth direly needs a few good spiritually strong men and too many of us are failing in our special missions.  Too many of us are spiritual wimps and this conference attempts to attack that problem.  We have to be the pillars of the parish, not only the older women.  We as fathers must take the spiritual lead in our families, in that way insuring that our children will be faithful in their adult years.  If only the mother takes the spiritual lead, the probability of faithfulness in later life is about 40%.  If the father takes the spiritual lead, that probability increases to about 80%.  This conference will help to prepare us to fill that role more effectively by becoming better husbands and fathers.  Hopefully, many men will leave the conference on fire to renew their families and parishes.  As a natural consequence they will be better prepared to put Christ into their professions and renew society in a small way one person at a time.
   

• Ask the pastor to announce the conference from the pulpit & for weekly blurbs in the Church bulletin. These of course are important, but it's the conventional way.  We need creative methods of promoting this important event.
   
• Creatively use your parish bulletin according to the wishes of your pastor with a short catchy blurb every week during the six to eight weeks before the event.  I have a collection of short blurbs that you can use as is or as a starting point and adapt to your parish culture and situation.  If interested, please write me at paulrsebastian@yahoo.com or call me at 740-245-9404 if you have any questions.  I'll be happy to send these blurbs to you by e-mail or snail mail.
  
  

• Make copies of our trifold brochure that describes the Men's Conference and includes the registration form.  Use it as a bulletin insert and put it on the parish website.  Then the men can personally give you the registration form without your having to go after them.  You can also adapt it.  One year Fr. Wayne Morris of Corpus Christi, Belle Valley and St. Stephen's of Caldwell, for example, creatively adapted the official diocesan trifold to the needs of his parish without losing any essential information and thus made it into his own parish publication in color.
     
•  Register the men personally and submit the forms and money to the diocese all at once.  In that way you have better control and know who is going and who isn't.  That makes follow-up and organizing car pools much easier. Most men won't want to bother with sending the form and check to the diocese and many would put it off.  Waiting to register at the door makes steering committee planning more difficult.  If they pay in advance, it will be much more difficult to back out with last minute inertia.
  
  

• Help those who cannot afford the $25 registration.  Ask the pastor, the local Knights of Columbus council, parish women's group, or other donors to provide some funding for unemployed men and college students who may have financial problems.  Economic circumstance should not prevent any man from attending.
   

• Use a bus or organize car pools, preferably vans to reduce fuel costs.  Even better if the distance is great; that gives a pilgrimage atmosphere!   The great benefit of this is fellowship which is another selling point, especially if the distance and travel time is great.  Distance gives a pilgrimage flavor and sacrifice is what Lent is all about.  In the Middle Ages, people used to walk great distances to holy sites.  The men can have a great time while having a spiritually invigorating spiritual experience.  The enthusiasm generated by the conference can be contagious.  This can result in greater friendships and a more cohesive parish community. The local chapter of the Knights of Columbus could also benefit through one-on-one opportunities to recruit new members.  The fellowship among their members at the conference could strengthen their councils.
   

• Ask for the pastor's help and bring him along.  We'll need confessors.  His example is a big help!  It will be a great opportunity for him to know his men better and become closer to them as cohesion of the parish family grows.
   

• Ask the pastor to allow you or another person to talk about the conference at the end of the weekend Masses.  A peer, whom the men respect, especially if he attended before, can be more effective than the pastor whom people hear promoting something all the time.  Then inform them that the registration form is on the poster in the back of the church. 
   
• Enlist the help of those who attended a previous Diocesan Men's Conference.  They can relate the experience by word of mouth, to their local Knights of Columbus council, other men's groups, or perhaps with the pastor's approval speak at the end of Sunday Mass  as to how much they got out of it, how much they enjoyed it.  Personal testimony makes our promotion much more authentic. Donations to help underwrite the conference are most appreciated.
   

• Utilize the Power of the Woman.  Perhaps discretely ask the women of the parish through their parish group to lovingly encourage (not nag) their men to attend......husbands, sons, fathers, relatives, friends.  What woman would not like to have her men be true men of God who would transform their families, the parish, and ultimately society?
  
  

• Ask for prayers to God and to St. Joseph for the success of the men’s conference, arguably the best model in history of a true man of God for his intercession.  We cannot succeed by ourselves with our efforts alone.  
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  St. Joseph, model of a true man of God, pray for us and the success of the Diocesan Men's Day of Renewal.