Before he ascended to heaven, Jesus commanded the apostles to make disciples of all nations. But 2,000 years later, when Sherry Weddell started working in evangelization, she made a shocking discovery: Hardly any Catholics she met even knew what it meant to be a disciple.
This was not simply a question of semantics — it was the defining crisis facing the Catholic Church in the West, as Weddell, a convert to the Catholic faith who grew up as an evangelical Protestant, argued in her influential 2012 book, Forming Intentional Disciples.
Weddell’s discovery would inspire her work in Catholic evangelization and become the central thesis of her book, namely: The majority of Catholics she encountered while leading workshops with parish leaders were well-meaning, faithful Massgoers, but they could not be called disciples.
To Weddell, being a disciple, first and foremost, requires a personal relationship with God. Even many of the most dedicated parish leaders, she found, had never developed such a relationship or known that it was even possible.
Without that lived experience with God, Weddell argued, a person cannot become a disciple and make an intentional, conscious decision to surrender to Jesus and allow that commitment to shape every aspect
