Vision 2020: To see clearly, listen up!

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Anne Marie Amacher
Mike Patin speaks to Vision 20/20 participants at St. Ambrose University in Davenport on June 6.

By Lindsay Steele
The Catholic Messenger

If you missed any of the Vision 20/20 Convocation sessions, or just want to hear them again, you’re in luck! The Diocese of Davenport has podcasts of all of the general sessions and most of the breakout sessions from the June 6-8 convocation available online.

Among the podcasts is Mike Patin’s “LensCrafters Wanted,” the first of three general session talks at the convocation. Patin, a motivational speaker and author from Louisiana, has spoken in more than 130 dioceses in North America. He encouraged convocation attendees to examine their vision in light of “The Joy of the Gospel” and through the “bifocal” lens of missionary discipleship.

“Sometimes when you and I go through the bumps and grinds of real life and real faith in a real church, we can lose our taste, we can lose our memory, and we can lose our sight,” he said. “I believe that this convocation … might be a moment for us to reclaim our taste, our memory and our sight.”

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In the presentation, Patin shared some facts about Americans and how they feel about the Catholic Church. While the church is “bruised and battered,” Catholics don’t have to be discouraged, he said. Each person has the ability to reach out and grow the church through their words and actions.

To emphasize this point, he quoted Saint John XXIII: “Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourselves not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.”

Patin offered examples and exercises throughout his presentation to help participants do just that.

You can hear this presentation, and others, at https://diocese-of-davenport.simplecast.com. Topics include: sharing faith stories; reaching out to families; evangelizing the churched; evangelizing youths and young adults; sexuality and sexual identity; reaching out to the nones; evangelizing in an age of secularism, atheism and scientism; hospitality; immigrant voices; accompaniment; evangelizing in smaller parishes; and evangelizing to married couples. Video recordings can be found at https://
tinyurl.com/y5xjtocw.


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