By John Hickey, Evangelization and Mission Leader

My name is John Hickey, and I’m serving as the Evangelization and Mission Leader for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon. I also serve as the Chairperson for the Evangelization Commission for the Saskatoon diocese.

I grew up in Saskatoon, and I am proud to raise my family here. I’m married to Heather, and we have four children, Abby (13), Zachary (10), Matthew (8), and Charlotte (6). Currently, I’m working in evangelization through a movement called Catholic Christian Outreach (CCO) at the University of Saskatchewan, and have been for the past 15 years.

Through my involvement with the diocesan Evangelization Commission, one of our tasks is to evaluate and discern ways in which to implement the Diocesan Pastoral Plan – “To Proclaim Christ and God’s Kingdom Today.” As we examine the plan’s goals and objectives, we discover a real opportunity to engage the people of the diocese to be active in their missionary call, which has been conferred in their baptism.

One of my main objectives as Evangelization and Mission Leader is to promote and assist parishes, individuals and small groups in using platforms of outreach, such as the Alpha program or the CCO Discovery faith study. These platforms are tools that can assist us in sharing our faith in a clear and simple way, particularly with those who are either disengaged or on the peripheries of the Church.

Pope Francis continually invites us to reach out to the peripheries of the Church – that is the people in our life who are far from Christ and His Church. The periphery is all around us. It includes the people who we work with, the people we sit beside during our kids’ hockey practice, and the neighbours we live beside. The periphery is proximate, and we can ask Jesus, to point us to who we are called to build a foundation of trust in order to intentionally accompany others to Jesus.

This past November, the diocese hosted a conference called Transform, where we encouraged participants to consider their personal call to mission, and to ask the Lord who they might be called to share their faith. I’ve since been coaching a number of individuals and couples, as well as some parish communities to reach out to the approximate periphery in their life, through leading a Discovery study. Despite the fact that the majority of these faith studies have taken place over Zoom, I’ve been encouraged to hear stories of lives changed through these studies.

I want to encourage anyone reading this to consider whether there are people in your approximate periphery, that you might be called to share your faith with. If you would like to someone to discern and discuss how to reach out to them and share the gospel in a clear and simple way, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

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Contact Evangelization and Mission Leader John Hickey at jhickey@rcdos.ca or (306) 659-5847.