This summer, CatholicMom.com is hosting an on-line book discussion group for Sherry Weddell’s Forming Intentional Disciples. Each session will focus on one chapter of the book, and yours truly is participating. Hit the link above to see all of the participants, and to find the discussion questions.

According to Weddell (based on her own experience and extensive research by others) there are five thresholds a person must cross towards intentional discipleship during the process of evangelization. The first is “Initial Trust”: before a person can even begin to learn about the faith, they need to cross the “bridge of trust”. There needs to be some positive association with the faith. It might be a person, but it might not: Weddell mentions one fellow whose bridge of trust was Linus’ reading from the gospel during the annual Peanuts Christmas Special.

This week I’m going to dive right into the discussion questions.

How was the bridge of trust built for you? That’s a difficult question. I was raised Catholic, and though in high school I tried to persuade myself that there was nothing in it, that wasn’t due to any real doubts: I simply found God’s existence to be inconvenient. That phase didn’t last long, and though a number of people were involved in bringing it to a close, it was really all down to God. You might say that I really did believe that He was the Lord of creation, even though I didn’t like it much. Even when I didn’t trust in Him, I at least trusted Him to be Him. Since that time, with some ups and downs, I’ve always had at least the ghost of an intention to be a disciple.

Who are the people who helped you to come as far as you have in your personal journey? I’m tempted to say, “all of them” and leave it at that. There have been so many over the years. I’ve written about my reversion to Catholicism in the past; that was in 2007, and a number of Catholic bloggers unwittingly played major roles in making the Church attractive, including Mark Shea, Amy Welborn, and most especially Julie Davis.

Have you ever been that link of trust for another person? I don’t know. I’m a lay-member of the Order of Preachers, and I was first convinced of the importance of evangelization over twenty-five years ago; still, I’ve no evidence that I’m any good at. I can think of one person for whom I might have been a link of trust; and there might be many others, only I don’t know about them. Some people plant seeds, and some people get to harvest, and my suspicion (and hope) is that I’m one of the former, because I certainly don’t seem to be one of the latter.