The Gospel Network
by Stuart A. Wilson-Smith, CSP
October 8, 2013

Being a religious seminarian engaged in forms of new media like twitter and blogging (to the greatest degree possible given the demands of seminary formation) has allowed me to have interesting conversations about what it really means to preach the Gospel at all times. A few months ago I received a troubling note from a follower of my twitter account (@stueyws) who wanted to know why my tweets were not at minimum two-thirds quotations from Scripture or the saints. “What’s the point in being on twitter if you’re afraid to preach Christ!” wondered Mr. McGillicuddy (we are on happy terms now, so that is an approved pseudonym).

The truth is that I totally get that challenge, and I thank Mr. M. for it. The best place for me to begin a response then is with a mea culpa: I admit it, I do not as explicitly preach the Gospel using the new media as well as I could. Great room for improvement there. But the real hard work to me is (1) finding a balance wherein the Gospel message may be contextualized and made alive for people, and (2) being true to the fact that the Gospel is/has unfolded in a very particular way in my own life, and there is, I think, a great value to each of us Christians sharing publicly our lives in the Gospel – in Jesus Christ. Many have heard of the life and sayings of Jesus; fewer have been given tangible reasons to care. When the Gospel is seen as operative in the daily lives of the people we encounter, it is a powerful evangelizer.

Point number two means that new media presence for the evangelical Catholic is enriched not only by religious imagery and timeless theological concepts, but by the beautifully mundane, and the delightfully silly. This, at least, is what it is becoming more and more about for me as I consider what my own new media presence will look like when my formal formation as a priest and Paulist is complete. My life contains many of the typical markers of Catholicity – Scripture, kneeling, prayer, crucifixes and confessionals – but it is also marked by community life with my brother Paulists, travel, culture, ’90s Alternative Rock, and … laundry. It’s not like, “I have to pray and serve at mass and stuff; but then other times I do chores or have a little fun.” For me it’s all part of the same fabric, informed by life in the Gospel. For this reason, I do not shy from sharing/tweeting any or all of it.

I appreciate that I am in formation, and that certain expectations rightly flow from that, but the “I” who is in formation is a pretty regular guy whose regular life is made extraordinary by discipleship of Jesus Christ. So yes, the richness of the Catholic life and faith we share is vital to communicate, but much of that richness is most effectively communicated by the uniqueness of each Catholic life: lives marked by passions and pastimes, jobs and metro rides. I think these experiences are worthy things for each Catholic to share because they are, for us, experiences inevitably colored by the Gospel, and together our stories weave a vibrant Gospel network for the world to connect with.