Know the Faith: It’s all about LOVE
Excerpts from an interview on
Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story: Tools, Tips, and Testimonies
with William Hemsworth, creator of Know the Faith, Defend the Faith podcast on Breadbox Media.
https://breadboxmedia.com/sharing-your-catholic-faith-story-with-nancy-hc-ward/
“It was after a renewal of my Faith that I heard about evangelization. I did not know that the laity was called to evangelize. That wasn’t on my radar at all. I began to collect conversion stories and do research. I found out so much about evangelization.”
“I’m not a theologian, I don’t know a lot about how to defend the Faith with the scriptures but what struck me in my research was that Pope John Paul II said the most effective way to evangelize is through our witness. I thought, ‘Maybe I can do that. I have inside me my personal story to share what no one else has.’
“We’ve all got that. We can learn ways to evangelize with the story we have with us all the time. That’s what released me from feeling I didn’t have anything to offer. It was quite a journey from a shy teenager to an evangelist that equips people to evangelize.”
“For me, evangelization becomes all about LOVE. About how God loves us. And our response to him. When we respond to God’s love and love his people, then we forget about ourselves. It’s not about us and what people think of us, it’s about loving God so much that we want to bring people closer to him.
“That’s what the renewal did for me. It helped me know that God’s love is real. I want to do what I can to do what he has for me to live my Faith. If I say. ‘I don’t want that part of Catholicism; that’s not for me,’ then I’m missing out on something he wants to give me.”
“I learned that our story of what God does in our life is personal, but not private. It’s meant to help others.”
William Hemsworth is a former ordained Baptist and Lutheran who converted to Catholicism while attending seminary. He is a husband and father of four who is passionate about passing the faith on, and assists in teaching adults and children at his parish in Tucson, AZ. For every person that enters the Church, there are six who leave, and William feels his calling is to help change that by teaching what the church teaches on any given issue. This is done through his own understanding, and by the help of authors and theologians that he interviews on Know the Faith, Defend the Faith on Breadbox Media.
