Welcome to the Jeff Kaven show where we talk about the Bible, discipleship and evangelization putting it all together and living as activated disciples.

This is show 290, is there a laity shortage?

And thanks again for joining me. I'm Jeff Kavens and I am so glad that you chose to be with me this week and hopefully every week where we talk about things related to being a witness for Jesus, being a disciple, Bible study, learning how to share the good news of the Lord all around the world.

Or as I like to say, sharing Christ anywhere to anybody any day, any time. And I really do believe that we need to be equipped to do exactly that.

Well, today I'm going to talk about something that you really don't hear much about, to be honest, and that is a certain kind of shortage in the church.

When I say that, if I were to ask you the question, what kind of shortage do we have in the church today? Most people would say, well, there's a priest shortage.

And that's really what people talk about. There is a priest shortage and they're talking about consolidating parishes, closing parishes, one pastor receiving five churches in the country and on and on. There's a lot of discussion about it.

But I'd like to turn that slightly today. And I'd like to ask you a question. And that is, is it possible that there is a laity shortage, a laity shortage.

Now right away, people might say, well, Jeff, I've been to church every week, you know, for the last 25 years and the place is at least three quarters full.

I don't think we have a laity shortage, but I'm not talking about people simply attending church.

What I'm talking about is effectiveness and Catholics doing what God has called them to do and walking in their baptismal promises and in the power of the Holy Spirit that they received at confirmation.

So I truly believe our needs, our voice needs to be heard, not only at the parish level, but in every walk of life throughout the world, doctors, engineers and teachers and butchers and civil engineers and funeral homes that can go on and on our voice, the voice of the kingdom needs to be heard.

And I would argue that there is a laity shortage. And what I'd like to do today is I'd like to introduce you to a little bit of John Paul II, the great, the saint.

And I was going through my library and I have an entire section on John Paul II and I have all of his encyclicals, all of his, you know, pastoral letters and so forth, everything.

And I've got to tell you all the people are talking about these days for me to go back and read John Paul II is a real treat.

And in fact, I'm going to do a show coming up here on some of the writings of John Paul II and I was reading one of his post synod apostolic excertation on the lay members of Christ faithful people.

Christopher Delus Leici is the name of this writing Christopher Delus Leici and I was reading that over again and a lot of my writings of John Paul II are well marked up with notes in the margin.

And I only got to paragraph 17 as I was reading in the last few days, taking notes and so forth. And I thought, man, I've got, I've got a message here that I want to share with you about a possible laity shortage.

By the way, if you do want the notes from the show today and all shows coming up in the future, all you have to do is send my name, Jeff Kavins, one word, Jeff Kavins, and you just text my name to the number 337773377

and we'll get you on the mailing list.

So let's look at this just for a second does just kind of illustrate what I'm talking about with a laity shortage and then I want to share with you some really good stuff from Christopher Delus Leici and that is the lay lay members of Christ faithful people.

I'm looking at it right now. It's about three quarters of an inch thick. That's a pretty good piece of writing of John Paul II on this one topic of your involvement in the church, the place of the laity in the kingdom of God.

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