Reaching the Lost

Missionary Core leaders Keelan Doherty and Jasmine Nguyen with Br. Joseph McBride, campus minister at Northeastern University in Boston, during a weekend retreat that Keelan and Jasmine helped organize and run for 78 students.

At some point in our lives, most of us have experienced a sense of helplessness at being lost. Maybe this happened as you stared at the subway system map in an unfamiliar city. Perhaps it was when you were trying to keep up with a teacher while learning a new subject. Or maybe it occurred when you were a child and became separated from your parents in a store.

Recall the great sense of relief you felt when someone said, “May I help you?”

What about students on secular college campuses who are lost in their search for love, and for the only One who can bring true meaning and joy to their lives, Jesus Christ?

Who is reaching out to offer them help?

THE START OF MISSIONARY CORE

About a decade ago, we started Missionary Core at Florida State University (FSU) as a small group program with the goal of helping college students develop a deeper formation of their interior faith life as well as the skills and confidence to evangelize other students on campus. Over the years, Missionary Core has become the inspiration to many important pastoral approaches in our overall campus ministry outreach, such as our men’s and women’s groups.

“We cultivated Missionary Core from an earlier program at FSU to incorporate the dynamic of reaching the lost,” said Br. Clinton Reed, who helped develop Missionary Core at FSU. “At its heart, Missionary Core is a formation program where we train and equip a core group of students to reach their peers through relational evangelization to help them encounter the Lord.”

Missionary Core builds upon the commitment of a small group of students who meet weekly to receive training on the four pillars of a missionary spirituality:

• Striving for holiness teaches students that in a world beset by so many problems, the missionary who proclaims the “Good News” must first be a person who has found true hope in Christ and strives to pursue Him daily.
• Seeking union with the Master Evangelist empowers students to understand and carry out their mission by joining with Christ as the One who has sent them to evangelize.
• Having new zeal for souls inspires the missionary through Christ’s own charity, which takes the form of concern, tenderness, compassion, openness, availability and interest in people’s problems.
• Being led by the Holy Spirit commits students to being molded from within by the Spirit, so that they may become ever more like Christ.

PEER-TO-PEER EVANGELIZATION WORKS!

Bibiana Nuñez was an incoming freshman at FSU in 2015. As she prepared to start her freshman year, she felt lost and began asking herself if there was more to her faith than showing up to Sunday Mass…whether there was real depth and happiness to be found. For Bibiana and many other incoming students at the five colleges where we have campus outreaches, the offer to help them find their way is available to them from their very first week on campus.

“I went to the Catholic Student Union as soon as I got to campus my freshman year,” Bibiana recalls. “What seemed like out of nowhere, a girl named Erika Richard (who was in Missionary Core) took me under her wing as friend and older sister. She invested her time with me and taught me for the first time in my life how to have a Christ-centered relationship. I learned how to have a deep friendship with Erika, and she showed me how to have a deep friendship with the Lord.”

“Peer-to-peer evangelization works,” exclaimed Bibiana. “There’s a certain trust, a certain authenticity that students respond to really well.”

WHO IS SENT TO WITNESS?

Br. Clinton and other Brothers engage students involved in our campus outreaches to assess their passion for the Lord as well as their desire to become Missionary Core leaders and witness to others about their faith.

“We’re looking for students who are already passionate about the Lord and who have a passion for reaching and engaging the lost in a way that builds off of their love and desire for Him,” said Br. Clinton. “Much like the 72 that Jesus appointed to preach the Good News, our Missionary Core student leaders desire to evangelize others to encounter the Lord.”

After graduating from FSU in 2019, Bibiana became a missionary in Saint Paul’s Outreach (SPO) and came to Boston to serve with us at Northeastern University’s Catholic Center. The newly formed Missionary Core program she found was primed and ready to take the next step.

“My experience at FSU had prepared me for what I was about to do in Boston,” said Bibiana. “Within a few short years, Missionary Core in Boston grew faster than we were expecting it to grow. There must be this beautiful moment in heaven when we will all see the fruit of our many ‘Yeses’ to follow the Lord and share Him with others.”

A FAMILY TREE OF DISCIPLESHIP

Five FSU women students. Five separate paths in faith — until Missionary Core brought them together, one-by-one, transforming them into five evangelists. They said “Yes” to freely sharing their love of Jesus Christ with other women.

Catherine Hunckler (née McNeal) was one of the first students at FSU to become part of Missionary Core when the program began about a decade ago. Catherine reached out to Erika Richard, who over time mentored Bibiana Nuñez. Then Bibiana evangelized Monica Kan, and so this “genealogy” of faith continues to grow today.

“We’re like this family tree of discipleship,” said Bibiana. “Even though Monica and I never went to school with Catherine, every time Catherine’s travels bring her close to us we all get together. It’s a spiritual connection that we all share.”

And it’s a spiritual connection they continue to form with other women.

“It’s a ripple effect that continues to grow,” said Bibiana. “There’s something powerful about a student seeing another student reaching out to them and thinking, ‘If this student is reaching out to me, maybe it’s possible for me to take that step with someone else.”

(Front to Back) Monica Kan, Isabel Nuñez, Bibiana Nuñez, Erika Richard and Catherine Hunckler (née McNeal) on the steps of St. Paul’s Church in Harvard Square. The four women traveled to Boston in 2020 to visit Bibiana after she became a missionary through Saint Paul’s Outreach and joined the Brothers’ work at Northeastern University.