This article first appeared in the August 2015 issue of ‘The Southern Cross,’ page 2.http://www.thesoutherncross.org/
SAN DIEGO – The San Diego chapter of St. Paul Street Evangelization recently became the first of approximately 200 teams across the country to “street evangelize” at an airport.
Steve Beuerle, Central San Diego director for St. Paul Street Evangelization, has been flying back to Northwestern Michigan frequently over the last few months to visit his mother, who has cancer. During one of his layovers in Detroit Metropolitan Airport, he came up with the idea of doing street evangelization in an airport.
When he returned to San Diego, he called San Diego International Airport, spoke to the person in charge of permits for this type of activity and obtained the necessary permit, which he said was a very simple process.
St. Paul Street Evangelization is a grassroots, nonprofit organization dedicated to responding to the mandate of Jesus to preach the Gospel to all nations by taking the Catholic faith to the public square. It does this in a non-confrontational way, allowing the Holy Spirit to move in the hearts of those who witness their public Catholic presence.
The ministry is simple: Participants venture into a high-traffic area, put up a sign that says “Catholic Truth,” and set up a table full of materials, including free rosaries, brochures and other information about the Catholic Church. Locations have included beaches, parks, malls, outside San Diego’s Petco Park and, now, San Diego International Airport.
“We had a very successful outing at the San Diego airport this weekend and plan to make this a regular location for street evangelization,” Beuerle said June 27. “As the Bible says, `the harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few.’ We just need more volunteers to help us staff the table so we can have more of a presence there.”
Two of the numerous visitors to their that day were Dax and Danille, who said they were returning from a trip to Norfolk, Va., and Missoula, Mont., where they both got to meet their respective biological fathers for the first time. They said that these meetings were set up as part of a new television show filmed by NBC Productions called “Finding My Father.” They said they both believe that God had a hand in of this and plan to keep in touch with their biological fathers.
Beuerle told The Southern Cross that Christ’s call to evangelize was made to every Catholic Christian, and the Second Vatican Council reiterated this need, urging each of the baptized to bring the Gospel, which is found fully in the Catholic Church, to a culture that has largely reverted to paganism. As an on-the-street Catholic evangelization organization, he said, St. Paul Street Evangelization provides an avenue for Catholics to share the person of Jesus Christ and the truth and beauty of the Catholic faith with a hungry culture.
For more information, visit www.StreetEvangelization.com or contact Beuerle at (619) 515-3267 or scb@procopio.com.