The Mission Ignite Toolkit: Building an Evangelizing Parish, Together

You know why the Church is called to evangelize. Now you need the how.

You want your parish to move outward: to reach people, make disciples, and shift from preservation to proclamation. But how do you actually get there?

The Mission Ignite Toolkit is a practical, 10-month process that walks your parish leadership team, step by step, through the work of becoming an evangelizing parish. This is not another book explaining why evangelization matters. This is the process.

Discernment before strategy. Before asking "What should we do?" your team learns to ask "What is God asking of us?" Prayer, baptismal leadership, and attention to the movement of the Holy Spirit are woven throughout, because strategy follows discernment.

Your parish. Your people. Your mission field. Instead of importing someone else's successful model, Mission Ignite helps your team discover the community that actually surrounds you, and the discipleship reality within your own parish, so that your plan is grounded in the people God has entrusted to you.

Over ten months, your team will:

• Discern the vision God has for your parish


• Call forth baptismal leadership


• Discover your mission field


• Measure your discipleship reality


• Establish a common discipleship path


• Explore evangelization models that fit your people and gifts


• Turn ministries toward mission


• Create a one-year evangelization plan and a three-year intention

Along the way, Mission Ignite Precision Tools help you examine the details that often determine whether culture change succeeds or stalls, including discipleship, invitation, communication, ministries, leadership, and parish culture.

By the end, you will have more than ideas. You will have a shared understanding of your mission, a common language for discipleship, clear priorities, and an actionable path forward.

Lead the process with the support of facilitators from The Mark 5:19 Project, or equip a facilitator from within your own parish and use the Toolkit to lead it locally.

Ten months. One parish. A clearer mission. A practical path from preservation to proclamation.

Susan Windley-Daoust, Ph.D., is the executive director of The Mark 5:19 Project, a Catholic apostolate that helps parish leaders build vibrant, mission-driven communities. She previously served as Director of Missionary Discipleship for the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota. Before that, she spent 22 years as an academic theologian, teaching undergraduates and pastoral theology graduate students at the University of St. Thomas and Saint Mary's University of Minnesota. Her books include The Four Ways Forward: Becoming an Apostolic Parish in a Post-Christian World and the award-winning Theology of the Body, Extended: The Spiritual Signs of Birth, Impairment, and Dying. Her articles have appeared in America, Sojourners, and Homiletic and Pastoral Review. The Mission Ignite Toolkit is the hands-on companion to The Four Ways Forward, drawn from the process she has used with parishes.