Our Stories Can Save Us

From a marketing standpoint, the Catholic Church has access to the most scarce and prized resource in our contemporary economy - uninterrupted attention. First-time author Damian P. Hanley explains in detail how the Church - at the parish level - can leverage this resource and use web 2.0 media to engage millenials and iGen - generations plagued by addiction, vacuous materialism, and a severely diminished opinion of the Church.

Catholic churches are struggling to connect with young people in an authentic and relevant way. We are dying to be taken seriously in a culture where subtle, hedonic relativism, atheism, and nihilism are well-marketed and packaged as independent free thought.

"I wrote this book on the belief that within every adult Catholic is a faith journey containing invaluable wisdom. In large, impersonal churches, it's easy to disconnect - pray, pay, and obey - and measure the success of the Parish using vanity metrics: offertory, attendance, cans of food collected, etc. I argue that our success should be measured by our spiritual maturity, and the quality of our relationship with God and others. How better to demonstrate this than by witnessing directly to the congregation. Podcasts, interviews, video, and visual storytelling. Every parishioner is a case study in how the faith really works. By documenting these stories and using simple, oftentimes free technology, we can truly let our light shine unto the world."