Our J17 leadership has decided that our only mission is to bring Christians together in worship and prayer, believing that our unity efforts will be a significant factor in building kingdom collaborations for the good of our city and state. Direct and indirect outcomes of our J17 Movement include:
AZ127 (www.az127.com), based on James 1:27, is a local church and parish movement to reduce significantly the number of foster children in our state system by getting kids into Christian homes. In the last couple years, AZ127 has place more children in foster care homes than all the other agencies of the state combined. The movement was initially formed and led by three evangelical megachurches, but in the last year, Paul Mulligan, President of Phoenix Catholic Charities, “translated” the AZ127 content into Catholic language, and the diocese has adopted AZ127 as a model for families in their parishes to open their homes to foster kids.
For the last eighteen months I’ve been serving as the Phoenix Mobilizer for American Bible Society’s 6-city scripture engagement campaign. Bishop Olmstead has given me his full blessing to spearhead a decade-long Bible engagement movement for the Diocese of Phoenix. Key Catholic priests and parish leaders have come together to develop and implement a plan.
The Arizona director of Alpha (http://alphausa.org/), Jad Levi, who also serves on our John 17 Movement advisory team, has had remarkable favor with the diocese. In the next six months, about two dozen of the 93 parishes in the diocese will be launching Alpha as a part of the the New Evangelization to bring Catholics and their friends into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. The website of the USCCB states, “The focus of the New Evangelization calls all Catholics to be evangelized and then go forth to evangelize” (http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teac…/…/new-evangelization/).
Source: Gary Kinnaman - Presented during Movement Day NYC, representing the John 17 movement and Greater Phoenix and Arizona Catholic/Evangelical Bridges, as posted on the John 17 FB page on 1 November 2016.