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Showing posts with label Catholics Come Home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholics Come Home. Show all posts

Monday, December 20, 2010

Over 200,000 Lapsed Catholics Return to Church through 'Come Home' Outreach


TV ads aimed at bringing lapsed Catholics back into the fold have enjoyed enormous success recently with an estimated 200,000 returning to churches throughout the U.S. as a result of the campaign. 

Featuring high-resolution TV ads with lush colors and powerful imagery, Catholics Come Home – an initiative of business entrepreneur Tom Peterson – has teamed up with local dioceses in the U.S. to bring people back into the Church.

Peterson told EWTN News Dec. 16 that Catholics Come Home “has been blessed with amazing results” over the last two and a half years as over 200,000 individuals, whether lapsed Catholics or otherwise, have joined their local parishes. 

Sunday, November 28, 2010

The Augusta Chronicle in the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia Reports: “Ads Call Catholics Back to Church”

The Catholics Come Home® TV Commercials will be airing in the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia and state-wide in less than a month. The Augusta Chronicle reports, below:


By Kelly Jasper
Staff Writer

Twenty years ago, Cristine Bays left the Catholic Church. There was no big pronouncement or public protest.

“I had just drifted away,” said Bays, an Evans mother of three.

The same is true for millions of Catholics who don’t attend weekly Mass, or who have fallen away from religion entirely or become Protestant.

A new program — half evangelism effort, half public relations campaign — issues an invitation to out-of-practice Catholics across Georgia.

Television commercials created by the nonprofit lay organization Catholics Come Home will air on network and cable television from Dec. 17 to Jan. 23. The commercials, in English and Spanish, will air during prime time. Some celebrate church history; others show the testimony of Catholics who have “come home.”

The Catholic Diocese of Savannah raised $160,000 to air the commercials throughout its 90 counties, including Richmond and Columbia.

The Catholics Come Home ad campaign will air in prime time cable  and network television from Dec. 17 through Jan. 23 in the 90 counties  of the Diocese of Savannah. Watch the commercials and learn more at  catholicscomehome.org

The Catholics Come Home ad campaign will air in prime time cable and network television from Dec. 17 through Jan. 23 in the 90 counties of the Diocese of Savannah. Watch the commercials and learn more at catholicscomehome.org

The average American watches four hours of TV a day, making the campaign one of the most effective ways to bring Catholics back to the church, said Tom Peterson, a former marketing executive who founded Georgia-based Catholics Come Home in 1998.

He was “nominally Catholic” until attending a retreat in Arizona, which renewed his faith.

“God was calling me to use my advertising talents to serve him,” Peterson said. “The light bulbs went off, and the adventure began.”

He moved to Roswell, Ga., to grow the ministry. Since its founding, some 200,000 Catholics have returned to the church. When the commercials were launched in the Phoenix market, 92,000 Catholics returned. “That was just in one city,” Peterson said.

On average, each diocese sees Mass attendance increase 10 percent.

Most, like Bays, don’t have serious issues with the church but have fallen out of the habit of regular church attendance, Peterson said. Catholics Come Home’s research has shown that the average Catholic who leaves then returns to the church has been away for nine years.

It took a personal invitation for Bays to return, she said. During a hospital stay three years ago, she was visited daily by churchgoers.

“It was the push I needed,” said Bays, now a member of St. Teresa of Avila Catholic Church in Grovetown, where her husband, Brian, will soon convert to Catholicism.

Augusta parishes were recently visited by Bishop J. Kevin Boland and other leaders in the diocese. They’re traveling the state to deliver workshops on how to deal with the influx of members.

“We know we have to be more welcoming. It’s everything from opening doors to saying hello and offering a doughnut or two. It’s the stuff Protestants figured out years ago,” Joe Soparas said with a laugh. He and his wife, Mary, are coordinators of St. Teresa’s Catholics Come Home program.

Priests are also setting aside time to meet with those returning to the church or grappling with issues, said the Rev. Michael Lubinsky, the parochial vicar of The Church of the Most Holy Trinity in downtown Augusta.

“Catholics Come Home is a process for all Catholics, inactive and active, by which all are invited to come to the Lord by the holy sacraments of love and mercy and affection and forgiveness,” he said.

From 2000 to 2010, only 22 percent of U.S. Catholics attended Mass on a weekly basis, according to a poll by CARA, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a nonprofit Georgetown University-affiliated research center that studies the Catholic Church. That speaks to the millions of Americans who identify as Catholic but aren’t practicing Catholics, Peterson said.

“This is an invitation for them, too,” he said.

With at least 68 million members, the Catholic Church claims more adherents than any other American denomination, about 22 percent of the U.S. population. With membership waning, 1 in 10 Americans identifies as a former Catholic, according to the most recent Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, compiled in 2008.

“For the most part, it’s really the secular lures of the world that pull people away. Life gets busy,” Peterson said. “Ninety percent say they’d come back if someone invited them.”

Catholics Come Home usually runs its six-week campaigns through the Christmas season or Lent.

“It’s a great time to issue an invitation,” Peterson said.

“Most people see the ad on TV and say, ‘I started to tear up. I felt like God was personally calling me home.’ ”

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Thursday, August 5, 2010

Catholics Come Home Debuts New National TV Commercials for "Tough Times"


Catholics Come Home will premier their new TV commercial “
Home as part of the upcoming Advent 2010 television initiative. The commercial, which invites all people “to experience the peace that only comes from God,” gives viewers hope especially during these tough times. The commercial premieres just as Pope Benedict XVI offers his August mission prayer intention, “That the Church may be a ‘home’ for all people.”

“Home” will air beginning in December in select markets across the United States in English, Spanish and closed captioned for the hearing impaired.

Also debuting is a new commercial for CatolicosRegresen.org, the Spanish language website of CatholicsComeHome.org. This testimonial commercial features Eduardo Verástegui, actor, producer, and star of the movie Bella. Eduardo shares his personal testimony of his journey back to his Catholic roots after years outside the Church pursuing fame and material success. “There is nothing greater than to wake up every day and to use your talents that God gave you to serve Him and to serve others,” Eduardo stated during the Hollywood shoot. These commercials will premier on Spanish language television in December, in a number of markets across the U.S..

Monday, March 3, 2008

Catholics Come Home

At about the time a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life study reports that one out of every ten adult Americans is a lapsed Catholic, a new campaign has emerged to invite those Catholics home.

The Cause of Our Joy blog reports:

There’s a new advertising campaign originating out of Phoenix called Catholics Come Home. Using slick commercials and a high-tech web site, the campaign seeks to goad the conscience of lapsed Catholics to re-discover (or discover for the first time) why their Catholic faith is important to their lives, their families, and their eternity.

They have three commercials at the moment: “Epic 120”, which is a two-minute tour through the impact the Catholic Church has had on history and still does today; “Movie” which reminds us that after our lives end we will review our lives (like a movie) and will get to evaluate what we have done; and “Mix”, which shows individual Catholics explaining how they left the Church, why they came back, and what a difference it’s made.

These are high-quality productions, as good as anything out there. The local Phoenix Catholic newspaper, The Catholic Sun, did a story on the start of the campaign in that diocese recently. They say the average Phoenix household will see the commercials 13 times between now and Easter.

And if it’s successful—and they have the money for it—they’ll expand into other dioceses. Looks promising. I know where my Lenten almsgiving is going.