There were no pews or seats, only cold, wet sand. But that wasn’t going to stop three million energetic young people from celebrating Mass that day on Copacabana Beach in Brazil.

“Go!” said Pope Francis. “You have been able to enjoy the wonderful experience of meeting Jesus, meeting him together with others, and you have sensed the joy of faith. But the experience of this encounter must not remain locked up in your life or in the small group of your parish, your movement, or your community.”

As the 2013 World Youth Day festivities came to a close, the pope was kicking everyone out—but not without marching orders.

“I want a mess. I want trouble in the dioceses! I want people to go out! I want the Church to go out into the streets! I want us to defend ourselves against everything that is worldliness, installation, comfortableness, clericalism, being shut in on ourselves. The parishes, the schools, the institutions exist to go out!”

It’s Time to Make a Mess

When you know you have something really special, you can’t help but want to share it with everyone you meet. And when that something happens to be God’s honest truth—the Gospel, the secret to a meaningful and joyful life—you’d think it would be spreading like wildfire.

But it’s not spreading like wildfire. In fact, the fire seems to be going out. We must be doing something wrong.

In the next generation, half the pews will be empty. And not because of something that will happen, but because of something that has happened. A generation is already missing and so are their children. And they show no signs of coming back any time soon. The inertia alone ensures that the situation will get worse before it gets better. It’s a crisis of massive proportions, the severity of which has been masked by positive personal anecdotes and clouded in an ambiguous “hope” that, in the end, things will turn out fine anyway.

Sure, we can point to many bright spots worth celebrating within the Church today, but the bleeding continues. None have yet reversed the mass exodus of modern man from church.

We’re in the midst of an identity crisis. We’ve forgotten we were made to live courageously. We’ve forgotten who we are. We’ve forgotten we’ve been charged with a radical mission—a mission to turn the world on its head.

There is indeed hope. But it’s not a vague, passive hope, where we stand on the sidelines and wait for God to swoop in. Rather, it’s a hope intimately tangled up in our human messiness and fueled by our weakness. It’s a fool’s hope.

It is time for big, bold changes. It’s time to get out of maintenance mode and go on a mission. It’s time to go! You exist to go out, to be shared, to love and be loved. The Church exists to engulf all of humanity, not just the poor sinners within its walls. But unfortunately, whatever we’re doing now simply isn’t working.

There is a movement afoot, though—a movement that, by God’s grace, can turn the tide.

It is a movement of people inspired by the opportunity of the information age, prompted by the poverties of modernity, and frustrated by the status quo. It is a movement fueled by big ideas and an exciting vision for the Church. A movement of people who know that the dawn of a new renaissance is possible in our lifetime.

These people are already hard at work, through many diverse efforts across the country, as faithful partners in this new evangelization. And more people are joining this movement every day.

But what makes their evangelization efforts so successful when so many others are failing? The secret is that they begin where we must all begin—with a mess and a fool.

Are you concerned that the genius of Christianity is not being taken seriously? Are you as frustrated as I am that so many continue to walk away from it without ever really knowing it? Are you ready to start a new era of evangelization unlike the world has ever seen? Good. Now let’s get started.

Pope Francis was right. It’s time to make a mess. It’s time to change the world. And we are just the fools to do it.