 I really appreciate that. It's so great to be with you. I've had such a fantastic time with you all so far this week and I just wanna start before we even jump in and just with a little testimony to the power of God active in the world today. I was giving a series of talks in Minneapolis St. Paul on Easter week and on Friday evening of Easter week as I was giving a talk I got a phone call in between two of the talks I gave and it was my father and my father let me know that my mother had just been diagnosed with stage four terminal cancer and he wanted me to pray and he said if you could get here it would be great because the doctors actually said it's very advanced and we don't even know if she's gonna make it through the week. This is Friday of Easter week and I happened to be with Bishop Cousins who's a wonderful friend and I pulled him aside before Mass and I told him what's going on he said I'll offer Mass and I just went in prayer and I said you know Lord I don't know what's going on but I have to be honest I know that if you asked my mother does Curtis love you? I know that she would say yes but I also know that as I lived a Catholic life and was a prodigal son and wandered very far away from the church I broke her heart and when I became an evangelical Protestant she was somewhat happy that I had found Christ and very devastated that I had not found the Eucharist and that was more heartbreak and then when I came back to the church I was uber Catholic and so that freaked her out also and so at every step along the way I've been throwing elbows at my mother's heart and I just said God you know I can't pray for her to live forever I know that but I just I'm gonna ask Saint John Paul for some help here he died an old man but his first miracle was to heal a none of the very disease that he had and would you intercede with my mother I know she can't live forever but I just want some time to be able to prove to her that I love her not here but here and so I flew home Saturday morning I arranged for a flight Saturday night to fly out to California and I got on the airplane and we sat on the out on the airplane for hours and they canceled the flight and I was like oh my goodness in the next day I got up six o'clock in the morning and got on another plane and I flew and by the time I got there she had already gone into surgery I had missed her and I just sat there and I prayed with my dad and he goes Curtis it's not good and about three hours later the doctor walked out on Divine Mercy Sunday and told us the cancer was completely removed and I just spent the last couple of days just earlier this week with my mother with some of the most glorious time of relationship building so God is active in the world she's cancer-free and we're just having some great time so thank you just want to take some time to praise God for his great works so I'm excited about our topic today we're working with some of the best catechists in the nation here so grateful that you're here want to look at the topic that's becoming to my great delight and I'm sure yours also so much more of a conversation topic what does it mean to be a missionary disciple or an intentional disciple the language is still kind of fuzzy but I think there's this sense of what's involved in raising up disciples and how does that affect your work as catechists what does this look like and I'm excited to spend just a little bit of time with you today sharing some insights that I think God has granted me about what's going on that might be of use to you and your apostolate and as I think about that I think about a teacher who's teaching a course and she's up at a white board she's working away and she's writing and all of a sudden she realizes she's making a mistake that some teachers do she might be using words that the students don't know and when you speak a language that people don't understand you bore them you disengage them and so she stopped for a moment and she said oh could anybody tell me the difference between ignorance and apathy and there's silence and she said oh no seriously this isn't rhetorical could somebody tell me the difference and there's silence and she looks around the room and she looks at her star student Becky and she says Becky could you tell the class the difference between ignorance and apathy and Becky thinks for a moment says I don't know and I don't care which is exactly the difference between ignorance and apathy and it's exactly the difference between evangelization and catechesis if we try to catechize people who don't care we will bore them we'll disengage them in fact we'll frustrate them because you're giving them something they don't want yet evangelization addresses the I don't care so that catechesis can address the I don't know I don't know how to think I don't know how to live that catechetical formation but how do we do this and it's so important for us to understand that if we get these ordered properly we'll have great great success in what we're doing and if we get them out of order well then we'll frustrate people you can imagine that somebody said hey I've got great news for you you've been invited to an eight course meal just a half hour from now and it's gonna be the most spectacular food you've ever had in your entire life and you say well that would be great but I just ate the largest meal I've ever had in my entire life and I'm actually just not hungry your lack of hunger would render that great meal worthless and we have to recognize that the godless culture within which we live has taken away the desire for people and it's robbed our young people and people of all ages of the sense of why the church really exists we work with young people all the time and they think the church is here to teach us the rules about life and while there's a certain truth to that it's a half truth if you were to go into any coffee shop and talk to college-age students and say tell me about the Catholic faith they would say oh well the Catholic church is against homosexual marriage so the Catholic church is against abortion they'd have a list of things that the Catholic church is against but when you look at the catechism of the Catholic church and you look at what it says about itself what she says about herself in the first article says this, God infinitely perfect and blessed in himself and a plan of sheer goodness freely chose to create you to share in his own divine life who would say that in the coffee shop? Cause that's our message and they haven't heard it and if they haven't heard it and they think we're telling them rules that they don't care about they just don't really know that they want what we have and so what I'd like to do is I'd like to spend the first part of our time together talking about how do we foster that encounter with Christ? Why do we need to do that? How do we do that? And then I'd like to spend just a little bit of time maybe 10 or so minutes talking about discipleship which is the mode in which we should live that out. So we're talking about how do we get started and my work with Catholics all over the country and all over the world has led me to some really amazing encounters. It's amazing if you were to test Catholics they would actually score pretty well on many things. If you went to Catholics once it won't even go to church on Sunday said do you believe in the Trinity? They'll like yes, which is crazy because they couldn't explain it for more than 30 seconds without falling into heresy. You wouldn't do much better and neither would I. I mean it's just a crazy belief to have unless it's true. You could say do you believe that the second person of the Trinity became man? And they'll be like yeah, I even know what day he did it on. Do you believe that he died for your sins? Yes, they know what day he did that on. They get all these things done but they don't live any differently than the people who don't believe that. What, how is that possible? Do you believe in an everlasting heaven? Yes, but you're not trying to get there. How is that possible? And they just don't see the connections and why the church is so central and how not just the truths of the gospel but their response to the truths of the gospel are absolutely essential. I'm convinced that young people today and people of many ages, they know the karygma, at least pieces of it. They have those pieces in place. What they don't know is what St. Augustine taught us which is that there's a city of God and a city of man. And in the city of man, people love themselves so much that they're willing to deny even God and the poor. And in the city of God, people love God so much that they're willing to deny even themselves. And we were born into the city of man but you could choose to live in the city of God but you have to choose. And they don't know that their response makes any difference at all. They don't know that they were made by God for a reason, that their life is actually an adventure and that they're invited to live an adventure to pursue God and come to know who they're meant to be and as St. Catherine of Siena says and if they become what they're meant to be, they would set the world on fire. Oh, did not know that is a great poverty. And I talked to Catholics all the time and say, how's that Catholic thing going for you? And they're kind of like basketball players late in the game, they grab their knees and they're like, oh, Catholic thing is hard. Very hard, very hard. I was talking to one young guy who said, how's that Catholic thing going? It's not going well. I said, are you gonna quit? He goes, no. I said, why not? He goes, I don't wanna go to hell. Which is a great reason not to quit. It's not the best reason not to quit but it's a good reason not to quit. But it's just the sense. And you look at him and say, look, here's the Bible, big book, no pictures. You know, catechism, another big book, four pictures. You know, and then here's all the encyclicals and here's all the writings of the saints. Go at it. They're like, I don't like to read. And how do you do that? And what I think is that Catholics have the ingredients but the more time I spend with young Catholics who are my primary group that I spend time with, the more I, when I look at young people today, the Catholic ones I say, they're like a dream house. Imagine a dream, I imagine that I had a chance to build a dream house for my wife and we dreamed about the location and the place and the house and then with three months left to go with all the fixtures missing, I said, sweetheart, would you just let me finish this for you? Would you trust me to set it up just the way you want? She says, okay. And so for the last three months, I go out and get the fixtures that I know she loves and I put them just where we want and the house is perfect, it's on the lake, it looks out, the sunset, the sunrise are awesome and we're just, it's perfect and the workers are finishing up, it's the last of the days and they say, we're done and they toss me the keys and I grab them and I'm like, that's great and I look at my watch and I'm like, oh my goodness, she's gonna be here in a few minutes and the sun starts to go down and I walk through the house saying, I think we nailed it. I think we nailed it, this is gonna be awesome and as the sun is going down and I see my wife driving up through the driveway with her headlights on, I go to the kitchen and I flip on the lights and nothing happens and I think, oh my goodness, and I walk into the living room and I flip on the lights and nothing happens and now I'm freaked out and I'm thinking, oh my goodness, we put all this money and all this time and this was supposed to be perfect for my wife and I run into another room and nothing, nothing's working, all the time, all the planning, all the energy and nothing is working and then it hits me, wait a second and I run out in the garage and I open the master breaker and it's off and I flip it and everything works, everything works and that's our Catholic young people, the wiring is all there, they believe all the right stuff or most of the right stuff, it's amazing, I know that you can flip on this switch because our evangelical brothers and sisters are flipping them all the time and our Catholic kids, there was a major evangelical conference with thousands of people at it and one of the breakout sessions was entitled Catholic Youth, the Key to Our Church's Future and it wasn't an anti-Catholic seminar, their point was Catholics already love Jesus, they just don't know how to follow Jesus, if you could help them to follow Jesus, they'll become the best leaders in your church, they're the Key to Our Future's Church, they're the Key to Our Church's Future, not just theirs and the same thing is true for us, all the wiring has been done, they just don't know what to do with it and so the question is, how do you walk into the soul of a person and flip the breaker? What does that look like? Because as I talk to Catholics, again I think they've got the data right but things aren't connected. Jesus teaches us many things in the scriptures and they're powerful and they're beautiful, one of them is the way he teaches in parables and in Matthew chapter 13, he teaches seven parables, all about the kingdom and they're amazing, they're wonderful, my favorite is the shortest, not because I'm lazy, it's just because I love Matthew 13, 44, only one verse long and in Matthew 13, 44, Jesus says this, he says the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man found and he hid and for joy over it, he went and sold all that he had and he bought the field and I talked to Catholics and they have all of the nouns and all of the verbs but they're all out of order, when you talk to Catholics, so many of them walk around saying, oh my goodness, I'm gonna sell all that I have in hopes of finding the treasure but that's not what the parable says. The parable says the treasure was found first and then for joy over the treasure that had already been discovered, he went and sold all that he had. So I don't think there's any sorrow or sadness in this guy as he's selling his stuff. I think he's walking around going, wanna buy a watch? How about a car? Make me an offer, seriously, I'll sell you anything because I know that as soon as I get rid of my stuff and I have the money from that stuff, I can go buy that field, when I buy the field, I win and I've already won because I've already found the treasure and so I'm just in the process collecting the winnings and because of that, I live from a place of joy rather than a sense of obligation. Is the obligation there? Yes, it's there but it's below the surface. I don't not cheat on my wife because I don't wanna commit a sin. I don't cheat on my wife because I love my wife. I would never wanna hurt her. I know that she holds my heart in her hands and that I hold her heart in my hands and I'm very honored that she strives so diligently to care so beautifully for me and I wanna return that favor and love her. There's obligations but I never thought about it that way. I didn't sit 25 and a half years ago, I did not sit in the sanctuary of Our Lady of the Assumption Church as we were getting married and think as I looked across the altar, looked and said, oh, crud, I'm gonna have to change diapers. I'm gonna have to call when I'm late. I'm gonna have all kinds of housework to do. I didn't think any of those things. I looked across and said, if she doesn't figure out in the next couple of minutes that she's marrying down, I'm a win. It's just that simple. And I did. And so I was just so happy. I didn't care about the obligations. I was like, that's nothing. Just like the guy I didn't care about is watching anymore because it's nothing. It's a trinket. I found the treasure. And so how do we help people? You know, and I tried to write the book made for more to help to kind of open up the idea to people about how to approach young people of all ages, that God's calling you on an adventure, that you were made for more. And it was inspired by Pope Benedict on the opening night, his first Mass, that was the night for me when I watched it, but he said something beautiful to young people. He was saying his first Mass as Pope and he said to you young people, the world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness. That's so awesome. See, I think that's a message that'll correspond with the hearts of anybody who has a pulse. And it's not the message that people hear from the Catholic Church, but I think it's our message, it's the truth. I mean, the truth of the gospel is that Jesus Christ freely chose, the God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit freely chose to create you because the idea of you so fascinated them. They had no need to create you or me, none whatsoever, but they wanted to share the goodness of their life. And so they dreamed us out of nothing and they love the idea of you and the idea of me so much that the conception, your conception, occurred in the mind of God. We're told in Ephesians chapter one verse four from the foundations of the world. In other words, when God said, let there be light, he was thinking about you. And not just some general idea, we'll make a lot of them. No, no, no, he was thinking about you, about the deep intimacies of what makes you angry, what hurts you, what brings you joy, what makes you laugh, your weaknesses, and your strengths, he knew all of that about you. And at the appropriate time, when he fully willed it, the conception in his mind became the real conception of you just under your mother's heart at the moment of your conception. And he loved the idea of you that even though you were wounded by sin, he knew that how awesome you could be and so he was willing to come and rescue you at great personal expense because he knows how awesome you're supposed to be and he knows what's awaiting you and we don't know and our young people don't know. And if we don't let them know that, they're not gonna care, they're not gonna wanna sell all they have. So how do we get them to do it? How do we walk through that? And one of the ways that strikes me is, and we put this in the front of the book that Ted and I, I only brought two books with me, made for more that I mentioned a second ago and the real story. And in the beginning, which we dedicated to Dr. Hahn who's sitting right over there, but we quoted Pope Benedict and Pope Benedict said this, he said, I am convinced that if Catholics would begin to pray through the scriptures daily, what the church calls Lectio Divina, I am convinced that if Catholics would begin to prayerfully pray through the scriptures daily, it would bring about the new spring time. Wow, what a promise. You're trying to figure out how to be more fruitful, daily, prayerful reading of the scriptures. To seek him, right, we promise, if we seek, we'll find. And so what we do frequently, there's lots of ways, but my preference is when somebody says, well, I wanna have that kind of encounter, I wanna live differently, I wanna have that whatever's going on in those people's lives, in your missionary's lives, and there's a joy, there's energy, I want that, how do I do that? I say, why don't you begin by reading the gospels prayerfully and carefully? And I say, well, what do you mean by that? And so what I'd like to do is just spend maybe a couple of minutes with you walking through me praying through the gospels. So I'm going along, this was a couple of years ago, and I'm going along, and as you're seeking Christ in the gospels, don't read it real piously. I mean, be pious, but don't read it real piously. A lot of times we read in the Bible and we read stuff that we don't completely don't understand and we're like, yes, Lord, whatever you say, that amen, amen. Why was that there? I have no idea, but it was scripture. Okay, don't do that. Wrestle with God. There's two areas in the scriptures you're gonna wrestle with with God. The first one are the things you don't understand. Why is that there? I don't get it, it doesn't make any sense to me. Why is that there? And the other thing that you're going to is the stuff you do understand. You want me to do what? I clearly heard you, you want me to forgive who? For you have how many times? Give up how much? Are you crazy? I can't do that. And wrestle with God. And he will begin to reveal and explain the things you don't understand and he'll begin to energize you and call you to do the things you understand that don't think you can do. And he'll lead you on adventure. So I'm reading along and we're in John's Gospel. I just started John's Gospel, just finished Luke's Gospel and I'm reading along and when you're reading, it's good to not read like Americans. Americans, when I'm a read like an American, I'm like, read the Gospel of John, 27 minutes. No, not like that. Slow, prayerful, like a conversation. I'm not a great reader. I had dyslexia as a kid. Reading doesn't, as an enterprise on its own, doesn't bring me great joy. I love to read because I read great things. But I don't love to read all by itself, so I have to read great stuff otherwise I don't want to do it because it's hard. And for many of you, you read well and it's awesome because when you read stuff, my mom's a great reader and she's like, oh, when I read, it's like watching a movie, whatever. For me, it's like cleaning up the backyard. It's not fun at all. And so I'm reading along and I'm trying to engage my intellect, my heart, my imagination, what does this look like? And in John chapter one, verse 35, I'll set it up for you. Just the day before Jesus had come and been baptized. And the setting is this, John the Baptist is out there and he's preaching and he's got his group of disciples and there's the Pharisees up on top of the hill and he's like, are you Brutavipers? There's people coming and it's like repentance and they're being baptized. And he's got this growing ministry and these disciples and all of a sudden one day one guy walks down to the water and instead of saying repent or a Brutavipers, he says, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And all those disciples are like, what? And then he says, I must decrease it, he must increase it. They have a little argument about who's gonna baptize who and John baptizes them the next day Jesus is getting ready to leave and the disciples are kind of sitting there going, okay decision moment here, love John, thought he was the guy, he made it very clear that this guy's the guy, he's increasing, John's decreasing, he's the Lamb of God that's gonna take away the sins of the world. John's not fit to untie his sandals, he's leaving, John's not, what are we gonna do? And so they're sitting there and as Jesus walks away, two of John's disciples get up and start following Jesus. But they're behind him a little ways and in my mind, Jesus is walking along and he's leaving by himself and these two guys are back here and they're walking along and have you ever had that feeling that somebody's walking behind you? So Jesus looks around and they're like, you know, this goes on two or three times and finally Jesus looks around and there's this great exchange. Jesus looks back and says, what do you seek? And they look over and say, where are you staying? And Jesus says, come and see. And so we're told they came and they saw where he was staying and they remained with him. And it was about four o'clock in the afternoon. Oh, what reading the Bible's like for you? But it's a wrestling match for me. There's a whole lot I don't understand. There's a whole lot that I do understand that I don't correspond to. This would be one of the ones I don't understand. It's four o'clock in the afternoon. Let me explain why that's a problem for me because just the couple of days before I was finishing up Luke's Gospel, right? And if you just take my Bible and just turn back one page, one page, you have the end of Luke's Gospel. Let me tell you what I was wrestling with the week before. This is a setup. It's a road to Emmaus. It's Easter Sunday and there's two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus and Jesus shows up but they don't recognize him. And they're walking along in my mind and the conversation goes something like this. Jesus says, how's it going? They're like, how's it going? You're walking from Jerusalem. How do you, what do you mean how's it going? Are you the only person that didn't hear? Hear what? Jesus of Nazareth. We thought he was the Messiah. And on Friday they killed him. They're walking along and he said, yeah. And this morning the body's missing. You've never heard about any of this? And he lets them go. He lets them vent their heart because they're confused and they're in anguish and he just listens. Sometimes they're like, talk to me. And he's like, no, I want you to talk to me. Just empty your heart. And they walk on, in my mind, probably for a couple of miles. It's about a six, seven mile walk. So they've got some time. And then finally after they kinda let their hearts go, Jesus opens his mouth and begins to speak. And in verse 27 of chapter 24 says, and beginning with Moses, in other words, the book of Genesis, and beginning with Moses and all of the prophets, he interpreted to them all the scriptures and the things that concerned himself. This is the greatest Bible study in the history of the world. And there's not a single sentence about what he said. Nothing, nothing, not nothing. The best Bible study, nothing. Turn the page, it's four o'clock. Oh my goodness, who is doing the editing in this book? That's crazy. And so I'm sitting there going, how in the world? But here's the problem. You know who did the editing? The Holy Spirit, the author. The primary author did the editing. So it's exactly the way it's supposed to be. And the reason it's frustrating to me is because I'm not exactly the way I'm supposed to be, which is the great thing about reading the Bible and receiving the sacraments and allowing sacramental grace and the wrestling with the scriptures to allow you to become who you're meant to be. And when you wrestle with the scriptures, you will, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in a day, but you will, you'll encounter Christ. When you encounter Christ, something happens in your heart. It's almost like the Holy Spirit whenever it goes click, wow, everything starts to work. And for me, as I wrestled with this, why? Why do I not get anything about the greatest Bible study in the history of the world and why do I need to know that it's four o'clock in the afternoon, a page later? And it hit me, when you're doing lexio, you don't go on to the next passage. You can read the same passage for weeks if you want to. As long as you're drawing grace and energy and fruit and there's a wrestling match going on, you're welcome to stay. So for several weeks I was trying to do this and I'm thinking about it during the day. I'm at work and I'm like, I just don't get it. Why my new show over here and nothing over there? And then it hit me, you know, John's is the last of the gospels that's written and he wrote it when he was an old man and he knew about Matthew and Mark and Luke. And John's an old guy and imagine some day he's in prayer as an old man and he's done so much and now his life is near to the end and he said prayer and all of a sudden he hears, I don't know, his audible or it's just in his heart of hearts, but he hears Jesus say, tell my story. And I imagine that he was like, well, Lord, I mean, Matthew and Mark and Luke, they did great job. John, tell my story. And from a very different perspective than Matthew, Mark and Luke, John tells the gospel from the perspective of the beloved disciple. And I can imagine it as like, okay, kind of a big task. How, where do I begin? And in his mind he goes deep into prayer. I don't know if it was for days or weeks or months but he gets ready to write and he goes back to the beginning, he goes back to the very beginning. See, what we don't know from John but we know from the synoptics is that the two disciples that were with John the Baptist are Andrew, Peter's brother and John. And so John in John chapter one is telling you about the first day that he ever met Jesus Christ. And he remembers it and he's telling the story through all the decades that he's been alive and he's walking along and he still remembers the silly conversation Jesus goes back and says, what do you seek? And they're like, oh, where are you staying? That was a dumb question. But he responds, come and see and we went and we saw, we stayed. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. I remember it like yesterday because everything in my life completely changed for the rest of my life that hour and the question that I have for you and I hope that you'll ask to the people you're working with, what is your four o'clock? What were the moments or moment or moments in which you said, I can never live again the way I used to live because this has changed everything. This is what happened to Peter on the lake, right? Catch the fish. Oh my goodness, depart from me. I'm a sinful man. I'm gonna make you a fisher of men, great. Drop the nets, let's go. Paul, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Who are you? I'm Jesus. Three times in the book of Acts, Paul's on trial and they're telling him, knock it off, stop doing what you're doing. Why are you doing what you're doing? And three times he answers the same way. I was on the road to Damascus and I met Jesus Christ. He said to me, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? See, conversions are what leads to encounter. That encounter is what allows God to flip the switch so that we can live from a different place instead of living from me, even if I'm trying to be a good person, but maybe I'm trying to be a selfish person, but if I'm a me-centered person, I can't be a missionary disciple. I actually have to stand before the Lord and at some point in time, for me, it was my sophomore year in college and to be reading and for me it was Luke chapter six verse 46 and I was reading and I was amazed and I was reading along and it's the sermon on the plane and Jesus at one point in time in Luke chapter six verse 46, he says something but in my mind, there was no audible word but in my mind, in my imagination, I heard another word. The passage says, why do you call me Lord, Lord and you don't do what I say? What I imagined him saying was, Curtis, why do you call me Lord, Lord and you don't do what I say? And I dropped the Bible on the desk and I didn't have a response because I did think he was Lord and I didn't do what he said and I knew something had to change but I was honest enough for myself to say, well, I'm not just gonna say you're Lord because I know that I have all these bad habits. I gotta figure out, either make a decision that I'm not gonna claim you anymore or reject all these bad habits and embrace you and for the next couple of weeks, I read the Bible every day, I was praying, I didn't know how to pray very well and I remember at the end of it, I don't have to get down on your knees but I did, I just got down on my knees and I said, oh, and I prayed the prayer of a prodigal and I said Lord, I've squandered everything you gave me, you gave me a great Catholic family, I knew the faith and I walked away from it, I've broken all the commandments and I'm dead and sinned but if you would take me back, if you would forgive me, which I believe you want to do, then I promise you, you'll be the Lord of my life, I will do anything you ask me to do, I'll go anywhere you want me to go, I'll give you my life if you'll accept me, I turn to you. In that afternoon, I don't remember the day of the week, it was about four o'clock in the afternoon because I sat there for a while and I realized the sun was going down and it was dinner time and but it was a watershed moment because later in life, it gets hard to be a disciple, right? And you sit back and you say, why am I doing this? And you remember the watershed moment? I'm doing this because I know that God is real. I know that Jesus is alive and that he saved me and I remember that I gave him my entire life and so now when it's hard, well, I keep going. Now it's hard to keep going and those watershed moments are not the be end all of Christianity but they're the spark that ignites the fire. They're so much more, the life of discipleship is so much more than encounter but it begins with encounter and it's revitalized through encounters and it leads us to accompaniment, to be able to recognize that it's people who have had the encounter with Christ, who are living from the encounter of Christ, who then can accompany other people to have an encounter with Christ and to begin to follow Christ and become a disciple of Christ, all the stats are so clear. The most effective way to bring somebody into the church or get them to stay in the church is somebody walks them back in. RCIA doesn't work unless there's accompaniment. Focus doesn't work unless there's accompaniment. There is no program that works if you allow the program to be the solution. The program is the skeleton, you're the solution. I'm the solution. We have to raise up an army of people who are the solution because brothers and sisters, I'm convinced today that the biggest crisis in the church today is that we don't have enough leaders to welcome the people God wants to bring into our church. We're not ready. I feel like we're living in a moment in the church right now that's not unlike what was experienced by the patriarch Joseph with Pharaoh, he interpreted Pharaoh's dreams and essentially what he said is, brother, you better build bigger barns. You're not ready for what you're about to take in. You better build bigger barns because you're gonna need this when the need arises. Now the analogy of limbs because we're gonna have the weakness first and the plenty later, but it holds up in the sense that what we need are individuals who can walk those millions, hundreds of millions of people who are outside the church, back into the church and we don't have enough of those people right now to be able to see this. And this is the key thing of how do we do that? How do we raise it up? Who here is in favor of the new evangelization? Hey, who here would like to do twice as much work? Where'd you go? If you don't want to do twice as much work, we better get twice as many workers. That's the only, or just don't invite them. But this is a huge challenge for us and I want to share with you a model that allows us to be able to look at this. And so how do we do this? It's a model of discipleship. It's the model that Jesus not only taught, he not only commanded, he modeled. Jesus is the savior of the world. And he could have done it any way he wanted and in a certain sense, each one of us if we were honest with ourselves would actually correct how we did it. Cause we sit back and say, well Jesus, if you came now, you could tweet the gospel, you could fly all over the world, you could, you know, you could have Facebook page and how many friends you'd have. I mean, all this stuff, we'll build you a webpage, we'll do videos, it's gonna be awesome and there's nothing wrong with any of those things, they're all awesome. But Jesus knows everything and he chose to come when he did. And he chose the mode of evangelization, full evangelization, not just the initial proclamation, but the full evangelization of bringing people from the initial proclamation to that encounter all the way to full participation in the sacraments and a lifelong pursuit of holiness. And that was discipleship. He, I mean, if you follow him, it's kind of crazy. I'm shocked when I wrestled with God. I mean, how long does it take us to get into trouble in this book? Right there. Right there. When does he solve it? Almost there. Right there. Oh my goodness, that's a lot of the book. I mean, I would sit back and say, you're the savior of the world, we're in deep, deep trouble. Would you please hurry up? But we're told that in the fullness of time God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, we're told that as it was the perfect time. And then you sit back and say, well, we're so glad you're here. Hurry up, let's go. And he doesn't appear to be in any hurry whatsoever. He is 30 years old. He's living with his mother. Goodness. What are you doing? Right? Love my kids. If they're 30 years old and live in their home, dude, we're gonna have to have a talk. And they did. It was called the wedding feast of Cana. Right? But it was this sense of, oh my goodness, the whole world is waiting for you. You're in no hurry. You took you forever to get here. And you're just dilly-dallying around. What are you doing? Get on with it. And I think if you said to it, get on with it, I think you would say, I have been. I prepared the generations through the prophets, the covenants. And the last 30 years, the last 30 years I was allowing humanity to experience what it was made for on this earth, right relationship. See, mom, St. Joseph and I, we've lived in a little garden of Eden. And it's spectacular. I wanted to show you what I was hoping to give you, the ability to live in right relationships. I'm gonna spend the next three years teaching you how to do it. And I'll spend three hours giving my life so that you'll have the grace to do it. But I'm not wasting time. I'm doing exactly what you want. And then if you look at this model, you're like, you gotta reach everybody. You should be reaching millions of people. Maybe tens of millions of people. I mean, you gotta get busy. And he's got 12. I'm like, oh my goodness. What is wrong with your model? It's so counterintuitive. And it affects the way we do apostolate because we never go where he goes or we're always tempted to not go where he goes. And I wanna share with you the power of discipleship for just a minute. If you had, you could find somebody who had the gift of evangelization and they could reach the gospel in a million people, a million people a year, embraced the gospel, became good Catholics, died and went to heaven. If you could do that, that would be amazing. The problem with that is that as far as I can tell, only once in the history of the world has that ever happened. Jesus didn't do it. Paul didn't do it. Peter didn't do it. Billy Graham didn't do it. John Paul II probably did it while he was Pope. Nobody else has ever done that. So it's a weird gift, right? Not very often. So you're really rolling the dice on like a lotto ticket, right? It's probably not gonna come through. And here's the second problem. A million people a year, while awesome, won't get the job done. 10 million people a year won't get the job done. 100 million people a year are born every year. A million people a year fall behind 99 million people a year. But I wanna share something with you real quickly. Imagine if you took Jesus as model and I'm just gonna do the most simple one of Peter, James and John. So if I could just have, sister, if you'd be willing to stand up for a second. If I could have somebody in that corner stand up for just a second. And somebody in the back, in the very back row, if you could just stand up for a second. Go ahead. So just if, please stay standing. This is what Jesus did with Peter, James and John. Jesus just went and found three guys and invested very deeply. If you could, just touch three people right next to you. And when you're touched on the shoulder, if you could just stand up first, please and join them. So he went and he spent time, lots of time with three people, yeah, 12, yeah, 70, but most of the investment in our inner circle. And he spent time with them. And what if you were to work in your apostolate and you were to be able to invest in just a few. If the three that were just touched could go touch three more people on the shoulder real quickly and stay standing, please. And so now you see that those three people that you've invested in, you're not done investing at the end of a year. You're gonna keep investing. But after a year of investment, well then they could actually begin to help other people. And if the three people that were just touched, if you could just touch three more people and stay standing, that'd be great. And so you work for, let's say a year, on the college campus we think a whole year and we start to work with them. And so now all of a sudden, we start to spend, all those people are spending now another year and they're working with three people, just three. Nobody's doing anything crazy, but you spend a whole year, lots of time, hours with these people. You pray together, you work together. If the three that were just touched could touch three more people, that'd be great. And so what you do is you start to see that all of a sudden you're raising up people who could do the very thing that we need to have done. We don't need more faithful Catholics. We need more fruitful Catholic leaders who could actually love people and care for them. Because if we brought more people in, well we break everything. To bring more people in without being able to care for them is like a guy saying, I'm pro-life, I have fathered children with many women. That's not pro-life. If the three that just touched people could touch the remaining people, we're gonna be done. Thank you, if you could all have a seat. What you just did was amazing. What you just did was amazing. You demonstrated the power of discipleship. It doesn't look like you could reach very many people. Three versus a million? But you set off a tidal wave of energy. By living the model that Jesus said, he didn't raise up a billion followers. He raised up a dozen or so followers and said, go make more and teach them to do the same. He imparted not just faithfulness but fruitfulness. And here's the amazing thing. Imagine that one person, not three, but one person reached two, not three more, but just two, one reached two and a year later the two reached four. A year later the four reached eight. Eight reached 16 the following year. I've done the math in the 25th year, you would reach 33 million people. That's more people than the person who reached a million. And in the 33rd year in the lifetime of Jesus Christ, you would reach eight billion with a B people. Everybody, we're contraception. We gotta stop because there's not enough people to evangelize. And so to recognize this is the model Christ gave us and it allows us to reach the entire earth's population in a single lifetime, which is exactly how much time we have because we don't believe in reincarnation. Oh yeah, those poor people in that third world country, when they come back, we'll get them. They're not coming back. We got one lifetime. There has to be a sense of urgency in what we are doing, in what we are doing. And it's gonna be hard, but here's the amazing thing. We're not asking anybody to do anything crazy. In the model here, we just ask one person to get to know and love three people, to spend a year doing it, not be done at the end of the year, to keep loving them afterwards, but to commission them, to share Christ commission. You, the way I loved you, go love some more people like that. I'll help you, but you have to love them. I can't love them for you because you'll hit a capacity. If you got a great webpage and you had a million people come to it, that's awesome. Who's gonna love them? The webpage can't love them, but in this model, every single person on earth could be known, loved and cared for. And every single person would be knowing and loving and caring for others. And if I remember correctly, that's actually what Jesus told us to do. Love God with all that you have and then love others the way that I've loved you. That's it. We win. But we get distracted from that. That's what we've been trying to do and focused for the last 17 years. And it's how we've reached about 35,000 young people during that period of time. And we're continuing to try to be faithful to the model and it's dependent upon God's grace and the sacraments and God at any point in time. If he doesn't choose to bless the model, it won't work like a great farmer. You can have a bad year. But my conviction is that if we're faithful to God's command, the last thing he said on earth, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, go therefore and make believers. No, that's not what he said. Make students. Make faithful Catholics. No, make disciples. How do you know you're a disciple? You bear fruit. It's exactly what he said in John chapter 15 verse eight. He said this in John chapter 15 verse eight. By this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit. And so prove to be my disciple. How do you prove to be a disciple? Bear much fruit. When you bear much fruit, what happens? God is glorified according to Jesus. And I just gave you the model that I would, I have spent my adult life defending is the only model that yields the kind of fruit we're talking about. And it's the only model that will yield the fruit that the people in our world today need. They're dying waiting for us to give them the message. And when the church becomes who she's meant to be, she'll set the world on fire. People will be knocking down our doors to come to us. And I'll tell you as a catechist, it's a lot of fun to catechize people who had the encounter because they can't wait to learn from you. There's no force feeding going on. They're the ones that are calling you at two o'clock in the morning saying, you'll never guess what I found. You're like, you've got to call me when it's four, 10 o'clock in the morning. Don't call me now. You can't, they're crazy. They're on fire. You can't control them. You're like, I can't stop them. So I'll steer them. You know, it, oh my goodness. We see it on the college campus all the time. Young people on fire for Christ doing the most amazing things. A healthy radicalness for Jesus Christ. And see, Jesus didn't call us for a measured discipleship. I believe it should have a Lord of the universe and so I'm willing to dedicate at least 15% of my time to what you're doing. And I'll agree with at least 80% of what you teach. No, you're it. I'm not. I am all yours. Because remember the parable that I shared with a little earlier? Matthew 13, 44. It's an amazing thing. Matthew 13, 44. Because what it does is it helps us to see that not only is Jesus that treasure hidden in the field and if you, if I, the people we're working with if we were to discover that treasure, well it changed the way we live. We would live from a place of joy and the obligations that we had, we would gladly undertake for the sake of the joy. That's exactly what we're told in Hebrews was the motivation of Jesus. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. But it also gives us the lens. See the church tells us that there are multiple ways to interpret the scripture, the literal sense, but there are spiritual senses and if you look at the Matthew 13, 44 through a spiritual sense and turn it around almost like a pair of binoculars and look at it through Jesus' eyes, well then you are the treasure hidden in the field and for joy over you he sold all that he had so that he could buy you. The great truth about Christianity is not that we love God or serve God, the great truth about Christianity is that God loves you. He thinks you're so amazing and it's really hard so you better know that because you're gonna hit a point in time where your discipleship and the cost of discipleship and the carrying of the cross is gonna be so difficult that you don't know if you can do it and you have to have those moments, those wellsprings of encounter to come back to because discipleship Christianity is free but it's not cheap. The cost of discipleship is heavy. I'll give you an example. About 16 months ago, well I'll back it up about two years ago, I was on vacation, just about two years exactly I was on vacation with my wife and our eight children and we were out on vacation and I've been blessed with eight children, all girls and except for all of them, I actually have eight children, seven are boys and one's a girl and so we're there with our seven sons and our one daughter and my wife looks at me, I'm at the time 53 years old and she says, I'm pregnant and I said, that's awesome. She said, I know it's a little scary too and I said, totally but it's way more awesome than it is scary and so later that evening we went out and bought some, Martinelli's apple cider and poor glasses, they all thought it's the last night of vacation we're having a toast and I said, here's to the army and here's to the navy and here's to your mother who's having a baby and they were, it was awesome and they were all excited and my kids are great, they just couldn't wait and so run the clock forward nine months and so now it's a year ago March and it's the day we're gonna have the baby and so we come in to have the baby and the delivery goes really smoothly and Michael is born and as he's born we didn't do any tests because we have a no send back policy and so but as he was born I thought I might have down syndrome and I looked at my wife and she looked at me and we didn't say anything to one another and I've been at a lot of births and I tell you I have nine kids and I actually delivered Marcus Grotai's third son that's a whole different story, Scott won't go there but so I've been at a few deliveries and I know the joy, the Bible even talks about the joy happens right after delivery and this was kind of a hushed joy and we were kind of looking at one another and nobody's really talking, they're checking Michael to see if everything's there and we're kind of looking and we're holding them and you can't quite tell he's a newborn and I think he might have down syndrome and we waited and about an hour went by and I turned to one of the nurses and I was trying to respect Michael Ann and how she was processing this and I said do you think he has down syndrome and she says there are some indicators that he might have down syndrome and I could tell that Michael Ann just needed some time and I think she didn't feel free to have an emotional response because I was there and I didn't have freedom because I didn't want to make it harder on her I was just kind of raw emotion and I was there for a couple hours and I said I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna make sure the rest of the kids get some dinner and I'll be back in a couple hours and so I walked out of the hospital and I slammed the door to the car and I looked up and I said what are you doing? We got eight kids, one was special needs already, we're exhausted, we're trying to serve you I just don't get what you're trying to do and in that moment I didn't hear a word but in my heart I heard him say I'm calling you out on idolatry, idolatry? What do you mean idolatry? And he said, remember that afternoon? Your sophomore year in college and you told me I could send you anywhere I want? That you'd do anything I asked? This is what I'm asking, trust me and that wellspring immediately changed everything I was like, I'm in, I trust you I don't get it, it might hurt, I don't know and I gotta tell you Michael's bossing he's just so delightful I mean other eight kids, all awesome, all amazing I've never watched a kid that can pull joy and love out of people quicker than Michael can, it's amazing out of my kids, out of my wife he's 16 months old and I was skyping or Facebook and what do you call it? Live chat, what's the one on the phone? FaceTime, thank you, I'm old so I'm FaceTimeing my wife and Michael doesn't speak yet, he says a couple of words and I'm FaceTimeing Michael and he's like da, da, da, da and I'm like pound it and put my fist up and he puts his little fist up and he's just spectacular and but I couldn't see it cause all I could see was the cost of the cross and I had to go back and trust the God who calls us and if we don't live in a world where people are living from that you'll never be able to pay the price when it comes time to pay the price but to live in discipleship and to call people first to the encounter and then to the accompaniment where you walk two by two, three by three we walk and create a tidal wave of spiritual energy in the world well then we could fulfill the new evangelization because brothers and sisters if we became who we were meant to be we would set the world on fire, let's pray and the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen, Father God we thank you for the great love and mercy that you pour out on us and the adventure that you call us to and the world that is waiting for us to be who we're meant to be oh God unleash your grace in the church and our lives in ways that we haven't even dreamed of yet expand our dreams, expand our hopes and then just blow us away how your plan is even bigger than we could imagine awaken the church Lord we have all that we need because we have you but recommit our hearts so that we are all yours we pray this in Christ's name Amen, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, amen All right I've got a time for a few minutes of questions and answers I'm going to ask Christy's right here and she's got a microphone so if we could actually if you could come up and we would encourage you to form a line so we don't have to wait for people to walk over love to take a couple of questions with the last few minutes as we're waiting I just want to tell you I'm deeply convinced that catechism you can't get off of page one before it says moments of renewal in the church are also moments of intense catechesis and so your work is so so critically important to the church but I want to do some Q and A so I don't see anybody moving yet Christy's going to have to start making stuff up if you don't come so I think we've got some people coming yes I just want to commend you for stating that people are well wired as a catechist for all of my adult life I've been doing this over and over again but so often I hear nobody's catechized nobody knows anything so I want to say thank you for that I appreciate you stating that and those of you out there in the trenches our people do know their faith they just don't know how to share it and that's what you're asking us to do and thank you again for that witness right no as you're going I see that I completely believe that at the same time when something's completely well wired if one little thing breaks you can you can shut down a whole portion of it and we did experience for 50 years of a breakdown in catechesis which thanks to you and the bishops and other things that's behind us and it's getting better all the time and it redouble your effort but your truth is there the vast majority of the wiring is there there's a couple of things a little connections a switch that means and then it's all done it's done but it won't be true a generation from now because the people who are being raised without any catechesis can't catechize their kids at all they got to bring them to you so thanks yes thanks for your talk I was just wondering if you had any practical thoughts or suggestions for a model of discipleship as a teacher in a Catholic school yeah I actually think that high school even possibly in middle school but I think high school is actually the first time that discipleship really begins to work in a way that you can actually raise up peer peers to do apostolate where people have made an adult decision yes it's a very young adult decision but you can actually empower them it's college is where we're doing it obviously but I know it can be done in high school because I've met it we had some of our seminarians in Denver implemented our model they had been focused missionaries they've came seminaries they implemented the model in Denver and within two years they had 85 small groups being run by peer leaders 10 men entered the seminary in the first year right out of high school it was amazing to see what's coming on so I do think but the issue is this is the huge deal it's leadership selection we've got to change the way we're doing stuff right right now it's like who would like to teach second grade no experience necessary don't do that you know I'd like to say United Airlines never does that right we need somebody to teach our pilots no experience necessary no they're serious about training their pilots you don't have to have an experience to volunteer but before you get going somebody's got to train you it's got to equip you and they got to make sure that you are a missionary disciple living from a place of encounter because if you're not you know what you're going to teach the rules the rules are all true they're all true they're not what gives life they're what protect life once you have it but what gives life is the person of Jesus Christ and that encounter and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit which I then guard the way that Adam was supposed to guard the garden that's where obedience comes in yeah just to follow up on that as a teacher do you have any and I am the campus minister too which is good do you have any practical tips on like what that looks like to to approach a student for me it's a little I'm not sure if I know how to do it as a teacher and to approach a student and say just how to get that started basically yeah it will be a little bit awkward I have to admit that it always is I remember talking to a friend of mine he's like I like to ask that girl on a date I don't know what to say what do you think I have to say and I said I can give you some words but it's going to be awkward but you're already not dating her so the worst thing that can happen is you're right where you are and when it comes to starting a conversation with somebody about discipleship or the theme we've had within focus is it's a little awkward but heaven is worth the awkwardness and so what you do is you can share a vision with an entire class or with a small group about following Christ this idea of becoming who we're meant to be and say if anybody's interested in doing that I'd love to talk to you about that I mean it's the kind of discipleship is an intentional friendship an example that would be hey let's go run a marathon together we'll train the next six months we'll agree that we're not going to eat donuts and we're not going to smoke cigarettes and we're not going to drink vodka and we're going to run X number of miles a day and we're going to train and we'll hold each other accountable and if you see me one day and I'm sitting around smoking cigarettes eating donuts you're going to say Curtis I thought we were running a marathon and you'll hold me accountable and have a bad day and then we'll run the marathon together discipleship is an intentional friendship that runs a marathon to heaven share the vision and wait for the people to respond to the vision if you're trying to get them to do it they don't have the vision yet share the vision allow the vision to motivate them from the inside and then they'll say hey I'd like to learn more about that and then you can talk to them and they don't want to be nearly as awkward James Curtis I'm wondering what advice you would have for catechists teaching marriage today that's great you know I love catechists who teach marriage because I think they're the best example there's no part of the church's teaching that is more amazing more rich more robust more true than the church is teaching on marriage it's also an enormous amount of teaching an enormous amount of teaching and the temptation we have two major temptations when we teach the one is the Protestant temptation the other one is the Catholic temptation the Protestant temptation is we'll whittle it down and they over whittle so they teach part of the truth the Catholic temptation is let's teach all of the truth but that's like trying to drink out of a fire hydrant I think what we have to do is we have to sell a vision of marriage and then from that vision we can begin to teach as much as we can as long as we have but from that vision the vision that we start on college campus is don't look for guys or girls don't do it what you want to do is fix your eyes on Christ and lay aside every encumbrance and run and after you've been running for a while look around and see who's running with you that's somebody you might want to date because now you're on mission together and you've found somebody that's already running with you don't go there first and now once I've got an issue of okay I want to be a missionary disciple who is going to get married well now I want to talk to them about the truths of the church and you set a vision but I'm convinced James to take nothing away from all the things that need to be taught and they do not all of it needs to be taught I need to teach you how to learn I need to give you enough so that you know and enough so that you know how to how to lead my son got married last year he doesn't know everything he needs to know but he's a self feeder some of that involves calling me up say hey dad I got a question some of it involves calling other people and or just going to prayer or going to read so he knows enough he'll know more 10 years from now but he knows marriages for life both for life and for life and he's on journey and the fun thing about that James is people have talked about focus as vocations and we're very blessed in 17 years 120 women have gone through our program and entered convents 425 men have gone through our program and entered seminary and that's awesome but over a thousand young people have gotten married and there hasn't been a single divorce that's crazy just time for a couple more yes hi thanks so much for your talk Kurt as I really appreciated it I wanted to know specifically kind of a practical aspect question of ministry women ministering to women and men ministering to men because for the situation where I work we have two females who are kind of leading the campus ministry and so we're working on building up male leaders who can minister to other men and that beautiful complementarity of the sexes I know that's really important but I'm wondering if you have any practical tips on how to do that well or the importance of that yeah sure so we have taken a lot of question over the last 17 years about you know why doesn't focus do more co-ed bible studies and it's a great question we live in a culture that for the most part is moving past co-ed into whatever it's called now we've got everybody and so you've got the sense but we really believe what started by something we noticed and then we've learned something as we went what we noticed is that when we sent young attractive virtuous young people onto college campus it was very hard to keep the women away from the men and the men away from the women because they were just very attractive and so we actually implemented a dating fast so the first year you're on campus you don't date at all and that gave some space and then once we did that oh something really cool came to the surface that God gives us four relationships to live within throughout our life and they come in the order they typically come in the order that they come in nature the first one is you're a son or a daughter and that's been attacked by the devil because of the weakness of fatherhood and the breakdown of the home and it's hard and part of Christianity is restoring confidence in the fatherhood the second one is to be a brother or a sister that's also been devastated by our culture most young people don't have brothers and sisters the average Italian young person today does not have a brother does not have a sister and does not have a first cousin they're only children of only children the concept of brotherly love is gone on a natural level I've never been so angry at somebody that I wanted to break their nose but then when somebody else tried to hurt them I wanted to break their nose all of us who have brothers and sisters know that feeling and I could break my brother's nose but you don't touch him and but brotherly love is actually a foundation of what it means to love and so what we've done is we skipped the brother-sister relationship all together and we've moved right to sexuality and so all young people's relationships all of our relationships have been radically sexualized unless we're clinging to the gospel and so we do gender-specific studies to teach people how to love his brothers and sisters I don't think that's the only way to do it and it's not always the way we do it because of circumstances but we think that's a really important step and then the next relationship would be a husband or wife and then a father or a mother and you walk through life and there are all those relationships under attack but we really believe that if we can and it's best to allow men and women to have space as men and women you could also do co-ed stuff but I don't know what your experience is I can tell you and I'll just be very specific about one issue when you're doing a Bible study with college students you're sitting in a room full of people that are addicted to pornography probably every single one of them at least actively engage if not addicted if you leave that in a co-ed study you will not be able to address that boulder I promise you you separate the men and the women in a matter of two or three weeks some guy's gonna say I don't know what's going on but I gotta tell you guys I am in a world of hurt right here and everybody else will be like me too brother oh now light now we can get to the sacraments now we can get support now oh my goodness it's awesome but we've got there's boulders in our life that the male-female dynamic actually aggravates cause you wanna be hey I've got my act together and you don't wanna be vulnerable and so we just removed all of that it's not necessary we've just found it really helpful there are other ways to do that I'm sure yes okay so something that I feel like has come out in your talk along with many others is the importance of strong catechists and leadership and volunteers and also reducing the amount of teens that you're working with so that it can be more of a discipleship not you in 50 teens but you in three teens or 12 teens so essentially I feel like I'm kind of choosing between the lesser of two evils because I can either up my number per good leaders or take a chance with leaders who aren't so great and reduce those numbers and I was just looking for some advice on that that's an awesome question and the answer is no no it's an awesome question but this is what changes is that Jesus worked with the three but when he went to work with the 12 he took the three with him and then he worked with the 12 and then when he went to talk to the 70 he took the 12 with him and then he worked with the 70 and then when he gave the sermon on the mount he never said you guys wait here I'm gonna go give the sermon on the mount no he was like come on let's go and he was right with them all the time and then he occasionally pulled them back but what he was doing is he's raising up co-laborers so the issue is you're never saying no to anybody the most exclusive way you can ever do it is say I have to have all these people because you're gonna hit a saturation point sociologists say 25, 50, 75, 100 at some point in time you're done you actually have no more room in your life for the kind of relationship that could walk somebody back into the church so that's actually a radically exclusive at a relatively low number this is open-ended it says if I invest in you and we're on mission together we can partner on this and now we create open-ended non-exclusive so what you do is you get if you're working in high school you get your juniors and your seniors and you share with them a vision about what it means to lead somebody one step ahead and you call them to the next level of leadership which is peer leadership and they come alive everybody in this room knows that you love your faith more when you teach it than when you just believe it but we rob our people of that joy when we teach them exclusively we've got to raise up teachers they're not gonna be as good as us but they can be better than us with time and when the gifts of the Holy Spirit take root in their soul they can be even better Jesus said that it's good that I go greater things than I, you will do oh my goodness I mean I would believe it if Scott Hahn told me that but Jesus Christ said that just kidding I don't really believe but I mean that's an amazing statement so we're talking about something that is radically open ended it's the most inclusive in fact if you run the model and think how many people just in your parish or your school how many people do you really have to reach because it's not the people who come I like to talk to pastors how many of the people are your parishioners every single person Catholic non-Catholic who lives in your parochial boundaries is your parishioner you have fatherly responsibility there's no current pastoral model that'll account for that number of people except discipleship you're gonna have to do that model and it seems like you're saying no but you're not because if you do with great love I'm taken by the person of Matthias Matthias is there he follows Jesus for I don't know days, weeks, months and then all of a sudden Jesus goes up and prays all night and he comes back down and he's like okay I gotta pick the disciples you and you and you you and you and Matthias is like oh darn and what he didn't do he's like I quit that's it I'm going home no, Matthias follow faithfully so that we see in the book of Acts when Judas falls they're like okay from the group that was there from the beginning let's raise up some people who could replace him Matthias so we're never saying no but sometimes we're saying wait kind of like when my daughter brings a guy home right you know he's like I'm not saying no I'm just saying I will kill you if you don't wait so first things first you know first comes love then comes so thank you all right I think we have time for one more hi I'm a seminarian studying for the priesthood awesome thank you for being radical I was I was just wondering if you could speak how do you think that the priest can support best support catechists in his or her parish or in his or her diocese I think that the way that a priest can support catechists is to either disciple those catechists or disciple people who are discipling those catechists it is the best way to support anybody because no other no other model will include everyone there will always be people excluded and so to be able to see that it is not how much you know right now if you have had that encounter for Christ and you long to be faithful think about John chapter 6 Jesus gives this amazing teaching on the Eucharist and everybody walks away and you know it well right this is what it says say they all walked away and then Jesus turned and said will you leave too and Peter said Lord I think the word you're looking for is transubstantiation right that's what he's that's yours doesn't say that no it didn't say that Peter had no idea what Jesus was talking about he's like what where else am I gonna go you've got the words of everlasting life I trust you I don't know what you're talking about but I'm here okay you can teach that person and Jesus did one year later to the day we're told John 6 is Passover and the Last Supper's one year later on Passover that Jews like Catholics liturgical people and Jesus takes bread in his hands and says this is my body and Peter's like told you he would explain himself told you and that's what we do fidelity, faithfulness is the key here loyalty to Christ I trust the church because I've given my life to Christ and he gave me the church and so with that heart of a student well then what do you do you disciple them and if you've got that faithfulness that radicalness to say I trust you period not just with my knowledge but with my life well then I can learn and oh my goodness it's the best time in the history of the world to be a Catholic if you're a teacher the Catechism the Catholic Church all the great teachers as Scott and Jeff and the Catechical program here and the Augustine Institute and Focus the great stuff online this is the best time in the world to teach the Catholic faith period easiest, best greatest resources ever but we're trying to teach people who don't care yet and so if we just flip that switch everything we do gets much easier and so I we've really been encouraging I've been very gratified that the bishops are now asking us to go to the seminaries and teach the seminarians how to disciple so that they can learn that process while they're a seminarian and then we're being asked now to speak at the convocations and start to training with the priests because they're recognizing I can't shepherd 4,000 families but I could raise up a handful of people who could raise up a handful of people who could raise up a handful of people and you saw how quickly that I mean we could fill a much bigger room in just a couple more cycles come to defending the faith we'll show you it's amazing to see how quickly you reach the world in a very short amount of time and so I really think I'm putting all my marbles there because I don't think when I read the Great Commission Jesus said with all the authority in heaven and earth I'm gonna give you two options discipleship or programs? He never said that there's nothing wrong with programs as long as they're building up disciples but if you're doing programs instead of disciples you'll never get where you need to go and you'll be in disobedience to the most authoritative statement ever stated in the history of the world so if you wanna bear fruit and I'll ask this question as I leave the stage and I wanna express it first in a statement I am overwhelmed with gratitude at the heroism that you exercise on a regular basis on a daily and weekend and week out basis just love people and they don't always love you back you invest in people and they don't always appear to be responsive to your investment and I wanna stand and just declare my gratitude and my awe for your willingness to do that that being said if you're going to invest the time and the energy if you're going to make the personal sacrifices is there anyone in here who would like to bear more fruit? All of us all things being equal we all wanna bear more fruit and the model that Christ gave you I challenge, just intellectually to argue with it but to put it into practice the model I just shared with you is the single most effective model bar none to bear the most fruit God bless you