 Chris, I'm at each office here at Franciscan University of Studentville, and I'm not alone. I have a very special guest tonight, Mr. Chris Stafanik. Chris, say hello to everybody. How's it going? Thanks for having me on, John. Chris, we're excited that you're here. You know, our topic tonight is about rebuilding the church and the mission of our conference office and where that comes from and how we live that out, not just through our conference outreach, but how all of us live that out. And I really appreciate Chris, because Chris really is somebody I've seen for many years now in service of the church, building the church. And he's had a lot of job descriptions, a lot of titles and ministry, but I think the thing I appreciate most about Chris is that he's just a brother in Christ. And it's always great when you share the work of the Lord with a brother in Christ like Chris. So he brings a ton of experience just on different levels, from Paris to the Dallas, and now with his national ministry, which I'm hoping he'll share a little bit about later on in the webinar. So welcome, Chris. We're glad you're here. And for all of you out there in webinar land, thank you for joining us tonight here on this broadcast. It is an exciting topic. You know, we look around the church right now. We see areas where faith has grown cold and hearts have grown cold, and the love of God is barely a flicker in some places, even in our own parishes. And we can probably want to think that, man, this is just probably the worst time to be Catholic. You know, there's so many challenges inside the church and so many challenges outside the church. And the reality is it's not the worst time to be Catholic because there's never a bad time to be Catholic. And there's always been, in every generation and every season of the church, a call to all Catholics to step up and heroically go forth and take on this mission of renewing and rebuilding the church and making it all that Christ desires. Before we jump into too much further, I want to do two things. Number one, I just want to kind of give you a little tutorial on your go-to webinar control panel because we want this webinar to be as interactive as possible. So as you scroll down your side of your screen and you see the webinar control panel, you'll see a little button, a little arrow point into the word, question. And what you can do, and on the other side, you'll see like a little square with an arrow sticking out of it. Click on that square with the arrow sticking out of it and it'll like expand into like a bar across your screen where you can type in questions for Chris or myself at any time during the webinar. Any comments that you want to make, any insights that you have, anything that you want us to clarify on, just type it in there. And we'll be glad to answer your questions and respond. And we want to make sure that, in the midst of all our crazy rambling that we actually say something that you want to hear. So if you have a question, please, by all means, enter that question right in there. Did you have a compliment? All in cap. Yes. A critique, I put it in 6.0. Yes, big bolded compliments for Chris. And try to keep your criticism of me to the middle. Oh, God, I'm afraid. I believe we're going to be further. I just want to ask the Lord to bless our time. So let's just come before the Lord and ask him to pour out grace. Namely, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and then a good and gracious God. We turn to you now during the season of Lent as we continue to prepare our hearts and ask you to rebuild us that we would be able to celebrate the mission of Francis Union versus Christian Outreach Office and the student conferences, but also be able to embrace in a deeper way the mission that you give each one of us to go rebuild the church, to be that living witness, a living stone in your temple. Help us, O Lord, with your grace to have the courage, the wisdom, the strength and the love necessary to go forth as joyful disciples, bringing your hope, your peace, and your salvation to the world. And we ask this in all your name, Jesus. Amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. So before I jump in, Chris, what have you been up to lately? What are you going on, man? A little too much, kind of juggling all the balls, but you know, I'm trying to stay occupied, not busy. You know, a good priest friend of mine, I've asked me, you've got a lot going on, no, no, I'm occupied. And I've taken on that phrase repeatedly to myself regularly. Busy means I'm frazzled, I'm scattered, I'm doing a lot of different things. Occupied means I have one thing I'm doing. One thing only is required. My eyes are on the Lord, my heart's set on Him, and I'm doing whatever the heck He wants. That could take the form of doing a million different things, but it's only one thing in my heart, and then I'll freak out. So I'm occupied today with putting the final edits on a new TV show we are coming out called Real Life Catholic, which shows the beauty of faith in everyday life. Season one is 10 episodes going everywhere from South Louisiana to Hawaii to Sheboygan. So you know, all these places around the country showing Catholics living out their faith, and how amazing that makes daily life. So that's it, and we're shooting to get that on Netflix. So pray that that happens, and looking good, you know? But definitely on EWTN and YouTube for sure. Cool, cool. Yeah, you know, a good priest friend of mine said, busy is an acronym for burden under Satan's yoke. Yeah. You don't wanna be busy because when we're busy, you're right. You know, we're being pulled by false desire, is the pressures we put ourselves under. Once, yeah, I like that, let's be occupied with the will of the Lord, and the one thing that He's calling us to do in each moment of the moment. I like that. The main thing that's keeping me, the main thing I'm occupied with, with our ministry in general, like the TV shows a special project right now, main thing is these parish renewal events called Reboot Live, where we focus on the basic gospel message and inviting people to it. And we're doing that in a different state every week around the country. We work with parishes for six months leading up to the event to train them to invite their whole neighborhood back to church. Because of that process, we're seeing small towns get 1,000 people at this event. Not from a big region, but their neighbors, their cousins, the people who don't go to church usually. And I'll tell you, man, that's just, I never get tired of that event. We're seeing conversions happen every week. It's so exciting. Just watching the grace of God in action. So that's the main thing. That's the main thing with our ministry. That's cool. That's cool, man. Yeah, we're talking about being occupied. You and I are both graduates of Franciske University. You, I work for the conferences. I speak at the adult conferences. You're hosting youth conferences and you've been involved for many years and you've got other ministries and everything. You know, we can kind of look at the mission of what we do here through our conference office and really trace it back to, first to St. Francis himself, right? He's a patron of Franciske University. And when we think about his influence on who we are and our spirituality and what we received here as students at Franciske and how that has really exploded, not just through our conference outreach, but in alumni like yourself and taking up that mantle. You know, it was back in the 1200s when St. Francis was first going through his initial stages of conversion. And he had a couple of key moments where, you know, he was growing, growing and God just kind of gave him that nod. And he just went further than he had ever had and felt more deep in the mountain. And on this particular day in his life, he was walking through the streets of the Cece and wanted to go into the Church of St. Damian to pray. Just really felt drawn in his spirit to go pray. And as he knelt before the San Damiano Cross, he asked the Lord to give him, you know, perfect faith, perfect charity, right wisdom so he could know the Lord's holy will. And he asked for the grace to do that. And in the silence that followed that prayer, the Lord interrupted it by speaking directly into his heart. Francis told me to build my house, which is in need of repair. And it was such a key moment. Like he went into a state of ecstasy after, you know, after hearing the voice of the Lord and contemplating those words as he prayed before the cross. And so after he came out of his state of ecstasy and ended his prayer, he took the Lord at his word and went down the street, found this little chapel, the Porscheuncle. It was literally the roof was collapsing on the place. And he thought, well, that's what the Lord was going to do. Go rebuild this little church. And now he went to Assisi in the middle of the downtown area. Here's this huge, huge basilica. And in the middle of it is the tiny chapel. They built this huge, this huge edifice. This huge glorification. And in the middle of it is this humble little chapel covered with painted frescoes. And just, it's just an amazing thing to go and see. And that was, that St. Francis built. And of course, was that? It's just my boy. We still often think, we think we're in the right track. And we are, because we just do what's right before us. But we think we got the whole plan in mind. The strategic plan is to keep your eyes on the Lord. You're like, it's a joke to think like five years ago, there's no way I'd guess I'd be where I am right now in the ministry. Doing the things, focusing on the things I am. We just keep going. But what was so cool about what St. Francis did is while he was building this little church, he needed buildings of wise. So he went and took a bunch of his dad. His dad was a famous cloth maker. He took a bunch of his dad's cloth. And he sold it so he could buy buildings of wise. And his dad was furious with him and dragged it before the local bishop and accused him and said, do something with my Renegade son. And in the midst of that, St. Francis had another workloads conversion. He stripped down into his birthday suit and renounced his wealth. Announced all claims. You know, he was raised in a very extraordinary and lost lifestyle of the best of food, drink parties, clothing, everything. He had childhood dreams of being a chivalrous knight and winning wars and being recognized for his bravery and his courage. And then now down the road, after he had really started to follow a lord, all this stuff meant nothing to him. He just kind of really make it into the world he came and make it up from this world back into living in the kingdom of God. He went. And then it caused a stir, but it also caused people to take notice. And other guys were coming along and said, hey, you're building that church, gonna help. And he started forming this community of men and women who were in support of what he was doing. And as he was praying and as he was building, his heart was drawn deeper into Christ to the point where he was finally, I mean, I think this was kind of a turning point. God had, you know, he had always had St. Francis. He always had an aversion to ugliness. Especially lepers, didn't want anything to do with lepers. And in one particular day, the Lord said, I want you to go and minister to the lepers. And he found a leper on the side of the road and was able to embrace him and kiss him. And he wrote in his personal memoirs afterwards, a thing that was most repugnant to him in the world became the sweetest of things. And when we look at, and where I'm going with all this is when we look at the call to go rebuild the church and what we're talking about, you know, in St. Francis' progression, it's like, okay, first I want to build a church, then I'm going to try to renew the church, but in the end it's about how can I align myself most with Christ and become a living stone that God calls me to be first. Beautiful stuff. Hey, man, I'm involved out, man. When you think about St. Francis and his life and his witness, you know, what stirs your heart? His simple focus on the gospel message, and it's all he's trying to do is just live it out. He didn't have this complex rule of life drawn up. He wasn't called a Franciscan, he was, he was a Franciscan. What was the OG Franciscan? Yeah, the name came later after him. He was just trying his best to live out the simplicity of the gospel. I think so often in our own personal lives, in the church, we get lost in all the implications of the gospel, in the life and the beauty and the rituals and all the grandeur, everything that comes from the gospel, and we try to give that to the world. On the flip side, we have a world that gets lost in all the issues. You know, we come with this whole big picture and the world thinks, you know, the Christianity, the gospel, it's about, the church is teaching on some political issue, on a particular moral issue, you know, it's about this thing, this problematic thing that happened in the history of the church, what do you say about that? You know, but at the heart of all this is something very simple. It's the fact that God's calling us to relationship with himself. He's given his life to us, He's calling us to give our whole lives unreservedly back to him. That's what Francis embodied in his life. He was living on his baptismal call. That's all he was doing. So it's that simple focus that I struggle for in my daily life, when I struggle for it in my ministry, and that I've made our whole ministry about with the regular live events where we're seeing convergence happen. You know, I gave an event a couple weeks ago, my cousin came, we got into captain's school for years and years. He got into the church, well, he stopped going for a while, he got into sacraments, you know. But he said, Chris, I've never thought of Catholicism as having anything to do with my relationship with God before tonight. What? How are we missing this? You know, I think the way we convey it and the world perceives us, it's ballooned out into all this exterior stuff that has come from the heart of the gospel. So I've seen Francis' life, what I'm trying to do in my life and work, which is return to the heart of it all. It never gets old. No, it doesn't. And people in there, as people look at the life of St. Francis, right? They're so quick to say, well, he was a poor beggar. He lived in poverty or they look at him or, he was a nature boy. He liked to run around with squirrels and other furry creatures and birds like to land on him for some reason. He attracted birds and other small, little creatures. Father's Neske, right? Well, he kills them after he attracts them, right? He's a... There's issues there, yeah. I've been hungry. But with St. Francis, he didn't embrace poverty for the poverty's sake. He didn't embrace poverty because he thought poverty was cool. He embraced Christ and because of his relationship with Jesus Christ, because of that intimacy, because of that love relationship that you're talking about, Chris, the heart of it all was so strong and because of the heart of Christ beat so deeply in him, he was able to choose poverty out of love for Christ. He didn't choose love for Christ out of his poverty. And I think when we are looking at how do we progress spiritually and how can we become people who bring renewal to our families and people we work with, the first and foremost thing that we need to do is, like you're saying, is get deeper into our own personal, life-changing relationship with Christ. Yeah, that's it. That's it. When you're in a fight, when you're going to fight or flight mode, your extremities get kind of cold. You'll notice this if you have a lot of anxiety, someone cuts you up in the freeway and you think it's about to kill you. Feel your hands afterwards, feel your fingertips, they get cold. Because the blood just rushes right away from all your extremities to your heart, so that you can fight for longer or run for longer. But it starts to go where it's really needed to keep you alive. You say the beginning of the webinar, there's a lot of people who can look at this time in the church, in the world, and say, what a horrible time to be Catholic. No, I think this is a time where God is calling us back to the heart of it all. And if we get that right, the church will be renewed and the world will be renewed. Because the gospel message has lost none of its potency. If we don't get that right, we're toast. But that's exciting, because we're gonna get it right. It's another option. The gates of hell won't prevail against the church. Absolutely, absolutely. And I think of, once again, on our conference outreach, in our day and tonight, Chris, the person probably that would say, had such a profound influence on us and our vision of ministry was Father Michael Scanlon, right? You talk about a man after God's own heart, a man who in so many ways embodied the spirit of St. Francis. You know, when Father Mike had the renewal of his heart and his mind through a profound encounter with the person of the Holy Spirit. You know, it wasn't enough for him to go, wow, I can check that off. That's a great thing. I'm so happy that I have the Holy Spirit at work in my life. He immediately turned all that God was doing inside of him outwardly and said, I wanna bring as many people as I can into this new outpouring of the spirit so they can have this in alive and a deep, rich life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ. And part of that was, he said, I want to get priests on board. This has changed my priesthood. It's changed the way I view myself, my vocation. So he brought a couple hundred priests to Francis University one summer, 1975. Father Mike and they didn't have a schedule for this conference. They didn't know what they were gonna do. They would actually get together during dinner and they would pray with one another and someone would say, hey, I think the Lord wants me to share that. And they'd all say, yeah, this one's good, go. And then they would have their evening. And what are you gonna speak on? Well, I think the Lord's asking me to speak on that. Oh, cool, go do that. That sounds great. Oh, man, that's cool. And they just were also kind of let the spirit lead every part of that. And then at the end of this priest retreat, this priest conference, you know, the priests were like, we need something like this for our young people. And Father Mike, he's like, I'm not a youth minister. I don't know any young people. I work here at the college. I know my college students, but I don't know how to get high school students interested in Jesus. I don't know how to get high school students to want to come to something like this. And remember, this was the 70s. You know, Catechesis insane for a decade and a half. And it was just a lot of things that were kind of broken and a little off in the church. And yet all the priests stood up and said, Father Mike, all you have to do is put on the conference. We'll bring the teens. And so Father Mike, not knowing really what he was doing, but knowing that the Lord was calling him to do it, said yes. Mm. He said yes. He never said no to the Lord. He said yes once again in faith. He said yes. And out of that- How many young people have been to the conferences? Well, this is the beauty of it. You know, I look at what Father Mike said yes to, you know, to take a step in faith. And this year we're gonna put on 25 youth conferences across the United States, coast to coast and two up in Canada. We're gonna serve 60,000 teens and their leaders at our youth conferences. Since Father Mike's initial yes, over a million people have attended the Studentville Conference. Every year, every year, the ordination class out of all the priests that are ordained in the United States, 15% say, I heard the call to the priest that had a Studentville Conference. You're kidding. Just like you, there's guys like me who are now second generation. You know, we received so much from being students here at the university. And now, I'm lucky to be back here serving this mission. I spent 15 years doing youth ministry and parishes because I had instilled in me that I had to take on that mission. And you're, and Chris, you're posting. Oh, thank you, Jesus. Yeah. Man, it doesn't have to pull me away. Most of all, the impact pulls me away. Because I know those numbers wouldn't blow me away if it made a shallow impact. I know from years of working with the conferences, live, it changes these things. Because it focuses on the core message of the gospel. It focuses on the, you know, answering the greatest question of our era. Why should I even care? We as a church get too caught up in answering a billion other questions that underlying all those questions is, why should I care anyway? So I'm gonna throw this, that, and the other thing at you. But really, I'm just asking, why the heck, why is it even relevant? Why are you bothering me? Right? That basic evangelization answers that question. Why should I care? That's what we built the church. And I love the story you were just sharing about how Father Michael, you know, all those conferences emerged. I mean, this is, and this is something I saw in his spirit, something I see in Francis's spirit, something I see at the university. And I'm not saying this is a cheesy salesman at the university, because I don't work for the university, right? I went there to be part of the conferences. And every level at the university, you see people who talk about Jesus as if they personally know him. They don't talk about him, like he's a topic, like he's a theory, but a friend. Someone they're an intimate relationship with. That's how evangelization happens. You and me are blessed to do professional evangelization. It happens by presenting it in just the right way to convince people and move hearts. But for the majority of the church, the reason a million people have been to those conferences, it's not, we're not inviting a million people. It's because of people who are out there in the trenches, live in their Catholic life and actually talking about Jesus like they know him. The early Christians call themselves the living ones. It's people being out in the world that's living ones, where people look at their eyes and say there's something different in you. It's that friend you're talking about. Not to sound cheesy, but you know, it is, it's that heartfelt connection totally transforms the church. Yeah. Now Father Mike, the beauty of and death came very much in a very Franciscan way. And in this way, I think Father Mike reflected St. Francis so well. His entire ministry was built on two words, preach Jesus. And he never went off message. He never missed an opportunity to tell somebody about what Jesus was doing in his life. He never missed the opportunity to give glory to the name of Jesus in his preaching, whether it be a noonday mass homily or a keynote at a conference or an opportunity just to be talking with students as they're walking to and from class and he'd be walking up the sidewalk. He was always preaching Jesus. And the Franciscans attributed to St. Francis, although our Franciscan scholar's question of validity, it's still a good proverb for the Franciscans is that you should preach always and if necessary use those words. You know, that our lives should be preaching the reality that God is alive and that he's madly in love with us. That he's in love, you know, and the way we live, it should be coming home. That's it. Is that dripping from your personality from your every word is emanating from you? And not in a forced way. If you're living that, if we're not busy, but we're occupied, if we're spending time in daily prayer, it's gonna naturally come out of us. As long as we get over the hump of our self-consciousness, I mean, sometimes we wanna hold back those casual words that just show the world who we are. I mean, we have a world that constantly tells everyone to be who you are, unless you're a Catholic, right? And we go along with that. I have no idea why we keep going along with that. I was at a campus in Jersey. The director of inclusivity and diversity there said, 67% of our campus is Catholic. They're all afraid to tell anyone. What? Well, why? I know why, because it's caught up in all the exterior things. As soon as you say I'm Catholic, they think, oh, I got you pegged on a million different issues. It's us that turned the ship around, that rebuilt the church and says, you don't have me pegged at all. Being Catholic means I'm in love. That's what it means. And if you understand that context, you understand the rest. If you don't get that context, the rest is rules, regulations, and rituals that have nothing to do with life. Once you get that context, dude, I'll accept the rest. I'll accept anything that Jesus says. Yeah. Well, I think that's true. When Francis came to his United States visit, it was amazing how many people got frustrated with the fact that he didn't come out and say, okay, guys, the church is teaching on gay marriage or the church is teaching on abortion. Let's remember these teachings. Let's be sure that we know who we are through our theology. He wasn't interested in leading with dogmatic statements of truth. Not because they're not true and not because he doesn't believe them, but because the world that we live in is looking at the church and says, I don't care if you're true unless I know that you're good and beautiful. The three aspects of God, goodness, beauty, and truth. And we already live in a relativistic society. Chris, you've spoken more on relativism and how it affects young people than most people I know, but we know that if you come up in front of a group of young people, probably the first thing that will get them to tune up more than anything is if you start with, and this is what the Catholic Church teaches as the truth, you know? Because they're- You're a little old as beckons. Yeah, exactly. But see, they're waiting to see is the church good? Is the church beautiful? And that's where we come in. We are the reflective facets of the beauty of God's love when we let it shine forth and we reflect that glory to the world. That's our job. That's our job. The beauty of stained glass is that it doesn't really look all that great unless you're inside the church and the sun shining through the windows. From the outside, stained glass can look kind of dark, but we are the ones who are supposed to go outside of the church and shine that brightness and say the church is a beautiful place because Jesus is there. And I'm a different person because Jesus is here. And come with me and see. I found Jesus in this church. Come with me and I will show you where I find what makes me who I am. And unless we go forth and become an axis. Come and see. Come and see. And there's times I wish there would be more clarity from the Pope on different things. However, he has spoken clearly about abortion, about gender, about marriage. He's not getting caught up in like, the world wants us to constantly repeat what we say about that a million times. Why? Because the world wants to make that an excuse for not coming to Jesus. Not being challenged to live different. And they want permission to write us off right there. So yeah, Pope Francis lands here and the whole country saying, yeah, but what about this? What about this? What about this? And he kind of dodges past it all. And he's trying to say, hey, yeah, but wait. What about the fact that God's calling you to a relationship with himself? What about that? Because that's all that matters in the end. And the rest only makes sense in that context. Like marriage. I often think about marriage in light of evangelization. And vice versa, you know? Outside the context of love, all I have is a burdensome relationship that takes up my time and gives me rules and limits my freedom. In the context of the love story, that I need to stay rooted in, that I need to go for dinner with my wife to keep myself rooted, take discipline to be occupied with that. Instead of busy with the stuff of marriage. When I get the context, the rest is, if it's not a joy, it's a light burden. It all makes sense. It's not something I resent. That's the gospel. That's Christianity. If we get that love relationship, Pope Francis recently said, we're in the midst of a love story. If we don't understand that, we've understood nothing of what the church is. If we get that, the rest is, you know, it's easy to take. It makes sense, the burden's light. I agree. I think the reason in the Garden of Eden, even, you can trace the fall of man. Satan went into the mind of Adam and Eve and twisted God's words. He didn't go to their hearts. Because in their hearts, if they would have been, if they would have focused on where their hearts were with the Lord and with God's presence in their life, there's no way that Satan could have messed with it. But he started up here, getting them to doubt. And they kept it right here, on God's commands. And he twisted it and he twisted it. And this is why loving the Lord from our hearts, not just an ascent of saying, I agree with the teaching of the church, but do I love the Lord from my heart? Am I willing to lay down my life for this guy? Am I willing to serve this one I call Jesus? And change the way I see things, change the way I treat other people, because they are a reflection of the one I love. Am I willing to say no to passions because they wound the one I love? You know, and Adam and Eve taking it back to, well, it doesn't matter what you say. I know this guy loves me and I trust him. There was no way that Satan could have tricked them into eating the apple. But of course we're weak and we're probably prone to die. And I'm looking forward to the Holy Saturday celebration where we can celebrate the old happy fault that one is such a great savior. But we only get to pray it once a year, so I love praying it. I know, I know. Yeah, we probably wouldn't have done it any better if we'd been in the garden. We would have been lining up, you know, to make it pretty solid. I would say to live out the most pathetic lent ever. Yeah. You know, all the resolutions to give up things and sacrifice, I don't know how St. Francis did it, boy. It's weak, but the Lord, He consistently leads me through the best lent ever to just by different ways of purifying that I didn't see coming. Yeah. But yeah, but all that's in the context of this is not about my perfect love for Him, boy. Thank God I'm gonna be toast. It's about His love for us. First down in 419, constantly as a reminder of who we really are, it's we love because He first loved us. You know, this is not, we didn't initiate this. We didn't make this up. We didn't create this idea of God's love. We know it because He's loved us first. You know, how could we even comprehend something as beautiful of love unless we actually had experiences. People say it's too good to be true. It's too good to seem true for the beauty of it. It is true. It almost seems too good to be true, but it is. Really? It's the stuff of fairy tales. Exactly. Who'd make this up? Yeah, the prophets could have tried to imagine it for a thousand years. They wouldn't have thought up something this good. I mean, this is what we have to offer in the world. This is why people need to be proud to be Catholic again. This is why the church needs to reset around the gospel again. And instead of being known as the church of the issues and the church has been caused. Yes, we have the issues we have to cause. Don't get me wrong. It doesn't mean we don't speak about life issues or marriage. We have to show the gospel embraces every facet of the human experience. But first and foremost, we have to be known as the church of the gospel. Otherwise, we're noisy gongs playing symbols. What the heck are we doing? We're just another political group out there vying for their own interests. That's how the world perceives us. And then they write us off. We have to be the church of the gospel again. It has a challenge to give to each individual heart that stands before each heart with Jesus Christ saying, we're calling you to something. We're viking you to something. Love you're made for. Amen. So, you know, when you come to a stupid little conference, and I'm gonna kind of shift gears after I make this statement and talk about, maybe Chris, we can maybe encourage some of the people on this webinar. What are some things that we as everyday Catholics, away from, you know, the big picture of conferences, but what can everyday Catholics do to rebuild the church? But before I do that, I wanna say like, you know, we have committed ourselves to one thing here in this office and that's never cut the roots that caused us to grow. You know, we will always be an office that prays. You know, we do two or three different retreats a year to discern topics and themes. There are literally thousands of hours of prayer being put on by speakers and our team here in the office, priests that support us, people that are out there in the field, thousands and thousands of hours of prayer and discernment and conversation and listening to the Lord that go into coming up just like, what are we gonna do at one conference? Why? Because these are Christ conferences. They're not, they don't belong to me. They don't belong to Francis King University. They were stewards of something that's greater than us. And we are blessed to be able to stand on the shoulders of giants like Father Michael Scanlon. And then the second thing is, when you come to a student conference, you are going to hear the love of Jesus Christ preached with boldness and confidence because that's where it's at. You know, the truth is an extension of the love of Jesus Christ. It's a manifestation of who he is as a person. And until you get to know that heart, that heart that beats for you, that heart that bled for you, the heart that was pierced for you and burns like the sacred heart icon, burns with love for you. Until you get to know that heart personally, you're not gonna have much of a regard for the truth that Jesus speaks. Because that truth is a part of that heart. And people will love the truth after they come to know that the person behind that truth has died for them and has risen from the grave so that they can live without fear and live in confidence of knowing that they are loved by a God and has a perfect plan for their lives. That gives people hope. It gives people joy and it gives people the courage to live the truth. Not just, okay, I agree with the church, but I'm gonna live that truth. Today we can say, even Satan knows the scriptures. Even it's- But it is what we do. Yeah, but it's what we do. It's not about how much we know. And it's about how much you're willing to love. There's no love, there's no humility, but he knows it all. Amen. And so we got a number of people on this webinar with us, you know, we have all, you know, the thing is the call to build the church is not the exclusive property of a handful of people, you know, I think we're blessed to have many talented people at Christ being raised up by the Lord in this generation to reach a broad audience. But you know, there's still no substitute for the one-on-one interactions that need to take place to engage in a company of people on a spiritual journey that will lead them back to the arms of Jesus Christ. So Chris, you know, what tips, advice, kind of encouragement could you give people on this webinar to how can they maybe discover, cultivate and live out their personal call to go rebuild the church? Stop underestimating how important you are. Stop underestimating the power that God wants to work in the world through you. And when people hear those words, the first thought is, well, maybe you think God's calling me to preach the gospel from a stage like you? No, that's not what I'm saying. I think we get it all wrong. We use the world standards to judge effectiveness. God is calling every single person to be a witness to the gospel in those simple ways every day. And don't confuse simple with simplistic. Simple is powerful. You know, so you think, well, what can I possibly do? Just say, God bless you, the God that grows this door gives me change? Yeah, do you know how powerful that can be? You know, what can I do? Tell a friend I'm praying for him when he tells me I had a bad day? Yeah, and then again, I could change someone's life. You know, or a non-believing friend to invite them to church with you. These things are life changing. But what if they get angry? Okay, if they get angry, that's their problem, right? I mean, I'm not saying be obnoxious about it. But sometimes we, I'd say most often they're not gonna get angry with you. We impose our discomforts with sharing the gospel on other people. You know, if you're gonna share about a sport you're passionate about, the person not passionate about that sport, they'll hear you out, but they're not gonna get angry. Let it be the same with Jesus. A lot of times they'll respect you. You know, I, this great quote from Penn, you know, Penn Teller, Penn's an atheist. As a famous magician, comedian, atheist. And he said, how much do you have to hate someone to not evangelize them? To believe that eternal life is possible and to not tell them about that? So a lot of people who don't even believe might respect if we just drop a little line about Jesus here and now. So, you know, and even if they get angry, you planted a thought about God in that person's mind. You have no idea the ripple effect of that. Where that could end from the eternal perspective. You know, the most important people in scripture are the nameless people. The most important part of salvation history, the secret sauce, is the most boring part of the Bible, it's the genealogies. It's that long list of names that you don't recognize any of them. Really, that's the billion Catholics in the world. You know, at the end of the day, it's even the people we look up to and think they're a big deal Catholic. Give me a break. You know, I mean, people at a conference, they leave the conference, no one down the street knows who the heck they are. You know, there's no real big deals going on here. The big deal is Jesus, all right? And we all have our small part to play with. The small part is a huge, the small part we have to play is a big deal. Don't underestimate the power of just having a conversation like me and John are right now. We can see that John, I love talking, so inspired by it, because you can see it in your face. You talk about the sacred heart of Jesus like he's close to you, like you know him. That's not something you can hide if you try to. Whether you're talking to a believer or an unbeliever. And when you talk about it with sincerity like that, it doesn't turn anybody off. Because they know that the place you're coming from is just being real. People respect that. People respect real. I couldn't agree more. I think when we think about the work of renewing the church and rebuilding, once again, it is absolutely essential that we as lay people understand the significant, significant role that we have right now. Especially when we look at how stretched in our priesthood is. Now this idea that, oh, it's the priest's job. We have a youth minister, or we have people who do adult faith formation in our parish. They're the ones that are in charge of making sure people get evangelized. We have a tendency to, okay, I write my check, I throw it in the collection pile. I mean, I'm going to church on Sunday. What more is there? There's an exciting life that God is calling each of us to. And I agree, Chris, I think we have to understand that not only does God call us to greatness, he expects greatness. Not for the sake of our own, I'm great, look at me. But because we're made in his image and likeness. If you don't believe that, just look at the power that he's given simple men and women to help create new life. Let that be a template of saying what kind of power has God given man? That is a physical manifestation of a spiritual reality. We can all produce spiritually children in faith through our sharing of love. When you share love with a spouse in a particular intimate way, new life comes forth. When we share Jesus with anybody in a particular and intimate way, we can bring a new life back to Christ. We can help awaken. You will raise people from being dead in their faith to life. You will cause those who can't see God to see God. And Jesus said, what I'm doing, I am going to send forth and you're going to do the same. And it says in Romans chapter five that every part of our life is to be patterned on the example of Christ, conformed to the image of Christ. And Christ was one who revealed God's love. If every part of our life is to be conformed to Christ, then every part of our life should in some way reveal God's love. That's our call. That's our birthright. That's our destiny. And so, I agree with Chris. Don't sell yourself short. Don't put yourself down. Don't say, well, obviously God's not looking in my way when he says, we all have this universal call to evangelize. It absolutely isn't. It is you. And it's you in a very particular way in a way that no one else can because you're a unique manifestation of the love of God. And you can show God's love in a way that no one else can. Even because maybe some of the brokenness you carry with you, you reveal God in a particular way. And we need to be willing to do that. I was traveling with my wife this past August down to North Carolina. We spent a week on the beach. And we stopped in Becley, West Virginia to spend the night halfway there. And in the morning we got up thinking there was a complimentary breakfast somewhere in the hotel and there wasn't. So we were very disappointed, but there was a coffee station and sometimes coffee's all you need. And I'm walking towards, I shouldn't say walking, I'm more like shuffling towards the coffee station like I made coffee. And there was a woman there who was very, she seemed very distracted that she kind of cleaned up and put trash in the can and put out fresh cups and made sure that her hand was wiped down. And as I approached her, I looked at her and I could tell that she didn't cry. And immediately like it just fell upon my heart, just say something nice to her, just offer her some clumper. And I said, and I just turned around and I said, hey, good morning. Thank you for being out here and making sure there's coffee. I don't know if I'd be able to make it all the way to North Carolina without some good coffee. And she said, oh, it's no problem. And the fact that she responded, she was very pleasant. But then I just said, is everything all right? You just look a little sad this morning. Well, she went on to explain to me how her sister had just been diagnosed with a brain aneurysm and that she could be very close to death and that she couldn't get off work to go down and see her. It was just, she was just very broken. And at the end of her telling me her story, once again, I said, I'm so sorry for what you're in. Can I pray with you right now? And she said, absolutely. So I just put my hand on her shoulder and just said, Jesus, just come with your spirit right now. I asked her her name was Teresa. I said, come with Teresa right now. Just come with your spirit and follow on her and let her know that she's loved. And we looked up her sister who's in the hospital and Lord, I pray that you're able to open a door so that she can go see her sister. And I mean, I knew this woman who was working, probably not much better than in the middle of ways doing housekeeping in a hotel. So I gave her $40 and I said, I hope this helps with gas money so you can make it down to Charleston to see your sister. Wow, wow. And I don't know how. It doesn't matter. Did she, you know, as she started crying and she gave me a big hug at the end. So I know that God moved because she responded in a way that said, God just did something amazing in her heart, brought her peace, brought her joy, brought her something, God did something. And so she gave me the hug and I walked away saying, I don't know, I didn't, I wasn't there to preach the gospel, I was there to show her Jesus. Oh, praise the Lord, that's perfect. You know, and what Chris is saying, like your God will open up doors if you ask him, God, give me an opportunity today to show your love to somebody. You pray that prayer, God's not gonna not answer that prayer every day. I know it. And you know what else you can't underestimate? Even if you don't have these measurable things like that at the end of the day, on my own conversion, my parents dragged me to a youth conference I didn't wanna go to, right? I'm one of them. And what changed my life, I walked into the room. It was, the speaker's great, the music was great. But I looked around, early Christians call themselves the living ones, right? I realized instantly, I'm dead. They're alive. I wanna be alive. Just seeing those people change my life. If all we can measure at the end of the day or at the end of a lifetime is that I was one of the living ones, we've been part of the message that the whole body of Christ is supposed to be screened in the world. We've been part of making the gospel alive in 2017, attractive and beautiful. And never underestimate the power of that. Yeah, that's a beautiful thing. And I know that, the centuries have had the prayer, Christ has no body now but yours. He has no hands but mine. He has no feet with which to walk to go preach the good news. He has no voice except for mine. And Jesus is longing. People say, well, why doesn't Jesus speak to people? Why doesn't he make himself more present? And I'm like, and he does, but you're holding back his voice by not opening your mouth. We are to be that, to speak those words of love. And we live in such a broken time. And we have people who are mocking Christianity in the streets of our country, mocking the Catholic faith. And the last acceptable prejudice in the United States that you can have and no one's gonna get upset with you is if you're an anti-Catholic. You can mock, you can mock, preach all day long. And so I think we get very angry and very defensive. But we try to throw out statements like, well, hate the sin but love the sinner. And I'm just like, why don't we just love the sinner? Just not worry about hating sin. Takes too much time, too much energy. If you wanna hate the sin in your own life, get rid of your own sin and go to war with your own sin. But don't go to war with the sin in others. I'm not saying, stand up for what you want when you do all your civic duties. But when you encounter people, don't look to hate their sin and love the sinner. Just love the sinner. That's the command. Love more than the sin. So let's spend our time doing whatever we can to love those people that we want to know Christ. And because faith is caught. It's a contagious that we need to be more symptomatic. Yes. Amen to that. Amen, brother. I'll get you back to TV show edits. Alrighty. Well, Christ is, you know, before you jump off, Chris, and I thank you, because I think when we first talked, you said you'd give me 15, maybe 20 minutes. You've been on here for 50 minutes. You're very generous, you know? I know how occupied you are. But before you step out, number one, does anyone have a particular question for Chris that you want to type in before he goes? Any questions whatsoever? Talk to me, folks. I just lost the question screen. Where is it? Where'd it go? You'll have to read the question to me. I don't see the question screen. Oh, there it is. I've got it in front of me. There aren't any questions yet, but I'm going to do a going, once going, twice going, three times. Any questions for Chris before he signs off? That's all right. Chris, tell people who are on the webinar where they can find out more about your ministry, what you have going on, and maybe even find a way of connecting with some of your video content, because you pop up at my Facebook feed all the time, and I'm always blessed by what I see and hear you share, and they're always so well made to production that you put into your videos. It's top notch. The message is spot on. How can more people discover what you're doing out there? Very simple. Go to reallifecatholic.com. Sign up for the newsletter. That's it. We send it out once a month. Don't bug your inbox down. Keep it info confidential, and just get all our free videos, everything to share. We have the Facebook feeds, all that stuff, but the sure way to get it is that. And then the live events. I'm a see Chris live tab on reallifecatholic.com. Love to partner with people who have a heart for evangelization. Usually it's an involved, engaged layman at a parish that starts the invite to a parish. And like I said, small towns. I mean, our first reboot live renewal event was Linton, North Dakota, a town with 1,000 residents, 900 people attended. Wow. You know, it's all about the grassroots effort to invite everybody back to the Lord. So it's the smaller scale of the Billy Graham crusades going on, but it's this thing kind of thing in power. So, honor to be with you guys. Oh, I'm impressed by the kind of job. Thank you, man. Thank you for all you're doing to serve the church. Thank you for being such a good brother and Christ. Thank you for joining us this evening. I'll be praying for you as you continue to work on this next video series, and call me if you need anything, right? Thanks so much, man. Love you. All right. And for everyone else out there, I just want to say, you know, thank you for being a part of this. You know, one of the things that we want to be able to do through the civil conferences is allow as many people as possible to share our mission. And so we actually developed a program two years ago called Share Our Mission where we invite people who are out there who are planning on coming to a civil conference to bring people with them. Why? Because it's the simplest way to help other people have an encounter. You can evangelize without ever having to stand up and preach. You know, by going and finding people, you know that you want to see their life renewed and touched by God, and inviting them to come to one of our five adult conferences. We have the Power and Purpose Conference for those who want more life in the Holy Spirit and understand that in a deeper way. We have our priest-deacon seminarians retreat. So if you know a priest whose ministry could use a renewal, or a hinkus could use an annual retreat, this is an excellent opportunity for him to gather with 150 to 200 other priest-deacons and seminarians from across the United States. It's a beautiful time of prayer. You can gift that to your priest as a thank you. Get him here, and maybe pair up with a couple of other families to make that happen for him. We have our St. John Bosco Conference for those who are involved in the religious education and the passing on of faith. That includes an RCIA track, youth minister's track, faith formation coordinator's track, all the different areas of ministry that's about passing on the faith. You come and you get fellowship, instruction, and there's certification tracks for each one of those different areas of expertise that you might have. Then we have the Applied Biblical Studies Conference, which is sponsored in part by the St. Paul Center for Biblical Studies, who are our next door neighbors under the direction of Dr. Scott Hahn, and it just cracks open the scriptures and makes them come alive in such a vibrant, dynamic way. So if you have a hunger for a deeper knowledge of scripture, you might want to check out that conference. And finally, we have the Defending the Faith Conference, and the Defending the Faith Conference gathers some of the best minds and some of the best hearts of people who know and love the truth and have a gift for communicating it and helping it become accessible to everyday Catholics who don't have theology degrees, so these guys have more letters after their day than some people have letters in their name, but they bring not just a level of education and expertise, but a level of love for what they teach that's inspiring and blessed. So all of these conferences, you can find out more about them at studentvilleconferences.com. And if you are planning on coming and you want to learn more about the Share Our Mission Program or how you might be able to become an ambassador, because we have some excellent tools to help you if you want to become one. And not only that, we have some outstanding rewards, both financial and some other incentives that we've put together to say, hey, look, if you want to share our mission, we want to reward you with a discount. So here's an example. If you come into a studentville conference and you decide to bring somebody who's never been before, first thing we'll do is we'll take $20 off the cost of your studentville conference and we'll take $20 off the person that you're bringing for the first time. So there's no limit to that. So if you wanted to bring a group of 10 people to the studentville conference who've never been before and you organized it and put it all together, we'll give everyone in your group $20 off each and we'll give you $200. It's that simple. It's not a commission. It's not a sale. It is simply our way of saying, if you're willing to put forth the effort of bringing people to the Lord, we want to help you get here as well and say thank you for your decision to share our mission because here's the thing, the personal invite that you can give another person and bringing them into a deeper encounter with Christ at a studentville conference is more powerful than any marketing that I could do. And we would rather invest in you because what we've seen and the beauty of this is these people come as groups to a conference. They have these amazing experiences and they go back and they have like a nucleus of community that love and they pray together and they have this shared faith experience that's just causing renewal on their broader parishes. There was a group of 50 that came from Virginia together on a bus and this past fall, they hosted a huge tent revival and invited 500 people to come in and hear an evening of prayer and preaching and inviting people to experience a deep brow pouring of Christ's love. And these are the kind of things that are happening. It's not just about, oh, I come and I have a great weekend and I buy a t-shirt and a couple of books and it's wonderful. It's about, I come, I get set on fire for the Lord, I go back and I'm spreading fire. I'm becoming the parish arsonist everywhere I go. I'm trying to light fires of faith, which is not a bad thing when it comes to faith. Real fire comes from the storm. But we would love to be able to work with you, equip you, strengthen you to do that work. So if you are interested, what I would recommend you do is after the webinar is over, your confirmation email for this webinar had my email address, jbolyoufranciscan.edu, embedded in it. Just fire me off the emails and I'd like to learn more about how to be an ambassador, I'd like to learn more about the conferences or if there's anything else that you have questions on that you think our office can help you with. Now we are here to serve the church, we are here to serve you and if you have the desire to bring renewal to your parish and to expand God's working in the lives of people on your parish, we want to help you any way we can. Why? Because that's our mission. We want to go renew and rebuild the church through the power of the Holy Spirit and in the name of Jesus Christ. And God wants to use you the same way that he used Saint Francis, the same way he used Father Mike, the same way he's using Christophantic. God wants to use you. Your circle of influence might be a lot smaller but it'll have a deeper impact. And that's what we really think is so important is if everyone just did one little section of their world and impacted it deeply, the whole world would get impacted. And then Chris can't go to every parish and preach the gospel, but you can go to a lot of people within your own parish and do that for them in a very powerful and personal way. So I want to encourage you, don't give up hope. Don't sell yourself short. Trust in the Lord, be strong heart, strong mind, be courageous and take what God has poured into your heart His love and let that overflow to the world around you. And that way you will rebuild the church and that way you will be an influence. You will help people get closer to Christ. When you stand in heaven, there will be people standing behind you saying you led me to Jesus and ultimately I made it here because of your witness. And what pauses is those of you like jewels in our crowns when we're in heaven. But in order to do that, we need to put the work and sacrifice in here on earth and take the risk of sharing Christ, even if we might be rejected. Love takes risks always. Love is always a risk. So take the risks that are good. Take the risks that are necessary in order to make Christ known. And thank you for being a part of this. Well, really it's a blessing for us to be able to encourage you. It's a blessing for us to be able to share. I really appreciate Chris coming on board. It was awesome. And just be assured that we're gonna be praying for you as you continue on your one journey and I hope we can pray that you have a gloriously joyful and exciting Easter season. So let's close in a prayer and then we'll say goodnight. And then we have a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and then Christ, you chose us before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in your sight. You called us by name and you made us your children. And now you send us forth to be ambassadors of your love, to be those who would be the guide, the friend, the person who would not be afraid to share that love of Jesus with others so that your name can be glorified and your kingdom can be built and we can bring the saving knowledge of Christ's love to all people. Pour your Holy Spirit into our hearts that we would have the courage, the wisdom, the love, and everything else that we need to go forth as joyful missionaries, ready to bring the gospel to everyone that asks of us and to share the love of Christ with everyone that we need. And Blessed Mother, you are the perfect disciple. You follow Jesus and you have been appearing across the world for the last 2,000 years, reminding us of what Jesus said and bringing people to deeper faith. You continue to evangelize in your son's name. In the same way, we appear with love and grace to evangelize others. We ask for your intercession, Mary, as we pray. God, Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. Now and at the hour of our death, amen. In the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. Thank you everyone for being with us. Have a blessed evening and a joyful Easter.