[00:00:00] Jim Jansen: Hey, everybody, welcome to the EquipCast. So today I sit down with Tom Quinlan, and Tom is one of the most versatile and experienced missionary leaders I know. Tom has worked in parishes, religious education. He's done diocesan ministry. He's authored several books. Tom and I have a really honest conversation about the things the Lord is doing in his heart, the lessons that he continues to learn as a missionary disciple and as a minister in the church.

We talk about measuring things that matter, that give us a clue as to the health of our parish ministries. We have an amazing conversation about baptismal prep and the opportunity it is, and the importance of transforming that as it stands as the, the first experience for many young couples entering our parish. Tom is honest, he is kind, but he doesn't pull any punches. You're gonna love today's conversation.

Today's episode is brought to you by Faith & Family Life Catholic Ministries, FFLCM. Their Pathways Formation suite of resources offers lifelong family-centered faith formation. Go check 'em out at fflcm.org.

Tom Quinlan, welcome to the EquipCast. How are you doing, sir?

[00:01:50] Tom Quinlan: Thrilled to be with you, Jim.

[00:01:51] Jim Jansen: Okay, Tom, So you're from Iowa. Are you a Hawkeyes fan? Where do your loyalties lie? We're friends, but I realized I totally should have vetted this before I let you actually into my heart as a friend. Where do your loyalties lie?

[00:02:05] Tom Quinlan: Is there a right answer here? I'm a Chicagoan, and I'm politically astute enough at this stage in my life where I came to Iowa from Illinois knowing that I should just play the middle. I Root for them both.

[00:02:19] Jim Jansen: So are you more of a baseball than a football guy?

[00:02:22] Tom Quinlan: I'm an NFL guy, so we can talk Bears.

[00:02:25] Jim Jansen: Oh, there we go. See, and that's good. There's zero conflict in me for professional teams.

[00:02:31] Tom Quinlan: come on over everyone who's listening. The water's good. We've got a coach and a quarterback, so it's time to jump on the Bears bandwagon.

[00:02:39] Jim Jansen: It's been a minute since the Bears have been good.

[00:02:41] Tom Quinlan: Been three decades or something, I just want to point out to our probably heavily Catholic audience that I'm a Chicagoan like a certain person who now resides in Rome our Holy Father, and I'm a White Sox fan as well as a Bears fan, and those are the two teams that our Holy Father roots for. And both of those teams in this past year, they've experienced a worst to first dynamic.

[00:03:08] Jim Jansen: Wasn't there like a World Youth Day pattern where the popes would visit for World Youth Day and then the teams would do great?

[00:03:14] Tom Quinlan: Pope Francis and Argentina in the World Cup. So I think God uses all avenues to evangelize and to show the beauty and truth and goodness in Catholic faith. We're having it now with this Chicago sports renaissance.

[00:03:28] Jim Jansen: That's awesome. Okay, Tom, we're just having fun here, we know you're from Chicago. We know you must be a man of faith to root for the White Sox and the Bears. Tell us a little bit about your story.

[00:03:39] Tom Quinlan: I was a guy who was raised in a middle-class suburb, west suburbs of Chicago. Same parish as Bishop Barron. So I've known him, and we've crossed paths over the many decades in many regards, and have, great esteem for him. Just a vanilla Irish Catholic guy from the Midwest who, by God's grace, had faith, deep faith. Raised, moderately in the faith, we went to mass every Sunday, but we weren't on our knees doing the rosary and that kind of stuff. 

[00:04:11] Jim Jansen: Moderately in the faith.

[00:04:12] Tom Quinlan: Exactly. And my mom was my first catechist, of course, in the car driving around. Catholic schools, great parish. When I was four years of age, I really do remember having a kind of a mystical experience of God out in front of my house sitting on the porch, and just really feeling God's presence in my life, and caring for me, and that I'm the only person that matters in the world to God. That happened at four, and that, I think, imparted something in me that gave me this sense of the God's affinity and God's imminence, His presence and care for me, which has been there ever since.

I went to Dominican Catholic college prep high school, and really started thinking about priesthood. And then in my mid-20s, I went to the seminary in the Archdiocese of Chicago, and spent three years in formation there and it was a tremendous time in my life, so grateful for it. But I stepped out because I wasn't sure enough. I felt at that point in my life, to be ordained. It's just like with marriage. You need a certain degree of certitude that this is for life.

[00:05:23] Jim Jansen: It helps the perseverance part. 

[00:05:24] Tom Quinlan: It does.

[00:05:26] Jim Jansen: Really knowing this is what the Lord wants.

[00:05:29] Tom Quinlan: So I went into parish ministry in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, 4,000 family parishAnd I have been on this wonderful journey as a lay person in professional ministry in different ways in the Chicago area, now in Iowa, doing some national ministry and even some international things. And have just been so blessed in this journey. among other things, it brought my wife into my life about 15 years ago now. So, The Holy Spirit's dynamically active in my life at this later stage, and it's so fun and exciting to feel the presence of the Spirit moving and shaping and changing me. And there are four themes that I've been speaking into when I do retreat days or reflection experiences. I invite people to enter into the Paschal in their life, and to reflect upon the ways in which they have gone through suffering and death and spent time in the tomb and have come to an experience of new life, or perhaps not yet. And in fact, one of the things we talk about is not all deaths result in resurrection in this life, and sometimes that's what heaven's for. So I don't wanna set people up for the expectation that all resurrection has to happen on my time in this life.

[00:06:46] Jim Jansen: Sometimes we're waiting in faith.

[00:06:48] Tom Quinlan: And that's all we can do, and that pleases God mightily, that we somehow are in the tomb and trusting. Which leads me to the second movement that has been powerfully present in my life in the last decade, which is surrender. That powerful spiritual disposition of somehow being able to die to my control freakness, and just hand it over to God and say, "You know what, God? I really do, like a child, hand this over to you, and I'm going to be good with whatever comes." That's so hard. And we talk about the Surrender Novena, and if we don't get a chance later, that's a beautiful thing for people to look up. 

[00:07:28] Jim Jansen: It's amazing.

[00:07:29] Tom Quinlan: So surrender is another movement of spiritual dynamism that has come into my life. I'm working on it. I'm praying into, trying to be somebody who fully surrenders to God's, providence. The third movement, which is really what is most recently manifest of the Spirit in my life, is gratitude. Such a deep, abiding sense that in all things, the good, the bad, and the stuff in between, God's grace is available. God's grace is there. And in fact, going back to the Paschal, so much of what has been the hardest in my life, those really difficult, even dark chapters in my life, I now cherish and carry with me with some of the deepest gratitude for how God has transformed that into new life and has stretched me and has grown my heart so that I can love and be more empathic and present with people.

And then the final thing, the equation I offer people, is surrender plus gratitude equals joy And I try to help people unpack the meaningful difference between happiness and joy. And that we often aspire to happiness, and we want for our kids happiness. And I'm whipsawed in this life, and I'm happy one day and unhappy the next.

And I- God wants more for us, deeper than that for us. And ultimately, I think it's, it can be captured in the word joy, which I've come to define as coming to know, to some meaningful degree, how much God loves me. And I'm continuing to more deeply experience God's love in and for me. And that, for me, is the best definition I know of for joy. And ultimately, I think that's what God wills for each of us here in this life. And then of course, the eternal fullness of joy in heaven.

[00:09:31] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Tom, this is deep stuff. We're just kinda getting started here, but this is the stuff the Paschal Mystery, surrender, being able to, in faith, experience gratitude for all of the things of life. This is the stuff of real kinda ministry, perseverance.

It's like the part of the Christian life that, it's one thing if your neighbor knows, "Oh yeah, he's a Christian. He's a Catholic." It's another thing when they're like what do you have? I want that." When they see the joy, it's in the hard stuff that the supernatural joy, the gratitude, the faith kinda shines through. Tom, could you share I... You don't have to go here if you don't want to, but just to share a story of some of the hard things that are now some of those, treasured points of gratitude.

[00:10:20] Tom Quinlan: Yeah. I think we need to be willing to be vulnerable with folks that we're ministering with and to. And so I don't want to make it the Tom show, but I don't shy away when I'm doing retreats and talks and stuff from going there. And I could talk about, the journey with my parents as they were aging and infirmed, and the complicated relationship with my mom, who I loved so much but often didn't like particularly.

She could be very difficult. And the coming to experience forgiveness for the ways in which I, fell short of who I wanted to be for my mom. And it's interesting, the forgiveness after she passed away came from God and her first, and the last one to forgive me was myself. But I got there.

[00:11:05] Jim Jansen: How did you get there? Cause I feel like there's a lot of people listening who that's the thing, I've reconciled with everybody but me.

[00:11:16] Tom Quinlan: Yeah. True humility is understanding our proper place in relationship to God and all of God's creation. And so it's not a, oh, poor me, little me, I don't count for very much, or I'm very bad, or whatever. That's not humility. Humility is recognizing that God is creator. I am creature.

God is the primary actor in this fascinating narrative that is my life journey. But I am an important secondary player. So Academy Awards, it would be for supporting role. 

[00:11:51] Jim Jansen: That's great. 

[00:11:52] Tom Quinlan: But the proper placement is God in the center of the stage in my life, and then I am responding, hopefully in a way that cooperates with His grace and movement of the Spirit.

So to come to recognize somehow that it's not about me . Ultimately, it is about God's love, God's forgiveness, that God's love and mercy are greater than my sin and my failure. This is, I think, something hard for us to get our heads and hearts around to come to know a God who doesn't particularly like to do math. That's not who God is. God is somebody who just loves, and loves in a way that is different from, unfortunately, the conditional, mediated way that we experience love. It's just a full-on loving on us that's ridiculous. The Prodigal Son story just, if we really tap into it, is just crazy, stupid love. So I think I was able to allow God's love and forgiveness in, and that opened my heart to get to a place where I could forgive myself.

[00:13:06] Jim Jansen: Tom, I love that like , God doesn't particularly like to do math. I love that because math was always a little bit of a liability for me. But just all of this it rings uncomfortably true that the thing that stops us from forgiving ourself is this like we actually think our opinion matters. We're valuing our own standards and our own ways of looking at it more than the Lord's. He's like: I don't care. I have forgotten. I have forgiven. Man that's good stuff. 

[00:13:39] Tom Quinlan: Can I tell you one more story from-- from my journey here? Falling in love really for the first time or falling into infatuation many years ago, and having that end quickly, didn't see it coming and the pain of that, and really feeling a sense of darkness and aloneness and brokenness, so real, so visceral, so hard.

And in God's transformative grace, so beautiful and powerful because I have been able to be an empathic presence. Having had my heart broken, I know what it's like, and I can be with people in their brokenness of whatever kind it is, in a way that I couldn't without that experience. So that's an example of something that I, hated going through, and now I just treasure it because I get to be there with people in a way that makes a difference.

They know that I know, and together, this word accompaniment we use now in Catholic lingo, I can accompany them and walk with them and that's such a privilege and a source of meaning.

[00:14:50] Jim Jansen: Yeah, you're right. People can tell when our own hearts have been, for lack of a better way to put it, tenderized by our own, suffering and scars and, the bumps and bruises that happen on the journey. Tom I wonder if we can pivot. You have done almost everything in ministry. Really just a very fruitful, you've been in the place, of adult evangelization and of course, you had time in seminary you mentioned, and also, like religious education. It's hard to find a particular ministry other than maybe youth ministry, but both kinda in the realm of young people, where our hearts are just kinda naturally drawn there.

In a beautiful way, we always want to care for young people, to help them know and embrace the faith. Like so many of the other places in the church, Religious education is experiencing the challenge of our kind of change of the ages.

I wonder if you could just kinda lay out a little bit of the landscape that is the world of religious education these days. And you go as big as you want because, we both know what's going on to challenge religious education is way bigger than what's happening on Wednesday nights and the materials from publishers. So give us a little bit of the landscape of what's going on there.

[00:16:14] Tom Quinlan: I clearly remember as a parish DRE in the '90s at a big suburban parish, recognizing that while we had a pretty good program, we had good structures, and our catechists were prepared and we prayed well with the children liturgically in each classroom to try to dispose them spiritually for holistic formation.

I think we were doing a lot of things right. There was this abiding sense that when I would be with parents doing parent formation for the sacraments or whatever, that I was with good people who were, to a large degree, candidates more for evangelization than catechesis, that they were in a place where if I was just talking at them quoting the catechism and assuming that they are there at that place that we want families to be, that I would be missing their reality and talking over their heads. So from the get-go as an initial DRE, I recognized that, 30 hours a week of outsourcing to good women and men trying to do their best to make little disciples of these boys and girls, the system was insufficient, inadequate to the calling of bringing people into the marvelous light of the mystery of God's love in Christ Jesus.

From the get-go, I recognized that we do need to step back and not just keep doing what we're doing. And even in the '90s in the Chicago area, there were some veteran DREs who were recognizing the need for us to bring parents more into engagement and to make them part of the process more overtly.

And that recognition has only grown over these 30 years to the point now where, I think everybody hears about family formation or hope parish faith formation. And many places, especially in the Midwest, have embraced some shape or model of this, and I think it's wonderful. When I was a diocesan director starting in '01 in the suburbs of Chicago, South and West, it's the Diocese of Joliet, we brought in John Roberto, and he did , trainings.

It was called Generations of Faith, and he did it three years. He did it in '02, '03, and '05, so that we would really deeply ground our diocese in this paradigm shifting vision for what faith formation can and should be in our time, which is something that engages parents in a meaningful way. The original version of family faith formation was, let's help our parents help their kids learn their stuff. It was an impoverished understanding of family faith formation because it took for granted that the parents were there, and of course, we know that too often they're not.

[00:19:11] Jim Jansen: And if I can give an example of this, correct me if I'm wrong, but it was like, "Oh, wow, we've gotta have parents engaged in this." So now mom is sent home with a worksheet to kinda make sure that the kids know the prayer, that they can pass the test. She's supposed to be getting people to soccer practice, preparing dinner, helping them with homework and she's probably got a teenager and a toddler and this like first communicate all at the same time, and she's supposed to be teaching the lesson plan. And for a whole variety of reasons, sometimes 'cause mom wasn't there or both mom and dad weren't there, but like it just didn't, bear the fruit that we hoped.

[00:19:51] Tom Quinlan: We have to be careful not to assume that just because folks aren't going to mass on Sunday doesn't mean that they're unevangelized, that they don't have a relationship with God. That's a dangerous assumption we can make as church folks. However, there is a lot of asking parents to pass on something that they don't particularly have in a deep and meaningful way in their own lives, and ultimately, that's just a sham. And we're asking parents and children and everybody to participate in lying. 

[00:20:23] Jim Jansen: And the kids are too smart for that. All the data right now points to the fact that most kids are making their fundamental decision for or against the faith in the tweens, 11, 12, 13 before they get to high school. So they've kinda made this decision, and a lot of it is this intuitive authenticity. They can just tell if mom believes it and dad doesn't, or they can tell if mom and dad kinda believe it except for when they're tired or on and on.

[00:20:54] Tom Quinlan: Of course they can tell. For me, it has been primarily advocacy for us as parishes to attend to the interior spiritual disposition and formation of parents. If I can distill it down to one thing, the word is conversion. The operating principle for all parish ministry needs to be, is this something that puts us in the ball game of helping to facilitate conversion in the lives of our parishioners and those who aren't on our database? If it is if, there's a tether to conversion to Christ Jesus, the person of Jesus, then we should double down and go there more. And if we can't find a connection to it, then we should step back and say, "Why are we spending our time and money as a parish, our energy, in stuff that's not related to the reason why we exist?"

[00:21:53] Jim Jansen: Tom, can you give some practical examples of this?

[00:21:55] Tom Quinlan: My mind goes to this. I am all in favor of confirmation. I think it's a beautiful sacrament, and an important one, and an opportunity for really good stuff to happen in the lives of young people and their homes, their families. And I would always advocate that sacrament formation should be looked at as an opportunity for household formation/conversion. Now, parishes invest a lot of resources, staff and money. Their budget. They have money in the budget to do stuff for confirmation prep. 

[00:22:31] Jim Jansen: Mm-hmm. 

[00:22:31] Tom Quinlan: Right? 

[00:22:32] Jim Jansen: Yeah, materials, people, 

[00:22:34] Tom Quinlan: Yeah. It adds up. There is a considerable investment on a back-end sacrament. It's a last chance, 11th-hour attempt to move the needle with a young person and family. And any corporation will tell you, you're gonna get better bang for your buck up front in trying to develop a customer or client relationship and affinity. And so what is the kind of budgeting and staffing made available for baptism? Next to nothing. Zero. maybe we have $50 a year for cookies.

But staffing? It's really stunning when our theology highlights baptism and has confirmation really as an adjunct to baptism. It is-- it's the moon. The sun is baptism. Confirmation's the moon in relationship. And yet our resources are poured into the 11th-hour, 12th-hour sacrament of confirmation, and we give crumbs on a good day to baptism.

And I have been out and about experiencing baptismal preparation, formation, processes and they're, generally speaking, really dreadful. Just I think we actually malform, deform people through our baptismal processes. They're that bad.

[00:24:02] Jim Jansen: Okay. That's strong. I'm not saying I disagree, but back it up. Give some examples. 

[00:24:05] Tom Quinlan: They get judged; they get bored.

[00:24:08] Jim Jansen: Oh, sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[00:24:10] Tom Quinlan: And

[00:24:11] Jim Jansen: and conditioned to jumping through hoops.

[00:24:13] Tom Quinlan: Jumping through hoops. 

[00:24:14] Jim Jansen: And check boxing. 

[00:24:16] Tom Quinlan: That's what it all gets reduced to, and it confirms for people this sense of this is what religion is. It's nothing more than formality that we're going through to please Grandma or my mother-in-law.

[00:24:27] Jim Jansen: And what if it was actually an experience of being welcomed into this family, not just for the child, but for the parents to be welcomed into the community to find a place of familial acceptance. 

[00:24:41] Tom Quinlan: Absolutely. 100%. I would have DREs come to me in the Chicago suburbs and say, "Tom, all these parents want at first communion is the sacrament." 

[00:24:52] Jim Jansen: Mm-hmm. 

[00:24:52] Tom Quinlan: And I said, "Yes, sacramental hit and run." Right? They just want to get it and we'll be gone again. And we would have conversations then about what has the parish done from zero to seven years of age to foster anything more from them than that?

Have we sat back with our arms folded and saying, "We're the Catholic Church, and you've registered, so we'll send you envelopes, and we'll expect you to come to mass and do all the things that Catholic people do. And we'll see you for kindergarten in the school or faith formation. We'll see you in five or six years ."

[00:25:24] Jim Jansen: Right. 

[00:25:25] Tom Quinlan: Society and inertia, finds its way into their lives. And so the opportunity that is there when the cement is wet at baptism to build relationships, to enter them into the matrix of the life of the parish, for them to give their gifts and to receive from the giftedness of the community is squandered. We sit on our hands for six, seven years, wait for the sacraments to hopefully do some magical transformation of people when baptism was that window of opportunity that is our greatest opportunity to evangelize those coming. 

[00:25:58] Jim Jansen: My mind's exploding here in a couple ways. One, just at the natural level like to connect with a customer and then to have zero real relational engagement between when they maybe do marriage prep or when they show up for baptism, and then expect, by the time first communion comes along, like , yeah, there's no relationship established.

The way you explain it, it's just common sense, and it starts to be in it's, I don't know. I'm kinda like, ah, I'm feeling the embarrassment. I'm feeling the frustration. I'm feeling the pain of all of these young families that we let slip away.

And again, some parishes by their neighborhood demographics, there's still a lot of young people a lot of young families around. But many parishes they're like, "Oh, where are the young people?" And I feel like You're just shining a bright light and like, well, this may be part of the reason why we've lost them, depending on the quality of the baptism program, the first experience isn't necessarily of high quality, and then we don't do anything. We don't continue to connect until first communion.

[00:27:02] Tom Quinlan: So I would invite your listeners to look at baptismal prep ministry as the leading point in a window of five to six years of early family ministry, where we can create an intentional strategy as a parish to evangelize young families. So that when they come for first Eucharist, they're there for second Eucharist the next day on a Sunday, because of course, this is our spiritual home.

It is not--

[00:27:33] Jim Jansen: Yeah. 

[00:27:33] Tom Quinlan: just about sacramental hoop jumping. 

[00:27:35] Jim Jansen: Well, these are where our friends are. We actually like it here. And I'm also like, as you're talking about this, 'cause we're kinda talking about both, right? The kids and the parents at the same time. But the first five years of a marriage is really foundational for what it does to set the routines and culture of a marriage.

And gosh, like they, they don't need us, but they need Jesus. They need the community of faith to navigate marriage these days. So the first five years are just so critical, and yeah, it is kinda shocking when you say it out loud that we're kinda absent from their lives at that point.

[00:28:16] Tom Quinlan: Jim, I'm just gonna double down here and say I would really encourage... there's a resource I created about baptismal ministry, and it's six practical ideas for how to do baptismal ministry in a way that is evangelizing. And the one thing I would encourage all parishes to do is look at their ministry with the courage to say, "I think we need to blow this thing up. I think we need to deconstruct it and start from scratch."

And then there's the pushback because there is a person or a couple sometimes it's a deacon and his wife, who have been so generous and gracious in giving of their time and their gifts, but they've been doing it for 35 years. And people will say Tom, we can't deconstruct that. That's, his ministry, her ministry, their ministry.

We can't do that." And I want to say, no. Baptism is the ministry of the parish, and we always have to have the courage to step back and say, "You know what? We need to look at this." The fruitfulness of it isn't being manifested, and so we have to step back. Are we tapping into the gifts of our community in a way that is moving the spirit and fostering conversion in people's lives?

And if we're not seeing the fruit, what are we doing as leaders if we don't have the courage to say, "We've got some hard decisions to make here to rebrand, recraft"? And it could be tweaking the ministry, but it could be, "You know what? We're gonna tear it down to the studs and rebuild this in a way that is now gonna be intentionally evangelizing and within the framework of an evangelizing strategy." This is an element to a broader fabric of a parish that wants to be intentionally evangelizing in a strategic manner, and that's a whole conversation.

[00:30:05] Jim Jansen: Now you're speaking my love language of, clear path. It's a framework where a parish says, "This is how we're gonna connect with people. This is how we're gonna introduce them to Jesus, how we're gonna help the adults in particular grow as disciples and then be equipped as missionary disciples."

[00:30:21] Tom Quinlan: That's why your ministry's so important and so good, Jim.

[00:30:24] Jim Jansen: A lot of the religious education, baptismal ministry, that's not my forte, that's not where my experience has been. But the two go hand in hand. Like you can't renew religious education without evangelizing adults. But if you wanna get adults that are parents, one of the best ways to get my attention is to love my kids, to help me in my most authentic need.

You know, It's like you ask me, "What do you want?" I'm like, "A nap." Maybe a good cup of coffee." But if you really ask me what do I really want, it's like, "I wanna be a good dad." And if you help me connect with my kids, if you help me pass the faith on to my kids, my goodness, you have my attention.

Okay, Tom, my head's just like exploding here. I wanna go back to that moment, maybe as people were listening, they're like, "Oh, I want this, but I feel paralyzed out of the fear of confronting that person," that wonderful, generous, kind person who's been running the ministry for decades.

And everybody can change and God works miracles, but it's probably unlikely that this person is gonna be the one to lead the ministry forward in this evangelizing way. I feel like that's where so many good desires just die. How do you do that? How do you lovingly have a conversation with someone who's been serving generously?

How does a parish begin to not just address that person, but then to begin to kinda change the expectations for parents? 'Cause that, that I feel like is where our good desire is just like, " Well, maybe we'll wait for them to retire," we just fail to act on our own convictions and I think the desires the Lord is placing in us to really connect with these young families in this key moment.

[00:32:21] Tom Quinlan: Yeah, there's a lot there. I think first of all, we have to search our heart and look at the ways in which our own ministry is not fruitful and needs to be renewed in the Spirit. Because we may be able to see this in others, but do we see it in our own work and ministry, and do we invite others to help us to see areas that need to be tweaked or deconstructed?

And that perhaps we should be stepping aside from this or that because it's just not bearing the fruit. Or that it's time for us to invite the Spirit to draw me into a deepening conversion and to be renewed.

[00:33:00] Jim Jansen: Almost like a, a sabbatical, right? It's I just need to kinda take a little break here. I need to really lean into some time of prayer, and I need to kinda relearn. I had a wonderful experience. Most of our listeners know I did campus ministry for almost 20 years, and there was this I think he was Presbyterian, but one of the campus ministers on campus that literally had been doing it, at the time, he had been doing it for 25 or 30 years.

Brett was his name. He was very fruitful, - like the ministry was really effective. And it's like, "Brett, you've been doing this for 25 years." And he's like, "No, I haven't. I've done it for five years, five different times." And his point was, is that every five years, he did a serious kinda reexamination of how he needed to approach it.

And so he was very out of the norm in terms of his longevity as a campus minister and he was outside of the norm in terms of his fruitfulness, because he was as relevant and had as dynamic of a ministry in his 25th year on campus as he did at his first, because he just kept relearning and going through the kinda the, I'll call it a conversion process.

He would go through that again to make sure that he was really meeting the next wave of students, the next generation right where they were at.

[00:34:21] Tom Quinlan: That's a humble leader, and that's somebody who is inviting God to continually renew him. And we should all have that kind of posture of openness to new life and the dynamism of the Spirit, rather than saying, "I'm on autopilot, I've got this." One of the best moments I've had in my ministry here in Iowa was, I was at an evangelization committee meeting at a wonderful parish, and it was a vibrant meeting, and all sorts of great things were being talked about.

And the only time in my life in Catholic ministry I was prompted to close a meeting in prayer was that day. And so right near the end, I had this sense, "Close in prayer." It was the Spirit. It wasn't me. And so I asked permission to do that and they said, "Sure, that'd be great." And I said, "Oh, gracious and loving God, we cannot do this." That was the primary message that the Holy Spirit wanted me to deliver to these wonderful, talented, ardent do-gooders who I think were evangelized to help us get out of this Catholic default mode of saying, "It's on us. It's on us. We have to figure this out. It's gonna be our work." And the Spirit is saying, "No, it's not your work.

It's my work, and you're facilitating it. You're instruments, conduits of it, but don't mistake that for being the animator. I, third person of the Trinity, is the animator." I'm not exactly sure why my mind went there, but I think that humility to understand, our place as supportive of God's movement. I think for leaders who ask God to renew them, the Spirit will not fail.

The Spirit will come and help us to find new joy and fruitfulness in our ministry. But if we are at a place of cynicism, of tiredness of hardness of heart, what I would urge those folks to do is get out of the way. Step aside. Stop being a barrier to the flow of the Holy Spirit in the life of a parish to reach out and to, attract people to Christ Jesus.

Any one of us can at some point in our lives become a barrier, and perhaps we need to step away permanently or for a time. I have learned, Jim, that I think you can say anything to anybody as long as it's done with love and they feel like you're on their side. I think a lot of people who will hear critique or challenge about, how this is going or not going, I think they already know the truth, and they'll be grateful that somebody actually has the courage to step in there and be with them in this place, not oppositionally, but as somebody who loves them, but also has their eye on the ball, which is the mission of Christ Jesus to go and make disciples. That's more important than anybody's self-esteem.

[00:37:02] Jim Jansen: Wow. What you're talking about sounds like pastoring. Whether it is officially the pastor or maybe it's, a lay leader who, is extending the ministry of the pastor that has responsibility to care for catechists or DREs or any ministry for that matter, who can come along and say "Hey, I noticed you seem kinda tired. We've also noticed that, the families aren't connecting the way they once were."

Tom, let's pause right here for a quick 30 seconds to highlight a tool built for the leaders listening today. If you're leading in sacramental prep or religious education I wouldn't be surprised if you're a little bit tired. You're working harder than you never worked, but you're feeling a little overwhelmed by all the disconnected programs, the volunteer shortages, and the drop-off after sacramental prep. But it doesn't have to be this way. Faith and Family Life Catholic Ministries and the Pathways Formation Suite offers an integrated set of resources for lifelong family-centered faith formation they close the formation gap between the sacramental moments by actually supporting families through every stage. One of my favorite stories of their work is a non-Catholic father who starts participating in the Pathways Home conversations, and then pretty soon he starts attending parish gatherings. And after that, he enters OCIA, and now he's bringing other people into the church because what the Pathways Suite of resources offers is engaging faith formation for the entire family. To find out more, go to fflcm.org, and schedule a conversation with the FFLCM team to discuss bringing the mission to more of your families. Let's pick up right where we left off.

I feel like we're talking to two groups at this point. We're talking about the leaders who need to show courage and compassion, who need to recognize that people who are serving in ministries, they see it, they feel it. They may not know what to do. They may feel desperate and overwhelmed. But it's probably silly to imagine that we're the only ones that recognize it might be time for a change. So we're talking to the leaders but we're also talking to the individuals themselves who feel the fatigue, who feel maybe the sense of disappointment, frustration that it's not quite working. I think, 'cause I've been there, I think for those of us who are feeling that, I think there's this mental obstacle that says, "If I don't do it, nobody else will." Can you speak to that?

[00:39:33] Tom Quinlan: I think again, these are ministries of the parish, and it's God's work that we're cooperating with. We have to do a better job as a parish of inviting every single member of the parish, everybody in the database, to embrace ownership of the parish.

So there's nobody on the sidelines, nobody who gets to be a consumer and nothing more. We need, I use the word stakeholdership. We need every single person in the parish and this happens through preaching and formation and encouragement. I see gifts in you.

Everybody has to take a step forward in a parish to say, "Okay, it's our parish." When we became members of a parish here in Des Moines, we received a wonderful little tent card that said, "Welcome to our parish." And a nice little watercolor on the front, and we put it on the fridge and thought, "Hey, how nice."

We didn't just get envelopes. We got something that said, "Welcome to our parish." But I, Jim, I looked at that on the refrigerator and said, "I think there's something wrong with this." And I talked to my wife, Christie, about it, and I said, "It's missing a letter. Instead of saying, 'Welcome to our parish,' it should say, 'Welcome to your parish.'" It's - missing the Y, which invites me and Christie to consider the relationship we have with this parish is not just a passive consumeristic relationship.

[00:40:57] Jim Jansen: This is not just a hotel, it's actually a, , barracks for people on mission.

[00:41:03] Tom Quinlan: Yes. Yes. So I think there's a lot we can do to animate and mobilize our parishioners to recognize that we're all called to go on mission, not just, the 5% that always does everything. So we have to spread out the burden the wealth, the joy of ministry, and invite everybody.

We need to help them find their gifts and to activate them. And one thing about leaders, you said about pastors leading with courage and compassion. I love those two words, so thank you for that. Yes, for pastors in their leadership role and everyone who has a leadership role in a parish we have to help them understand that Leadership is hard, that we are gonna be held accountable by Jesus Christ on our judgment day.

We were given a little portion of the vineyard the fields to tend the crop, to tend the sheep to fish . All sorts of metaphors for how we go out into the natural world and to fulfill Jesus' burning hunger to go and make disciples. For us to say that what we did in our time of stewardship is we kept people happy and we didn't upset the apple cart will not be good enough.

For those of us who have been put into leadership, we have a responsibility to put the mission of Jesus Christ before everything else. And so this is not about political positioning. This is not about power. This should always be done with the utmost gentleness and love. But yes, indeed, a courage to say, "My eyes are on the Great Commission of Jesus and nothing else, and that is what's gonna make the decisions for how this parish goes forward."

And finally, I'd say, Jim, have some evaluative processes in place for your baptismal ministry and other things so it's not just a subjective judgment on your part as the pastor or DRE You have qualitative and quantitative data from which you can speak about, "We have issues here. There are ways in which we need to be more effective and fruitful in what we're doing."

[00:43:23] Jim Jansen: I love that because then it's not personal. It's like, "Hey, we're farmers. We're looking for fruit. The fruit crop has been diminishing over the last few years. We want to address that." , Tom, what are some of those metrics? 'Cause it feels like-- I'll just give an example. mass attendance. Mass attendance is great. I don't b- in any way dispute that we want people at mass, but that often feels so far downstream and so remote from the activities of evangelization that, it's kinda like, if a football coach is like, I want to win the game. I want Ws." It's like gosh, but Ws come from a lot of other things: blocking and tackling and et cetera, et cetera. And all of these things, there are other metrics that help give us an indication of to whether or not a ministry is healthy.

[00:44:23] Tom Quinlan: That's right. 

[00:44:24] Jim Jansen: Pick which ever one you want, but what would be some of those things?

[00:44:26] Tom Quinlan: Yeah. I like that. We're not here to win this game, we're here to win this play. And you as left guard are here to win your battle with the nose tackle or whomever you're going up against.

[00:44:39] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Back in the '90s when Nebraska was actually good at football that was like the thing. They actually would track that they'd call them pancake blocks, where the block was so complete the other guy was on the ground.

[00:44:52] Tom Quinlan: Yeah. Yep. So how do we pancake block those people out there? That's right. Here's a crazy metric that you don't have on your bingo card, nor does anybody else listening. Vibe. Vibe matters. How do you quantify vibe? I don't know. I like to play a pastor in my mind or on TV. I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV.

If I were a pastor, I would go in and I would say to the folks, "You know what's the first thing we're gonna do here? We're gonna work on this together. We're gonna make eye contact with one another, and we're gonna try to smile a little bit, a genuine Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa smile, and try to manifest some of that joy that is in us for knowing the saving love of Christ Jesus in our lives."

[00:45:42] Jim Jansen: We do it for restaurants all the time. This place feels warm. This place feels comfortable. It's vibrant. We do it all the time for other kinda like hospitality industry things. 

[00:45:55] Tom Quinlan: And here's the thing. If you go to another church or anywhere you go that's a new experience, you pick up on the smell immediately. You pick up on the vibe immediately. When it's your own home, when it's your own parish, it's harder to perceive the smell, the vibes, or whatever it is. you're used to it. So every parish thinks it's hospitable. Why?

[00:46:17] Jim Jansen: Cause you already know the people! 

[00:46:19] Tom Quinlan: Well, every five years, we do this parish survey, and we get glowing marks on hospitality. Who's filling out the instrument? It's the usual suspects who all congregate together at the donut Sunday thing, and of course we're hospitable.

Everybody knows everybody who's filling out that form. How are we getting information, data if you will, soft data, from those who are checking out our parish, who are coming in for the first time? Those are the people we should be getting information from to get a sense of "What do you think? how did it feel?"

[00:46:54] Jim Jansen: Tom, how do you feel about the secret shopper? This is like a person, let's say from another parish a mature leader. So maybe you get like a catechist or a DRE staff member, really astute missionary disciple volunteer from another parish who will come secretly to your parish, and they will give you feedback on how welcoming does your parish feel when you're not from there. How fruitful and dynamic does your baptismal prep feel when you're not from that parish? 

[00:47:26] Tom Quinlan: I absolutely love it. I think it's a tremendous idea. But those are people who are churchy folks. 

[00:47:32] Jim Jansen: Right. 

[00:47:33] Tom Quinlan: They're not truly on the margins. 

[00:47:36] Jim Jansen: It'd be artificial 'cause they're already a Christian. And churchy - gosh, if you could find somebody who like "Uh, I'm kind of ambivalent. It's been a long time." The actual customer. 

[00:47:47] Tom Quinlan: I like what you're saying, but how about we have eyes out for the folks who come down 'cause their kids are absolutely gonna have a donut, but we don't know these people. We've never seen them before. And they're over there in the corner. How about if we go get them, and somebody just sidles up to them and starts a conversation, and is genuinely warm and friendly and welcoming, and also on a little bit of an information hunt to try to get a sense of how was it today?

What are your impressions of us?" Blah, blah, blah. I mean, However you wanna do it. But we have the opportunity and interface with people on the margins all the time and we don't. . And the other thing is for us to go out to other places. Let's go be secret shoppers elsewhere and find out what we like and don't like in other places, and that can raise our frame of reference, and raise greater sensitivity to the ways in which we may be blind to some of our deficiencies as a parish.

[00:48:45] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Tom, we started off talking about Chicago and Pope Leo. I think you are right in the heart of what Pope Leo calls the missionary conversion of the entire church. I haven't heard a lot of other people talk about this, but I really latched on to his very first homily as pope.

- They're back in the Sistine Chapel, everybody's there, only he's dressed in white now. And he's like, "All right, guys, , here are my priorities." The first thing is, the primacy of Christ in proclamation. The second thing is like the missionary conversion of the entire church. And I think this is, in our own way, this is what we've been talking about.

I wanna give you a chance Maybe to be a little bit prophetic because, we've got an American pope. We've seen OCIA numbers increasing. It's been a good couple years to be Catholic in the United States, and yet there's some fundamental issues like we've been talking about today that have to be addressed.

How do you see the church looking if we dig in and we start to go after this call to conversion? And how do you see the church looking if we kinda fail to do so?

[00:49:59] Tom Quinlan: There's a momentum in play now in the church in the US and elsewhere, in Europe, that is beyond what I imagined. And of course it is, because that's how the spirit works. It's beyond what we have the capacity to imagine. So we should embrace this and celebrate it and say, "Come, Holy Spirit" more. If we fail to seize the opportunity and the momentum that is ours today, really woe unto us for having, squandered what God is doing. I see all sorts of green shoots out there, Jim, on the US landscape and the universal church landscape. I'm on the board of Divine Renovation, and I really recommend folks get the book Divine Renovation from Father James Mallon.

Get it in the hands of your pastor and see what kind of fruit that can bear. Alpha, I've become a believer that is a fruitful evangelization ministry. There's encounter ministries, et cetera, et cetera. All sorts of ways in which in apostolates and movements, the faith is coming alive and people are discovering their Catholic faith in a new and deeper way, and coming into the church in a new way. Now, we continue to hemorrhage people out at the same time.

[00:51:13] Jim Jansen: Right. 

[00:51:14] Tom Quinlan: All we have to do is be ourselves really well. We don't have to go beyond what it means to be Catholic, but we have to understand the fullness, the depth, the brilliance of Catholic theology and worldview, and we have to have an evangelizing game plan that sees everything as opportunity to evangelize and foster conversion.

And if we can, as ardent disciples who all step forward and embrace our call as baptized people to be missionaries, disciples on mission- God will execute a new Pentecost game plan in and through us in our lifetime, and there is nothing more satisfying nor more joy-inducing for us than to participate in the go and make disciples mission of Jesus Christ.

So let's all embrace it. Let's go recognize that our coworkers and our neighbors and our friends and our extended family are our business, our work, to somehow accompany, to love and care for, and to witness to the power and the grace of Jesus in our lives, and how it- it's game-changing for us and can be for them.

We're just scratching the surface of what can happen in the Catholic Church and in our world. When I was at the Eucharistic Congress t- two years ago, I could sense the Holy Spirit doing two things, and both of them were about convergence. That's the word I came up with, convergence. The Holy Spirit wants the Catholic Church in the United States to stop the ridiculous infighting, the polarization that has crept into every fabric of our society, including parishes.

And let's not be a parish that says, "Hey, we're the 24 adoration parish." No, we're the soup kitchen parish. You know what? Let's have 24-hour adoration that prays into our social justice ministries so that we go out and we embody Christ's good news in real ways that make a difference in people's lives. So that's the convergence in the US church.

God wants us to be one body in Christ pulling on the same end of the rope. That's in in the US. And globally, I can see this as I participate in some international ministries, a convergence between evangelical Christianity, which is becoming more appreciative of sacrament and liturgy. They're coming towards us, and the Catholic Church, which is clearly becoming more evangelical.

That is convergence and the Holy Spirit wants to bring the whole Christian body of Christ back together universally, and he's working on that in our time. You talk about powerful, beautiful, exciting stuff worth spending your life for, this is it.

[00:53:57] Jim Jansen: Yes. Tom, I don't know how long you were in the seminary, but I think you got the preaching class before you left. Thank you. That's-- I couldn't agree more. It's beautiful. I remember very early on in my missionary days, I noticed how much ecumenical work seemed to dovetail with my evangelistic work.

And at first I was confused. I was like no. I'm paid to be a missionary to college students. I can't be just talking to my non-Catholic evangelical peers who are missionaries on campus." And then I felt like it was, John Paul II was like no.

They always go together." And I think as we've seen this, renewal and awareness for evangelization in the church it's, no surprise that we're also seeing this ecumenical movement from both sides. I would agree. My evangelical friends -- they love liturgy. They're attracted to it. For some it's more foreign than others depending on their background, but I love it.

Tom, I just wanna give you a last word here. We've been kinda all over the place in the conversation, but I think as a thread through this, there's a sense of compassion for the individual person, whether it be a pastor, a catechist, or a parent who feels the weight of their responsibility and who also feels the challenge of how do we figure out how to do things in a way that's more fruitful? I wouldn't be surprised if some of them are feeling a little overwhelmed, inspired, and overwhelmed at the same time. Can you just speak to them for a little bit?

[00:55:34] Tom Quinlan: Jesus, the vine and the branches, to the degree that we're connected to the vine, we have a chance to be an instrument of great fruitfulness. To the degree that we've disconnected or taken it on as our own that's when we're gonna falter. That's when we're gonna struggle. But even when we are connected deeply and grounded humbly in Christ and the Spirit, we have to recognize that people have agency in their own lives, and parents are gonna make the decisions they're gonna make.

I would say to any ministry person, don't unduly own the struggles that are out there and perhaps the ways in which your ministry isn't, hitting it out of the park all the time. You do what you can do, and then you hand it over to God. That's that surrender piece, and you say, "Lord, I'm doing my best.

I wanna do better. Show me how I can do better, but also help me let go of this sense of ownership, that it's on me." It's not on us, per se. It's on God working through us. So it's a balancing act between owning what we ought to own in terms of how can we do this more effectively, and leading with greater prophetic courage and insight and all of that.

But then at the end of the day, go home, put something on Netflix or have your glass of wine or whatever it is, talk to your spouse or your dog or whatever, and, and try to be joyful. Because the most attractive thing will be for those parents, those folks coming to the parish for the first time, to meet people in leadership and in the parish, who are parishioners, who are joyful, not sad, burdened, and burned out.

That's not attractive at all. So continue to know the Lord and the Lord's goodness in your life, and own what you should and let go of what you shouldn't.

[00:57:27] Jim Jansen: Amen. Thank you. Tom, thank you for the conversation today. Feel like we could've kept talking for another, two hours. And thank you for your ministry, for your wisdom, for the encouragement for your passion

[00:57:37] Tom Quinlan: Hey, can I give you a contact email? So it's my name, Tom Quinlan, T-O-M Q-U-I-N-L-A-N, 

[00:57:49] Jim Jansen: Okay. Tom Quinlan at evangelizingcatechesis.org.

[00:57:54] Tom Quinlan: I would be happy to send you the baptismal resource, six practical ways to make your evangelization baptismal ministry more evangelizing. And I also want to draw people's attention to a book that I wrote in 2023 called At Home in the Heart of God: family, Jesus, and the Eucharist. At Home in the Heart of God is a short book for parents meant to be part of an evangelization strategy at baptism and first Eucharist for parents.

Father Ron Rolheiser just put it out as one of his best books for 2026, and Bishop Barron has endorsed it. So I would love to see that book in the hands of our parents as we seek to try to move the needle to where they fall in love with Christ Jesus and want to feed on Jesus in the Eucharist and bring their children to Mass. It's not the whole game, but a big part of what we should be doing is trying to help parents hunger for Jesus and find Him among many places, find Him at, in our parish liturgy.

[00:58:54] Jim Jansen: Tom, we will link to all of those things so people can find you easy in the show notes. Thank you for being here. And for those of you who are listening to this, you're like, "Oh, I need to listen to this again. I think I need a sabbatical." Let's start with the holy hour. Maybe maybe that joyful glass of wine later on. And when you are someplace that you're like, "Okay, this is good stuff and I need to share this with a friend," share it out and thanks for listening.

Today's episode was brought to you by Faith & Family Life Catholic Ministries, FFLCM. Their Pathways Formation suite of resources offers lifelong family-centered faith formation. So go check 'em out at fflcm.org and tell 'em I sent you.