[00:00:00] Jim: Hey everybody, welcome to the EquipCast. So today I sat down with Rachel Gifford. Rachel helps me kick off our special series on how to build a clear path of discipleship. Rachel tells the story of her and her team and her pastor's efforts to build a clear path of discipleship at St. Mary's Parish. She talks about the start of their journey in assessing their ministries and developing a vision.
It's a practical, fun story. honest conversation. If you're just starting to build a clear path of discipleship, and you're thinking about it, you need to listen to this conversation. Take a listen.
Everybody, welcome to the EquipCast, a weekly podcast for the archdiocese of Omaha. I'm your host, Jim Jansen.
Now let's dive into some encouragement and inspiration to equip you to live your faith and to be fruitful in your mission. Let's go.
Everybody, welcome to the EquipCast. Okay, this episode is part of a special series on how to build a clear path of discipleship. Today we're going to zero in on the assessment phase. At the very beginning of the process, before you do anything else, you want to assess your ministries, figure out where you're at, where are we making and where are we not making disciples.
You see, a clear path is a parish framework designed to help people take their next steps as disciples of Jesus. It's your plan for making and maturing disciples. Parishes that have a clear path know exactly how they connect with people, how they foster conversion, how they help people grow as disciples, and how they equip people as missionary disciples.
The concept is simple, but building the clear path doesn't happen overnight. It tends to happen in phases. Assessment, discernment, implementation, all of the above, all together. And today, to talk about assessment, I have with me Rachel Gifford from St. Mary's Parish in Bellevue, Nebraska. Rachel, how you doing?

[00:01:59] Rachel: I'm doing great. I'm still kind of on a retreat high because we got to go to our Union with Christ retreat recently. So, I'm doing fantastic. 

[00:02:06] Jim: Yeah, that was, that was fun. That was, that's a little Archdiocese of Omaha retreat for evangelization coordinators and youth ministers and DREs. And yeah, we just got to kind of recharge.
We had a wonderful retreat master and Father Tim Donovan, uh, a EquipCast alumnus. Yeah, that was a beautiful time together. We're expecting good things. We expect to be peaceful and holy all through this conversation. I'll try to not mess that up. Okay, Rachel, just to get us started here, I want to give you a chance to set the context for people.
Your work in building a clear path of discipleship, it all happened at St. Mary's in Bellevue. Tell us a little bit about St. Mary's. 

[00:02:45] Rachel: So, St. Mary's is an older parish and I don't mean like just like people, I mean, we've been there, we just celebrated our centennial. 

[00:02:51] Jim: That's a hundred years for those of you... 

[00:02:53] Rachel: Yes.

[00:02:53] Jim: Just kidding.

[00:02:54] Rachel: And we're right next to the air force base. So, we do have a lot of, um, Transition. We have people that have been there, like they're, they're lifers. They've been there for a very long time. And then we've got people that have literally just come in like last week. So, we've got quite a mix and we do have a school attached.
So, we've got a, uh, roughly a little under 200 students in our school. We've got an RE program and we've got a Yeah, I'd say we're kind of a mid-sized parish, probably about 700, 750. Yeah. I haven't seen the most recent numbers, but families registered. 

[00:03:26] Jim: How many weekend masses? 

[00:03:27] Rachel: We actually have four. 

[00:03:29] Jim: Okay.

[00:03:29] Rachel: Four? Yes. And we have a pastor and an associate pastor. 

[00:03:34] Jim: Yeah. Beautiful. Okay. So, you've been on this journey for a while. Give everybody just a little glimpse, like how did you guys get started with this idea of building a clear path, take people to the beginning of your journey? 

[00:03:49] Rachel: Okay. So, the very beginning was probably like 2019 or so where the archbishop had been talking about a desire for this, for parishes and our Started engaging in some meetings with, uh, the team at the Chancery to kind of break down, like, what does this look like?
What do we do? And they saw truly that this was going to take a lot of time and a lot of effort. And so, I was working as a youth minister at the time. And so, one of the first things that they decided to do is kind of shift my role as a paid staff to say like, yeah, keep, keep youth ministry alive, but we'd like you to then.
take on some of this and helping us with this process because we know like there's a lot of time and energy that are going to be there. So, they, they made a staffing change pretty much at the beginning of the process. 

[00:04:39] Jim: That's right. I forgot that. You know, it's funny as you talk about this, I remember some of those initial conversations.
I mean, shout out to your pastor. Father Del Lape. I love Father Del. He's hilarious. It'd be just a wonderfully dry sense of humor. And I remember just like, you know, just a very good kind of obedient priest. He's like, all right, so the Archbishop wants to do this. Like, what am I supposed to do? What is it?
Is there a program? Is there a thing? And we were like, well, I mean, there are programs and things, but Father, it's a little bit more. Like dating rather than baking a cake. I mean, there's patterns, but it's kind of individual and whatever. And then the conversation went on, you know, kind of did this like, you know, we continue to talk and develop some action steps.
And honestly, I mean, to his credit, I think he was kind of disappointed. He's like, really? I was hoping I was going to get a recipe and I hope it was going to bake a cake. Uh, and this is going to be a little bit harder and more involved than I wanted to. And just remember as he's walking out of the room, he's like, Oh, okay, well, it looks like I'm going to be dating.
And it was just this like hilarious deadpan. But right away, he found someone to help him and dove into it. And you were there then from the very beginning. 

[00:05:45] Rachel: Yes. And we started meeting. Consistently, “we” meaning at first it was me and the two priests. Cause they're like, we want you to do this thing. And I'm like, what, what thing, what is this?
But we were very consistent, and we realized like the first thing that we really needed to work on is like, we understood that there's this, this goal that parishes be missional, right. And that we be making disciples. We're like, okay, how do we, how do we make this. It's like translatable to where we are, you know, and for our parish.
And so, we had at the time, the first thing that we decided to tackle is a mission statement for the parish. And our mission statement was like a paragraph and some change long. Like it was super, super, super long and really involved. I'm like, yeah, nobody's going to remember what this says. And it's a little convoluted.
Like it wasn't bad. There wasn't anything in there that was... 

[00:06:33] Jim: Right, not evil, but maybe not helpful for helping us remember what the main thing is. 

[00:06:39] Rachel: Right. So, we started meeting to tackle that. And we just had, I mean, it was several months’ worth where we were just going through like, what do we really desire?
And what does God really desire for this parish and for his people? And honestly, bouncing around all these different things. We just kept coming down to like the absolute fundamental message, which is now in our mission statement is to help people get to heaven. And I know that sounds really simplistic.
Just like you say, Oh, we want to help make people be disciples and be on mission. And I'm like, But it's true and it's okay to just be that clear, you know. 

[00:07:11] Jim: Right. Well, I, I love that because, you know, I mean, you all were doing this before there was a book before, you know, building a clear path was cool. And there was a lot of language and momentum around it.
You know, we talk about like, okay, step one is assessment, you know, start to assess your ministries, but you're like, uh, I mean, sure. Or step zero is. What's your vision? Like, what's your mission? Why are we doing this? And man, you don't get more fundamental than what we're trying to get people to heaven.
Rachel, let's fast forward a little bit. You spent, I mean, months in the vision and mission, and why are we doing this? What was it like as you started to kind of dive into the assessment phase? 

[00:07:53] Rachel: We really started looking at two things, like really trying to see, like, who are the people? and what are their needs that they're presenting?
Where is the church and what are the needs that we have right now? And so, we started to build out, like when I say looking at the people, we started looking at like the process of conversion, the process of becoming a disciple. And I know you've called the thresholds of conversion and looking at how just understanding, first of all, building that common language.
among us as a staff, we started bringing other staff in to start to learn what that meant. But then also looking at like, how are we in the church utilizing our current resources at a very practical level? So, like we made a flow chart, we made lists, we had some graphics to look at that were saying like, these are all the roles in the parish.
And this is what everybody's doing, and this is where people are feeling very strained, and we were able to identify some different gaps and some different things. Um, so for example, one that's very practical, that it's hard to see how does this connect to the clear path, is like, we're an older, right, 100 years old, we have older buildings and grounds.
And... 

[00:08:59] Jim: Yeah. 

[00:08:59] Rachel: Doing the maintenance and remodeling and things like that was taking up a ton of father's time and a ton of our business manager's time. And so, we decided we eventually restructured and created a position where there's somebody that came in that now manages those things to take those things off their plates.
Yeah. So, they can be free to work on other things. And so that's what I mean. Like, we really looked at every role that we had that was staff and key volunteers, what they were doing. And then we said in a perfect world with all of the titles gone away, what would benefit us the most moving forward? Like where are people going to really be?
meeting the needs of the church, and then how are we going to then be structuring to meet the needs of the people to lead them through this conversion process. 

[00:09:46] Jim: Yeah. Oh, Rachel, that's so good, because I feel like at a really, really practical level, when we ask the questions like, okay, are we making disciples?
Uh, no, not, not, no, not as, not as consistently as we should. Why not? Sometimes, the answer is, the people who, who maybe could or should be sparking that, that renewal process, that should be equipping others to make disciples or making disciples themselves, they're like, um, all my time is busy doing something else.
Mm hmm. And, and to be able to just identify that to make some space, like that's, that's just super tangible and real. I want to ask, because I know for, for some people, the assessment process. is intimidating or hard because it kind of requires a level of honesty like, you know, everybody's working really hard.
And then to kind of go through this assessment and realize like, ah, man, a lot of our labors just are not bearing the fruit that we would hope. They're not accomplishing what we desire. How did you, how did you all handle the challenge of that kind of honesty. 

[00:10:50] Rachel: With patience. We did pull in. It wasn't just an effort of like just the priests or just putting me in.
We pulled in our staff and we're talking through things with them and seeing where they were. But honestly, when it was really challenging, we would go back to that touchstone of the vision and to say like when you're looking at what you're doing and you can ask, answer the question of how is this helping people get to heaven, you know?
And I, I think. A couple of us saying, like, we started reading our mission statement every day, and it started giving, like, this renewal, because there were times it just seemed like everything was falling apart. And I think, uh, I joke about this with Whitney from time to time. It's just, like, somebody's apartment caught on fire, somebody got sick, then the pandemic happened, and the whole world shut down.
And this is all in the midst of us trying to get started and do this assessment phase. Yeah. And so, it wasn't just, like, feeling overwhelmed. It was It was a lot of challenges, but I will say we went to a workshop and invited as many of the staff as we could that was put on that talked about the thresholds of conversion.
And again, sharing that common language was really helpful and sharing that, that mission is saying like, this is what we're trying to do is get people to heaven. Once we have the shared vision. Shared language, then we can start aligning and realizing, like, once you have that common language, you're realizing people really do share the same priorities.
We just may be articulating it differently. 

[00:12:12] Jim: Yeah. Talk about that because I think oftentimes, we experience a different, like, language or accent, if you will, as a person. resistance. Okay, they're just not bought in. They're not, they're not with the program. And you all, not that you didn't have to, you know, make some hard decisions about, okay, this is our vision and our mission.
And if this is not where you see yourself, thank you for your service. But You really, when you created that common vision and mission and the language to express that, you discovered more unity than you might have expected. 

[00:12:50] Rachel: We really did. 

[00:12:50] Jim: When did you first realize that? Because I, I would not have expected that.
Like how did that start to reveal itself? 

[00:12:56] Rachel: So, even starting from, like, we did a workshop where we were mapping all of our parish activities to what need that was serving, like, what level of the thresholds of conversion that that was, that could be applied to, is like, how is this helping somebody move along?
And it was contentious. Like, everybody's got their pet programs, you know, and Everybody's like, well, I'm involved in this, and this is super important. And it was to also take care with the language of saying, we are not saying that what you've put blood, sweat, and tears into all these years is not important.

[00:13:28] Jim: Yeah. 

[00:13:28] Rachel: Nobody is saying that, but we're asking us to agree is like, is getting somebody to heaven the most important thing? And then It's, it's a matter of how to prioritize like a clear path, not to say that, I mean, we still need liturgical ministries, we still need people to upkeep our gardens and our buildings and grounds, we, we need these things to function, and so it's being very mindful of approaching it with like a deep spirit of gratitude for what people have done and to be able to move forward.
But I mean, even in that, at one point there was, uh, somebody from your team that was in the room that's like, okay, everybody stop. And we're going to pray a decade of the Rosary. 

[00:14:07] Jim: I wasn't there, but I remember hearing this story. 

[00:14:11] Rachel: And we're gonna, we're gonna ask the Holy Spirit to help. And you know what?
We're going to put a few things and like, we've got this in kind of a shade of gray right now, and they can live there for right now. We don't have to tackle where this gets categorized yet. And so, we had to be okay. with not having everything figured out right then and there and to really listen like when somebody had a very different viewpoint to listen to that person where they were coming from and then to try to help us come to a common understanding to say like we're not just saying straight up no to the entire history of everything that's been done it's that we're trying to say yes to something different moving forward.

[00:14:51] Jim: Yeah. Does that make sense? Oh yeah. No, that's so good. Well, and you're speaking to like, that's the, that's the reality I think that trips up oftentimes that when you talk about the future, some people hear understandably so an indictment of the past. a disrespect or a lack of acknowledgement for their labor and the fruitfulness that was.
And oftentimes that keeps us from having like an honest assessment of where things are at now and a planning for the future. We didn't talk about this, but I just want to go a little bit off script. Can you talk about maybe sometimes you chickened out and then sometimes that you're like, okay, we actually, and we were really heroic in that.
And we, we did enter into a difficult conversation and came out on the other side with, you know, clarity and insight. 

[00:15:42] Rachel: Yeah. I think some of it was even in terms of some of our, our structures. Like, Yeah. the way that we were doing staff meetings or like our pastoral council and trying to get them on board, our ministry leaders.
And how do you talk to somebody that's in charge of a ministry that's not directly aligned with a very simple, clear path to get somebody to heaven, you know, where it's kind of on the periphery? How do you talk to them about that? And so, we actually had a ministry fair and we invited the ministers there and I'm like, okay, here's our new mission statement.
I had somebody point, like, well, I don't like it. I liked the old one better. And I'm like, okay, that's okay. That's okay. You don't have to like it. I'm just asking you to sit with it. You know, and I didn't, I didn't want to have those conversations necessarily, but the key was, I wasn't having them alone. And father was so supportive every step of the way with this, but we had like a staff training.
Like he, he met with every staff person and introduced the vision and got their feedback so that everybody felt heard. And I think that that was really important because. At least if, like, I'm super intimidated, like, this might be emotionally upsetting to someone, at least I know that they've had this opportunity to voice where they are and to know, like, I'm not saying anything is a personal attack.
I want you to feel heard and feel valued. And how can we Move forward with this, or in some cases, not move forward with this. So, like pastoral council wound up restructuring their bylaws eventually to align with like, we want to serve what the pastor is saying and what he's doing, but that was a hard process.
And I think it took them, I mean, forgive me if I'm wrong, but I think at least a year to try to rework what they were doing. And so, yeah, there were definitely growing pains and not everybody was. It was emotional from time to time, you know? 

[00:17:30] Jim: Well, and this is so patient. I mean, if you're like looking like, how long would you say you spent in the assessment phase? 

[00:17:38] Rachel: Honestly, I think it was close to like three years. 

[00:17:40] Jim: Yeah. Yeah, it would, would get COVID was kind of a special circumstance in there, but there was still a lot. There was so much work that had to be done because as you're like, as you're in the middle of the assessment, you're like, Oh wow.
And now we're like changing staff roles. And, uh, now we're, you know, now we're rewriting the bylaws of the pastoral council. 

[00:17:57] Rachel: Yeah, and we've gotten to the point now where we'll reassess, right, to see what's worked, but we have that framework that we worked so hard to build, and again, it wasn't done in isolation.
Yeah. And so that was another thing where we can say, okay, so pastoral council's on board with this now. Some of our key ministry leaders are on board with this now. The staff is mostly on board with this now. Because if it had just come, like, it didn't feel heavy handed necessarily. It wasn't saying, like, this is just Rachel Gifford's idea, and this is what she's doing.
Like, it was never that. 

[00:18:26] Jim: Yeah. 

[00:18:27] Rachel: And it was, I think, communicated pretty clearly. Like, this was a team effort that was engaging everybody at the parish and that was guided by our pastor, who was ultimately guided by the bishop. 
And so that people could see that this wasn't, like, somebody's personal vendetta or anything like that, you know?

[00:18:44] Jim: Ah, that's so good. Rachel, I want to give you a chance to kind of, to go back to, you mentioned the mapping exercise. If some people have read the book, maybe they're familiar with that, or maybe if they're, they're, you know, here in the archdiocese, maybe, you know, my team or I has helped them with that. Give people maybe a little bit of a picture, like what, what do you mean when you talk about like mapping the ministries as an assessment exercise?

[00:19:10] Rachel: Okay, so we, like many parishes, have a whole bunch of. ministries or opportunities to serve in the parish or apostolate or whatever word, teams, committees, whatever team, whatever phrase you want to use for it. And when we're talking about mapping, we're looking at, uh, holding up as a standard, this, the thresholds of conversion.
We're looking at the people of the parish and how individual person in the pew can be moved along to say, like, at some point they could confidently say, like, I am a disciple of Christ and I feel equipped and supported to share Christ with someone else and invite them in. So, we start with, like, working with the people in the pews with the goal of them moving outward beyond the pew.
And so, once we establish very clearly, like, this is what. our standard is, that we're holding it against. Then we look at, okay, now where are our ministries? Because we can't put all of our effort into all of these things. We need things that are maintenance, right? That keep things going day to day. So, like, yeah, we need our music ministry.
They do things for our mass and other things. Yes, we need our liturgical ministers. Yes, we need, we need people to do maintenance. Like, physically maintenance. Like we need those things. And so, in acknowledging those things, and yes, they're indirectly connected because they create a space and an environment for people to experience conversion.
And so, we have those on the side saying like, yes, that is a priority to look at what we need to maintain and keep things functioning. But then looking at some of these other opportunities, like instead of having, you know, five or six Bible studies going on at once. really looking at, okay, what opportunity for faith formation are we really offering to people so that they don't get decision fatigue, like trying to make a decision when you have all these options.
You know, I think that's why we get doom scrolling is people just have too many things to watch, too many decisions to make, so they don't settle on anything and they just flip through it and to really highlight those things that we know will move someone forward in some way or meet them where they are at one of those thresholds and at least end with an invitation to move forward.
And so, we rallied around a few set things. We set the school and the RE program aside, just because that was its own complicated conversation, which we've worked through now. And we looked at like as a parish as a whole. And again, not to say school and RE programs were not incredibly important. They are, but that wasn't what we were discussing there.
And we looked at like, okay, this program invites people in, in the beginning stages. And yes, it was a program, but this whole process of mapping was not a program. We were looking at what programs, what efforts we're using that can move people along the process. Cause there's no program that's going to do it.

[00:21:55] Jim: Perfect. Yeah. Not one, not a one shop thing. So, I mean, literally, I think you guys did it this way. you know, for listeners who imagine you've never seen this, you get like a, you know, eight foot wall and you put images of the thresholds, you know, as people are, you know, I, I'm just, I just barely trust, you know, anybody who's Catholic and maybe this institution.
And I'm, I'm kind of, you know, I'm kind of open and I'm, I'm starting to seek and no, I actually am, you know, I've made a decision for the Lord. I am a disciple. I'm, you've got these down there and you literally go through. A like 5 by 10 or 5 by 7 index card for every ministry. And stick it on the wall.
Yeah. Wait, like who does this serve? People that are just at the start of their spiritual journey, learning to trust and, and on their way to become a disciple or people who are already a disciple, maturing on their way to become a missionary disciple. 

[00:22:48] Rachel: Like, when we really looked at it, we saw, like, the vast majority of our things were presuming that people were already disciples.
And we were really looking at it, we're like, you know, if all of these people were already disciples, we would be busting at the seams, you know? And so, we're having to challenge our assumptions. about where people were already. And then, you know, we're pouring all our effort into this side. Maybe we need to take a step back and say, like, we don't have much going on right now to facilitate the actual conversion process and to refine what we have for, um, I forget what the clear path threshold is, but I defined it as catechesis, right?
How to build up the disciple, how to build them up and give them the confidence to then continue to build up. So, we, um, Based on that, like, we, we have our Christ Life program. We have a men's group called That Man Is You that's very, that meets people where they are and does give the invitation to move forward.
And you know, we were noticing, like, we don't have that many programs that were on the conversion or the pre conversion side. And so, we were identifying gaps then, saying, like, we're saying we're trying to move people along, but we don't actually have. a stopping point for each level. Like if somebody's over here, they may not want to go to a catechism class that's really in depth as a scripture study if they're not even really sure that God loves them.

[00:24:09] Jim: It's this beautiful, dare I say, kind of horrifying realization that as parishes go through this, because it's a common pattern, they're like, uh oh, we have a lot of stuff to help people if they were a disciple. And maybe we have too much to help them if we're a disciple, and they're getting, you know, decision fatigue.
But when we ask ourselves the question, what if somebody who isn't quite sure yet? about Jesus were to show up, what do we have for them? And usually, the answer is nothing. Right. We have nothing for them. And then it's like, oh, no wonder new people aren't coming. No wonder we're shrinking. Because if new people come, we don't have anything for them.

[00:24:50] Rachel: Right.

[00:24:51] Jim: How do people respond to that? Because that's a hard thing to see. 

[00:24:55] Rachel: There is a mixture. So, I will say like there is some response of like, Oh my gosh, this makes so much sense. We can get behind this. We can go forward. And then there was also pain, right? There was a challenge and then there was a feeling of being overwhelmed.
And we, we did have, um, someone say like, I have no idea how we're going to get from point A to point B. You know, and someone else saying without, you know, identifying anybody, but just saying like, I don't think I'm over here on the threshold. I think I'm still over here. And so, it inspired people to kind of honestly look at their own spiritual lives and where they were and also look at, you know, where they really felt like they were going to be able to fit in, in this process.
And sometimes there wasn't a fit. You know, and so we have had some changes, which it's been hard. So, I mean, and I think there was resistance because some of it is very new. It's not how we've always done things. Like I said, we're a very established parish. We have certain things. We've always done it this way.
And there was definitely some, some struggle and some resistance saying, yeah, that's fine. That's your little Jesus talk stuff, but we have to get down to business over here, you know, and that, that was challenging. And I would say, you know, for my part, I'm like, Okay. Sometimes I feel discouraged and then I go and talk to father and then we revisit our, our mission and our vision, you know, and support each other. And...

[00:26:12] Jim: Yeah. 

[00:26:12] Rachel: We, we took advantage of this wonderful opportunity to be coached by the offices here. And so sometimes it was just a, can I just take a second to breathe? And then you remind me what I'm doing. 

[00:26:23] Jim: Yeah, you know, it's so, but I mean, honestly, the word that's coming to mind, you're just painting this very real, honest picture of what pastoral conversion looks like.
You know, the church, Pope Francis especially has been using this term, you know, and, and it's confusing at first because it's conversion, like, okay, it's all of the, you know, my fear and my attachments and my insecurities. I'm being brought to Jesus to let him remake me. It's assuming pastoral conversion is like, no, you're already a disciple.
What you're letting Jesus break and remake is the way you care, the way you shepherd, the way you pastor. And that's hard. It's still conversion, but you're kind of describing this experience of like, oh no, what I've been doing isn't bearing the fruit I had hoped. Oh no, I'm going to have to learn a new way to do things.
It's real. And I don't want to, cause you know, I'm going to stink at it at first. 

[00:27:22] Rachel: We did pull in new people. We've shifted roles for existing people. And we kept going back to like what we did in that, the flow chart and looking at like, these are what roles in a perfect world. If you took away all of the names, all of the positions, all of the history, if you took it all away, what roles do we need to support this process of moving people along, both in staff and in ministries?
And I will say like, we, we struggled a bit with like some of the language. We're like, okay, let's try to make this more familiar for our community. And so, for our clear path, we changed the terminology a little bit. It's following the exact same concept, but we modified it so that it would make sense in our community and our application and for our team.
And so, we, we still have words like encounter, discipleship, catechesis, sacraments and prayer, and love of neighbor. And these are the words and the points we call these, these are our values, right? And these are ultimately like, we're aligning these things with our thresholds of conversion, because maybe saying thresholds of conversion is confusing, right?
But people have heard of sacraments and prayer. And so, we align it a little differently. Sacraments and prayer are more on the side of like, you've already made your decision for Christ. You're growing as a disciple. And I from that point on, but we were able to Listen to the feedback and then adapt so that we, we took the format and the framework for the clear path, and we just adapted it.

[00:28:51] Jim: Right. Well, you made it yours.

[00:28:52] Rachel: Right.

[00:28:53] Jim: It is St. Mary's clear path. 

[00:28:55] Rachel: Right. 

[00:28:56] Jim: Yeah. Give everybody just like kind of a thumbnail sketch of that. You know, this idea, like you have something in mind to help meet people at the start of their journey, to help them encounter Jesus, to help them grow as disciples, help them become missionary disciples.
Kind of talk about like. The language you use, because you've talked a little bit, and then what are some of the specific tools, ministries that you use to help foster that stage of growth? 

[00:29:22] Rachel: Yeah. So, like, our first step is the encounter, and that incorporates people who, uh, maybe have a little bit of trust in the faith, or even maybe don't, but I'll come back to that in a minute.
All right. The goal of the encounter phase is to lead people to encounter Jesus, especially through the proclaiming of the gospel message. But we really emphasize the second part on there, witness of life. And that's where we're trying to emphasize that there's only so much like, father can't go out to every single house in old town Bellevue and get to know every single person's story and invite them in.
But the people could get to that point. And so, it's once that invitation has been made, where do they land? When they come into the door, like, do you first take them to a mass or do you take them to say, come have donuts after mass and meet with people? Or we have our Christ life program. Discovering Christ is the first phase where we've had people who are a non-Christian come through that.
We have had certainly people who are not Catholic. We've had fallen away Catholics, and then we've had people that are Catholic, but didn't have a personal encounter with the Lord yet per se. They. checked all the boxes and done the things. And so, for that program, it ultimately culminates in this opportunity to give your life to Christ.
And for some people, it was for the first time. And from that, we've had some people that have been baptized in the church. They've gone on into our CIA. We've had multiple people choose to be confirmed from that. Many people have come back to the church through the sacrament of confession. Because this specific format for this program helps guide people through that, ranging from like, let's talk about, does God exist?
And then if He does exist, what does He want from you? How do you know anything about Him? Like, starting from what seems like it's very basic, but we can't assume that people really know God for who He is. And how do we show them that? Or create an opportunity for them to encounter that. So... 

[00:31:20] Jim: That's awesome.

[00:31:21] Rachel: We have a program we've rallied around as a starting point. We put a lot of priority into that. So maybe if there's a group that was meeting there, that's like four or five people in our meeting space, we're like, maybe we need to say like, maybe you guys can meet somewhere else and let's instead have Christ life, have access to these resources as a priority.

[00:31:38] Jim: Right. Because we need the facilities because we have got to foster this initial encounter. 

[00:31:44] Rachel: Right. 

[00:31:44] Jim: Yeah. Okay. So that's step one. You help people encounter Jesus. Through you use the Christ life program for the first part of it. Okay, what comes next? 

[00:31:55] Rachel: Then we have discipleship, which are phrasing for discipleship is to invite others to become disciples of Jesus by providing accompaniment and mentorship.
And so we talk about like, have a one on one go out to coffee with somebody sharing their stories, because the best way to keep somebody in tune with their own spiritual life is to have that accountability, is to have that partnership, is to have somebody that can share the journey with you, to walk with you.
That's what Jesus did. They all walked together. He didn't just call one person and that was it. And so, it's this idea of accompaniment and it can be messy. You don't have to have all the answers, but can you love someone where they are and walk with them? And so, some of those have been like small groups.
And like, we have a program called that man is you, which I know that that's a set program, but our parish has done it for so long that it does have a little bit of a different flavor to it where they do really connect in their small groups and they have that accompaniment. They have that. Element of mentorship too.
We have a deacon very involved in the program. Like they have both of those things. 

[00:33:00] Jim: Right? Well, the table leaders, they're veteran. Mm-Hmm then. Yeah. That's so good. 

[00:33:04] Rachel: And we also have our second part of the Christ Life program, which is following Christ, which I would say is a little bit discipleship, but a little more with catechesis as well.
'cause it's teaching them. These are some of the main sacraments. Like here's confession and here's the mass, but also here's forgiveness. Let's talk a lot about how to be a disciple is a lot about forgiveness and I would say that's honestly kind of hidden in there. We don't say like this session is about learning how to forgive yourself and others it but it is and it's a very practical thing, but it's very much wrapped up and that you're still accompanied.
You're not in this alone. And we have other opportunities for catechesis too that kind of pepper the journey, but I think that piece is to help take that next step forward once you've committed to Christ. But what does that look like? And for a lot of people, it looks like forgiveness and how to encounter that and then friendship and how to grow together in that, you know?

[00:33:56] Jim: Okay, so you've got encounter and you use the Christ life program to help foster that initial encounter with Jesus. You've got discipleship and you're using that man is you and you're using small groups to help people really like be a friend and love someone and accompany them. What's next? 

[00:34:11] Rachel: Then we kind of move towards sacraments and prayer.
So that's where we will emphasize like, okay, now spend your time with the Lord first before you look at the next steps is like, we really want you to be rooted in that. So that's where we encourage people. Like we have 24-hour adoration and we will have adoration captains. Like we have people who can talk to them about what does that look like to sit and pray with Jesus?
We have various prayer opportunities. We have various prayer groups and like some of our small groups might be focused around like live lent together is coming up just a little side plug where you learn how to pray with scripture and also with other people but it can equip you to learn how to do it on your own and so that sacraments and prayer piece is where now you've had all this now here's where you sit with the lord and get to love him for who he really is.
And then our final phase is love of neighbor, which we've created into twofold, right? So, because you love the Lord and let him love you, then you allow him to love others through you, which yes, means serving their physical needs, of course. And so, we do have ministries for that, like the St. Vincent de Paul Society or our Stephen ministry.
But then we also have, You know, don't you think love of neighbor also means sharing the gospel with them? Yeah. So, we really build up our sharing Christ program is like teaching people how to share their testimony, teaching people that they have a testimony, teaching people to look at what the Lord has done in your life.
how to celebrate that, and then how do you share that with other people? And so that's, and then it all comes back around. Like I said, catechesis is sprinkled in throughout that, like to teach them as they go. But really that love of neighbor, I have seen some incredible things come from that to the point where people that started out at our Christ Life program at the very beginning with discovering Christ have now gone on, uh, it's a group of these beautiful women.
One of them became, uh, got confirmed in her eighties. God bless her. 

[00:36:00] Jim: That's beautiful. 

[00:36:01] Rachel: They have started a women's group. at St. Mary's called Women of Grace, where they meet, there's 40 or 50 women that meet once a month. That's just how to share life together. They've created their own discipleship group, you know, and it's something that kind of goes back into, well, we have one that does it for men.
Let's do one that does this for women. And that's a fruit. That's, they've moved through the whole process and now they're at love of neighbor and it's amazing. 

[00:36:24] Jim: I love it. I mean, it just a lot of work, but you've, you've been able to create spaces for the Lord. to help people grow and mature first to become a disciple and then to become a missionary disciple.
It's working. I'm gonna ask this question. This feels like kind of like a scary question because I'm hoping you're gonna say yes, Rachel Was it worth it? Absolutely. That's good. 

[00:36:49] Rachel: Yeah. Okay. Even when you look at just the practicals of like if we have 700-750 families Roughly 200 of them now, of individuals have gone through our Christ life program. 

[00:36:59] Jim: Yeah.

[00:37:00] Rachel: And that means roughly 200 people have had the opportunity through that program alone to dedicate their lives to Christ. 
We have what 40 to 50 of those people are going through our women of grace, like engaged in discipleship. We had, you know, eight to 10 live, lent together small groups last year. We have people that are engaging, not just showing up to be our volunteers for stuff, right?
They're not just the people that are showing up to do the Knights of Columbus fish fries, which praise God for those people. I love that, but they're sharing life. And sharing faith with each other, holding each other accountable. And I see them moving through the process where it's not just like, I have this pearl of great price, right?
I have found Jesus and now I'm going to hide it. I'm going to bury it again. You know, no, it's that I want to share this with others. And so, I see people now going up to, like, here's a stranger in the pew, I don't know. They go up and talk to them. Because we're right by an Air Force base, we might get people that are just passing through.
Yeah. And then what difference would it make to have somebody come up to you with a warm smile and say, Hey, nice to meet you. You know, we've created a welcome team where for new registered parishioners, like if they register, we send somebody or we offer to send somebody to meet with them in their homes or at the church.
We call them, we touch base with them. And these were things that were put on people's hearts. Because they moved through this process. They're like, you know what? I see this gap here. I have this desire. I'm going to do this and they're doing it organically. So, it's not necessarily something that's an extra demand on the resources of the parish.
We are just providing that. Yes. Yes. Go do this. This is beautiful. 

[00:38:34] Jim: Yeah, you're mobilizing people and they're living out their baptism. Yes. Oh, that's so beautiful. Rachel, yeah. Our time's totally flown here. I just want to, you know, I know you're not done. No. What do you see as like the next step for building your clear path?

[00:38:48] Rachel: I think for some of it, I mean, we will get to the point we've been building up the people that are there. We really want to invite some creativity and some imagination in terms of how to continue to move outward. Right? So, our thought was like, we have to build up the people in the pews first so that there's something to invite.
Right. Others into and I think we've done a really good. We've got a really good start in that. At least I know we're not done. We'll never be done. But then it's how to take that next step outward. How to serve our community that we're directly in. beyond the parish doors, right? And so I don't have a quick easy solution for that, but I think that's why we need the imagination and the creativity of the people who have responded to that call that God has put on their hearts to do that, because he's identified the people, you know, like saying, like, I want you to share the good news.
You've been baptized. Now share it with others. And there's a way to do that. And so, I want to hear like, what's going to best serve as our next step. And what's our rallying point. Just like we rallied around, like we need to really focus on conversion. So then how do we build trust? You know, and we have an amazing opportunity for that.
Like even through our school and RE programs, which we're working on. Right. So, we've almost built like a mini clear path for RE in school, uh, for the students. And then we're working out for the parents. Right. To, to engage and offer them some of these things. And so, yeah, I think it's a lot, it's going to be kind of that assessment phase all over again for like, how do we help people feel equipped and supported to then go beyond the comfort zone, right.
To go beyond the parish doors. 

[00:40:24] Jim: Yeah. To take their, their next step, wherever they're at in the journey, their next step. Rachel, what advice would you have for those They're, they're where, where you guys were in 2019. They're just beginning the assessing of the ministries of their parish. They're intuitive folks.
They kind of know. It's like, Ooh, this could be a little hard. What advice do you have for them? 

[00:40:47] Rachel: Let the Lord lead. So just like that first mapping activity that a bunch of our staff did where somebody said, hold on, let's stop. Let's pray. a discernment, like let's pray a decade of the rosary. 

[00:40:57] Jim: Yeah. 

[00:40:58] Rachel: Let's refocus because everybody has ideas and gifts and talents, but that refocus of let the Lord lead and that we can refocus on.
We want to get to heaven, you know, so it's okay to pause. It's okay to have confrontation. It's messy. It's uncomfortable. It's okay to have those things because it's the Lord. That's the one that gives our strength to move forward, you know, and nobody can love the people that we're having, you know, conflict with more than the Lord does, right?
And so, it's to let him lead. 

[00:41:30] Jim: Thank you, Rachel. Thank you. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for everything you do. Uh, I really find it, you know, an inspiration. There's so many amazing people doing so many good things, but I love the way you tell the story. I love how kind of honest and real you make it.
It's just very accessible and you're not hiding any of the difficulty, but you, I think, help us see, okay, we can do this. with the Lord. 

[00:41:54] Rachel: And you know it by its fruits, and we've had some amazing fruits even on our uh, our last little uh, message we've had in the last year, you know, we had 45 new families register.

[00:42:08] Jim: Wow. 

[00:42:08] Rachel: We're seeing some, obviously everybody experienced that constriction during the pandemic, but we're seeing some new life and we're seeing some new life in the sacraments. We're seeing some new life in the church and it's. It's, it's been amazing to see that, like the Lord is really faithful when we approach him and say, Lord, I want to do your will.
He's faithful and revealing that to us if we just continue to come to him. 

[00:42:30] Jim: You're really offering a very tangible message of hope and, uh, we need that. So, some of you, you know who you are, this was for you and, and you know, it's actually for someone else and you know who that is. So, uh, when you get to your destination, uh, send this out to somebody who needs to hear it.
Okay. Rachel, thank you. Thanks for being with us. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Thanks for listening to the EquipCast. We hope this episode has inspired you to live your faith and equip you to be fruitful in your mission. Stay connected with us by going to Equip.Archomaha.org. God bless and see you next time.