[00:00:00] Jim Jansen: Hey everybody. Welcome to the EquipCast. So today I sit down with Jonathan Sanchez-Hildago as part of a series about how to build a clear path of discipleship. And Jonathan and I talk about the implementation phase. Jonathan talks about how he found a team to help him build the next step on their clear path.
All that he learned through the obstacles and ups and downs and twists and turns of trying to build a clear path of discipleship in his parish. You're going to love today's conversation. Take a listen. Hey, 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.
All right. Well, everybody, welcome to the EquipCast. Really? Kind of a fun, special series of episodes talking about how to build a clear path. Today, we're really going to zero in on the implementation phase. See, Clear Path is a parish framework designed to help people take their next step as disciples of Jesus.
It's basically your plan for making and maturing disciples, and parishes that have a clear path, well, they 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. It's a simple concept but building a clear path doesn't happen overnight.
And, uh, it tends to happen in, well, phases, right? There's, there's a process of assessment and discernment and implementation, communication, alignment, expansion. The Holy Spirit is doing it all, but we actually have a role to play. And today we're really going to zero in on the experience of implementation.
Uh, and I have with me today, Jonathan Sanchez-Hildago. Jonathan, how you doing today? 

[00:01:54] Jonathan: I'm good, Jim. 

[00:01:55] Jim Jansen: Jonathan, I'm so glad you're here. Just let's just start off by giving people just a little bit of context of the parish that you get to work with. You're at St. Charles Borromeo, Gretna, Nebraska. Give everybody just a quick thumbnail sketch of what St. Charles is like. 

[00:02:10] Jonathan: St. Charles is great. 

[00:02:12] Jim Jansen: Good start. 

[00:02:13] Jonathan: Good start. It is. I still believe, I believe it's still the youngest parish in Omaha. 

[00:02:18] Jim Jansen: Mm hmm.

[00:02:19] Jonathan: I think so. It was founded, I think 2007 when they were having masses in the gym. Whoa. And so, in terms of working there, there's not a lot of things that have been there for 50 years because they haven't been there for 50 years.
So, a lot of the things are still new, still developing. When I came to work there five and a half years ago, there was still some programs that just weren't even up and running yet because it just takes time and money and space, which they didn't have a lot of those going for their favor. 

[00:02:52] Jim Jansen: So really like literally the parish was like, there was, there was nothing there.
There were cornfields. And even now those cornfields are slowly being converted to beautiful neighborhoods and schools and, and a little community. It was just dawning on me. You are the perfect guy to talk about implementation, uh, not just for building a clear path because you've had to build kind of everything in the parish.
I mean, that's been, yeah, that's been so much with the ST Charles experience. 

[00:03:18] Jonathan: It has been. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a quarter of our parish boundaries. is only a quarter of it has been inhabited by people. There's only housing in about a quarter of our parish boundaries currently. Wow. And it is the one of the fastest growing parts of Nebraska.
So, there's that. And then just, yeah, all the new things there, my role did not exist. I'm the director of evangelization and discipleship, and there was no one doing programming for adults there. There were, you know, people would run a couple of Bible studies here and there, but there was not. I remember one of my first staff meetings I went to, I just thought there's not much going on here.

[00:03:59] Jim Jansen: That's great. You can write, you can safely say, I am the best and worst evangelization coordinator this parish has ever seen. 

[00:04:06] Jonathan: Yes. Very true. 

[00:04:08] Jim Jansen: That's awesome. Okay. So, as we really zero in on kind of implementation, just like building, you know, something kind of taking a step on your clear path and really bringing it to life.
There's some context here. You know, you and your pastor, uh, you know, Father, Father Lusky, shout out for him. You, you had worked together already to kind of assess where things are at. Again, new parish. It wasn't a ton. You weren't already over programmed. You did some discernment and, and I know we'll touch a little bit on that.
It's like, okay, what, what do we need? What should we build? What did you end up deciding to build and why? 

[00:04:45] Jonathan: Okay. So, we've been on this clear path train since 2018 was the first time Andy brought it up to me and we looked into it.

[00:04:54] Jim Jansen: For all the math geniuses. That's, that's like five years.

[00:04:56] Jonathan: Five years. It was, yeah.
So, in January of 2019, I presented our parish council our first edition of the clear path, which is now five years ago. So, it's been, it's been a journey. 

[00:05:13] Jim Jansen: Yeah. I remember those days, but it's like, I mean, it's amazing how, yeah, how fast time goes and how even at a very, uh, young parish where there's not a lot in the way, it still takes some effort. to build this. 

[00:05:26] Jonathan: It does. And it's because it in theory, in theory, it works great. It looks great. And like you've said, it practical terms to implement it and for it to be fleshed out and done well. I'm still not sure. Of any parish that is doing the full clear path and just steam rolling going, going great, right?

[00:05:50] Jim Jansen: Yeah, it would be a lot easier if people weren't involved. 

[00:05:54] Jonathan: And that's the problem is where there's people involved, and we're all broken. And, and there's a lot of formation that has to happen. Yeah. And so, when we were looking at this, we realized that that conversion moment, that encounter with Christ. You hope I think every parish has that hope that we're facilitating encounters with Christ regularly, but did we have anything specific?

[00:06:18] Jim Jansen: Mm hmm. 

[00:06:18] Jonathan: That really targeted that and we didn't and as a parish I think that's probably the most important thing we can do for our parishioners is Facilitate that encounter and so that was where we really first started saying, okay, this whole clear path looks great But we need to do something We need this and we need this now because we don't have this right now.

[00:06:39] Jim Jansen: Yeah. And I just want to offer a little bit of context, right, for those who maybe aren't as familiar, you know, a clear path is just about creating this framework so that people can first off encounter the Lord, become a disciple and then grow and mature to become a missionary disciple. You know, typically, there's nothing magical about the names, but we often kind of refer to this process where people were very far away from the Lord.
Okay, they need somebody to reach out to them in a, in a relational way. So, we call the first step relational outreach. We call the second step a conversion moment where people can intentionally encounter the Lord and experience conversion. After that, the third step is, is usually referred to as faith formation, and then preparing and equipping people to be missionaries, to be evangelization formation.
You guys, as you looked and assessed, you're like, what we need, and this is super common, we're like, what We're doing some stuff, but we got to make sure that people have a chance to encounter the Lord and experience conversion. So that's where you decided to start right halfway through. Where did that conviction come from?

[00:07:44] Jonathan: As a parish, if we are not providing that, nothing else really matters. You don't have to, all of the other things, people do outreach for all, all sorts of things. Yeah. My kid's soccer team does outreach, trying to fundraise, you know, whatever it is, it's, there's small groups. You have small groups that get together and drink beer every Saturday.
Maybe it's not faith, small group. It is that context of, I have a community around me. 

[00:08:10] Jim Jansen: Yeah. 

[00:08:11] Jonathan: That conversion moment, there's only one place you can really get that. And that's with the Holy Spirit and with Christ at center. 

[00:08:18] Jim Jansen: Right. I mean, I love the way the Archbishop, you know, talks about this. It's like. I mean, what else do we really have to offer?
I mean, we have Jesus. And, and even more, I mean, some just like, well, we have the mass, like, Jesus shows up there. It's like, yes, but if someone doesn't yet have the eyes of faith to see him there, I mean, he's there. But there is a prerequisite of evangelization and formation that allows people to You know, really experience him.
He's there every mass. But this, this moment where, where you can really introduce people to the Lord, foster conversion, people who are far away, and maybe people who've lived their whole life as a Catholic haven't ever developed that personal relationship. That's where this happens, right? What did you decide to do?
You know, it's like, okay, we gotta have something that fosters this moment. How do you do that at ST Charles? 

[00:09:12] Jonathan: Right? So, um, The easiest thing is to take something someone else has done and just do it ourselves. And so, we looked at things like alpha and alpha is great. It takes 12 to 14 weeks. Then you have a retreat at the end.
We didn't have the space or the people. So, the space. Everything we ran ran out of our gym and when we were... 

[00:09:33] Jim Jansen: that was the church, the gym, the everything, yeah, brand new parish. Yeah. 

[00:09:38] Jonathan: At this point though, we did have our worship space. Yeah. But any small groups or anything were run out of the gym, the nights meetings, every, any meeting happened in the gym.

[00:09:47] Jim Jansen: Yeah. 

[00:09:47] Jonathan: And so, There was not 14 consecutive weeks ever that we could take up a night of the week to run Alpha. We also didn't have the people, enough people that were in that phase of their formation to, to lead tables. For 14 weeks or to cook for 14 weeks, provide babysitting for 14 weeks. 

[00:10:08] Jim Jansen: Right. 

[00:10:09] Jonathan: We looked at Christ's life, which is similar to alpha.
And then there's things like the CEC retreat. The issue with CEC is we don't control when they happen. And it's people from all sorts of different parishes. Right. And so. We looked at Koinonia, that college students do. We looked at Christ Renews His Parish, which Dynamic Catholic took over and now is called Welcome.
And I think that's an overnight retreat. And we said, well, there's going to be parishioners that aren't going to want to sleep overnight or commit for two weeks or whatever it is. And so, we wanted to remove as many obstacles as possible, and we didn't find anything that fit that. So, We took a core group of leaders from our parish, so it was just Father Jeff, myself, and two other parishioners who had experienced a lot of these things, and we said, we need to build something, and we need to make it so that it is accessible to the majority of our parishioners.
We want to remove as many obstacles, so we don't charge anything, and so Father Jeff had been pondering a retreat on the life of St. Peter for a long time. And as we got together, we started looking at the readings and we met for several months trying to figure out how are we going to provide this opportunity for encounter and conversion for our parishioners.
And so, we came up with Quo Vadis, which means where are you going? And the theme behind that is Peter was fleeing Rome during the persecutions because he didn't want to be persecuted. He didn't want to be killed weird and Jesus he encounters Jesus on the way on the way and Jesus as or he asked Jesus Where are you going, Lord?
Quo Vadis. Quo Vadis. Quo Vadis domine. And, and Jesus responded to him, I'm going back to Rome to be crucified again, because you won't do it. And, at that moment, Peter turns around, goes back to Rome, and he is, he's killed. Yeah. That's his last moment. But as we looked at the life of St. Peter, it is our lives.

[00:12:15] Jim Jansen: Yeah. 

[00:12:16] Jonathan: Because he's a screw up just like we are. And he's, you know, he has those moments of I'm all on board. I'm going to do everything. I will never leave you, Lord. This surely it will not be me that denies you three times. And then the rooster crows. And so, we have taken those elements from people from all these other retreats and experiences.
And incorporate it into, we get there Friday evening, we have three talks with some adoration, show up Saturday morning, we have mass, and then we go until about 3. 30. 

[00:12:48] Jim Jansen: That's awesome. 

[00:12:48] Jonathan: And, so it's, it's not even, it's about a full day, but it doesn't take up your whole weekend. 

[00:12:53] Jim Jansen: Yeah. How long have you been doing this?
How long has it been up and running? 

[00:12:58] Jonathan: So, the initial beta for the retreat, because you have to have people to run the retreat, And so the way we got that going was we looked at all of our parishioners and we said, who do we think? Is at least at a certain level that could maybe put this retreat on who is formed in a decent enough way.

[00:13:21] Jim Jansen: Yeah. 

[00:13:22] Jonathan: And through that, we handpicked the people we were going to invite. Nice. For the first one. 

[00:13:29] Jim Jansen: Yes, that's beautiful. 

[00:13:30] Jonathan: And so, the thought process was these are going to be the people that put on the first retreat that's open to the parish. 

[00:13:35] Jim Jansen: Yeah. And you know, I just have to, like, as I listen to the story unfold, one of the things that's just exploding in my mind is, as you're in this kind of, you know, discernment phase, okay, should, what, we know we need to do something for, for, for a conversion moment, but what do we do?
And you're looking at all the options, and you're keenly aware of the things you don't have, but you, you really leaned into the things you did. I mean, you have some exceptional So entrepreneurial, if I can use that, that word leaders, your own experience. That's so Father Jess MO and what you're just like, okay, we may not have this or this and this, but we actually do have a group of people that could invent something that's right for our parish.

[00:14:17] Jonathan: 100%. 

[00:14:18] Jim Jansen: Yeah. I love that. And then you're like, okay, who do we want to experience this? Because our first round of participants. Are going to become our leaders when this grows so that we can welcome, you know, more and more people. 

[00:14:30] Jonathan: Right? 

[00:14:31] Jim Jansen: You said, how long was the process as you're like sorting and sifting through your options of programming and building the retreat?
I mean, that was a multiyear process, right? 

[00:14:42] Jonathan: It was. So, we built the retreat. I mentioned the clear path in January of 2019 to the parish council. We took that whole year planning the retreat. I was looking back at my notes. So, the beta of that retreat, that initial one was going to be January of 2020 and great timing.
It was pre pandemic still, however, but yeah, however. There was a snowstorm or an ice storm and it got canceled. 

[00:15:12] Jim Jansen: You would have just made it in before the pandemic hit and lockdowns. 

[00:15:15] Jonathan: So, then we rescheduled for April of 2020. Oops. And we know how that went. So, so it was Oh my goodness. 

[00:15:21] Jim Jansen: I had, I had, I've been following this a little bit from a distance, but I didn't know that detail.
Like that's, how did that go? Like, I mean, I mean, duh, I know you had to cancel, but What did that do to the like what that do to kind of like your spirit and the momentum and then if you're on the other side of it now, where was the Lord in that Jonathan? 

[00:15:41] Jonathan: It was discouraging to say the least. I mean, it was the planning excitement.

[00:15:48] Jim Jansen: Yeah. 

[00:15:48] Jonathan: The, in January of 2020, we had the setup in the gym ready to go. It was a last-minute call and I was mad. Sure. I was mad at, at Father Jeff for canceling it. I was mad at the world. It was, it was just really frustrating because we had put so much time and effort into, to this retreat and things out of our hands made it not be possible.

[00:16:15] Jim Jansen: Yeah. 

[00:16:16] Jonathan: However, we probably weren't ready for it. 

[00:16:20] Jim Jansen: Interesting. And back now and you're like, okay, then maybe that was a gift. 

[00:16:24] Jonathan: It was a gift. It will. And you look at the pandemic and all that happening to get that momentum going and to have it stop, which is also part of the story that we'll, we'll get to here in a second.
It's so hard, but I think some of, some of those things are necessary to be able to sit with things. Sometimes we get so much, so much in the process of, okay, we started this thing. Now we need to just keep it going, keep it going, keep it, keep it going, keep it going, keep it going. And we forget. That sometimes we just need to sit with something and really process it and maybe make some changes.
Maybe add things, take things away. But sometimes we get so in the process of this is just what we're doing that we forget to say, should we be doing this in this manner or whatever? So that was it. We were able to refine it. 

[00:17:15] Jim Jansen: Yeah. What did the Lord do in that time? 

[00:17:18] Jonathan: We were able to go in deeper with the people leading it.
It was, even though we had planned for so long, getting the 25 team members of the retreat together regularly was really difficult because people have their lives. And so, we were able to spend more time with them to pray with it. There's things that happened. Some of the talks that people were going to give their witness talks.
that changed throughout this time. One made some a little bit better. Others was a completely different talk because the Lord had been once COVID hit, there's other things that were revealed. And that was really such a great time for the world to stop and reflect instead of just go, go, go. I think that was probably the greatest grace of COVID was we were able to stop and really let God back into our lives a little bit deeper and remove a lot of the distractions.
And so, we were able to have that beta in September of 2020. 

[00:18:17] Jim Jansen: Wow. 

[00:18:19] Jonathan: And so, when that finally happened, it was, it was such a blessing to be able to get off the feet. We had a lot of great feedback that this was so needed. And some people that went as part of the team, that was really their conversion moment.
And you never know where people are at. And if we don't have things like this, you just don't know. And so, we finally were able to get the ball rolling at that point. And so, then the next one was slated for January of 2021, which also got canceled because I think there was another surge of COVID or there's weather related things, and so there's stumbling block after stumbling block, and I think October of 2021.
So now this is now. over a year and a half later after that first beta was supposed to happen. Wow. 

[00:19:09] Jim Jansen: And, and way after you make the announcement to the bearish council, Hey guys, this is what we're going to do. 

[00:19:15] Jonathan: Yes. 

[00:19:16] Jim Jansen: Oh my gosh. 

[00:19:17] Jonathan: So yeah, this is two and a half years after this is the clear path we're going to be doing.
October 2021, we had our first open to the, to the parish Quo Vadis. And wow. From that moment, I think we're, we've had nine since then now. Wow. 

[00:19:32] Jim Jansen: Do you do it twice a year? Once a year? 

[00:19:33] Jonathan: We're switching now to once a year. 

[00:19:35] Jim Jansen: Okay. 

[00:19:35] Jonathan: What we found was, and this is just part of the growing pains is we wanted to do initially three a year, have one in October.
Once things people get back into the swing of things from school, one in January when you're cold and miserable and no one wants to really go outside. Sure. And then one in the, in the spring and what we found was in the spring, people want to go outside, and experience nature and sports are starting up and graduations are happening.
And so, the timing is harder than timing was really difficult for, for those spring ones. And we just didn't get as many people coming to those. So, you have to adapt the October and January is what we had been doing. The turnaround between October and January is really difficult because you have Thanksgiving and Christmas right in the middle of that.

[00:20:23] Jim Jansen: Right? Yeah, and it's actually not. Yeah, it's not as much time as you think because you lose multiple weeks. I mean, almost a whole month between all the special Christmas celebrations and then the, you know, like company parties and all of that. Yeah, that's the time does not move the same from the 1st of November to, uh, the 1st of February. 

[00:20:45] Jonathan: Right? And so, this last October was the last one that we'll do in October for now. And we're going to just move to January's from now on. And what we will be doing is once we had so many canceled, we said we need to plan a backup date for the cool bodice retreat. Imagine that you wouldn't think to do that, right?
But now we have yeah. January 18th and 19th is going to be the retreat. The backup date is January 27th and 28th. Right. You've got a snow date already. We have the snow date already built in. 

[00:21:17] Jim Jansen: That's great. There's, I mean, I just want to like highlight your, okay, worldwide pandemic, snowstorm, but like you've run into a lot of obstacles as you're doing this, but you've been able to use them as, I mean, a gift either to like, okay, let's go back.
Let's cast vision more deeply. Let's form the team more deeply. And you're learning along the way. Like it's not. The, the plan you laid out in what 19 and then later in 2020, it's continued to evolve. Talk more about that. I mean, you had a plan, and it was a good plan, but there's some necessity of this kind of changing and adaptation as, as you go.
Like how do you. Okay. What have you learned from that adaptation process? 

[00:22:02] Jonathan: For me, a lot of it was just letting go. So, the, I was the one in charge of the retreat. Once, once we got the first couple off the ground, it was a lot rested on me. I learned I needed a team. I needed, I needed people to help me because just doing the retreat could be a full time job in of itself.
Yeah. If I'm taking it all on myself and that's not sustainable. 

[00:22:26] Jim Jansen: Yeah. 

[00:22:26] Jonathan: And so. I had several meetings with several people, and I was able to actually pass off. The main responsibilities of the retreats and the coordination to a parishioner. 

[00:22:36] Jim Jansen: Okay. I want to dive into that. Like, are you Jonathan? Are you naturally more of like a doer or a planner?
Like where do your gifts lie? 

[00:22:42] Jonathan: I love coming up with concepts and ideas and establishing a framework to work off of. 

[00:22:50] Jim Jansen: Yeah, me too. I'm a strategic thinker. I'm an idea person, but oh my gosh, I, I, I'm Dependent in a, in a healthy way. I think on teammates that can execute, you know, the, the getter folks. 

[00:23:04] Jonathan: And I enjoyed the teaching of what we're trying to accomplish the doing.
I'm okay at right. I'm not, I'm not the greatest. And some of those things I, depending on what it is, I might be able to do a little bit better. Um, yeah, but I think it's the, the galvanizing others and rounding those people up. I am not great at and it's, I'm not the greatest. Something I'm trying to work on, but, but it's also just not my gift.

[00:23:34] Jim Jansen: Right. And it's huge. I mean, your gifts are irreplaceable at the kind of inventing stage. Like, okay, what should we do? And how does this go? And what's going to be right for us? But then at a certain point when it's starting to go public, you need that like galvanizing cheerleader to like, Hey, everybody come on this retreat.

[00:23:50] Jonathan: Right. Woo is one of my StrengthsFinder gifts. Yeah, but I'm not galvanizing. 

[00:23:56] Jim Jansen: No, I'm the same way. Woo is like number seven for me, or, but I am, galvanizing is a working frustration. We're, we slipped into working genius mode here. So, look it up, search working genius. It's, it's a fantastic assessment. And there's a ton of overlap with the gallop strength finder.
But yeah, I've had the same experience. I have woo but woo tends to be maybe more individual based and galvanizing is kind of a communal thing. And that's not my, that's not my gift. It's frustrating. I'm not able to do that. 

[00:24:27] Jonathan: I found actually that it's almost paralyzing because I don't know what to do next.
And so just a moment of vulnerability is just, I have sat at my desk, Even if it's something as simple as I need to get this email out to some people and it's because it's the next step, right? But because of, I don't know what I'm just paralyzed and I'm sitting there for an hour and it's not the hardest email on the right, but I don't know the right words, or I don't know the right things to do and implement and put in there.

[00:25:01] Jim Jansen: Thank you for that vulnerability. I, I think whether it is that specific thing, oh man, I'm just not a galvanizer or something else. I mean, there isn't anybody who's listening who's perfect at everything. And You know, this, the scope of these kinds of projects, whether it's a retreat or even a, a, a program that's seems to be more plug and play, there's a lot of diversity of guests needed to really pull it off.
I just want to assume that maybe we've convicted some people are like, I know that's me. I'm not good at this. I know I need help. Okay, Jonathan, I want to give you a chance to speak to those like, how did you find help? And I know that may sound crazy, but how did you find the people who had the willingness, the time, and the gifts that could complement your own and could kind of, you know, take this, this implementation to the next level?

[00:25:54] Jonathan: Sure. There's two ways of going about it. One, they make themselves known, which is really easy, but I think if you're paying attention and being aware. So, as we, as we do the retreats, there's people that are a little bit more enthusiastic than others and are willing to help out and do the things. And this is also just with discipleship as you are looking who to invest in, who do I call, and they get back to me really quick.
Or when I, when I hang out, when I hang out. that they're always willing to, or even if, if they say no, you can tell it's a genuine regret that they can't do it. Right. Um, yes. And so, Phil Smizer is the guy that took it over. We had a meeting. He's like, I'd love to talk to you a little bit more. He had a really deep impactful encounter with Christ in a Cursillo retreat.

[00:26:45] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Very similar...

[00:26:46] Jonathan: very similar format, concepts. And talking with him, you know, he said, I'd love to be able to help out wherever. And I said, well, you know, I'm doing this retreat thing, but I'm also not just the director of retreats. I am director of evangelization and discipleship, and I am doing these 1500 other things.
And I don't have the time, the bandwidth to invest in all the leaders that are in the retreat. I don't have, I cannot do all of these things. And he said, well, I'll do it. 

[00:27:15] Jim Jansen: And that's true. I just have to, some people are like, Wait, wait, so you're saying, find people, they'll come to you? Yeah, actually they do.
Like there's this assumption that the Lord wants this good work to happen. And he's already has gifted and stirred up a desire within people that if we, if we just open our eyes a little bit, he is providing who we need. We just have to maybe be willing to, you know, to, to let it be delivered in an unexpected way or a surprising package.

[00:27:47] Jonathan: Right. And there, there does need to be some discernment, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, Phil has been involved in the parish, but he didn't, he wasn't overly committed. He wasn't the one doing a thousand other things at the parish. So, he actually did have the time to do it. And in the conversations I had with him, I trusted that he would be able to take it over.
And do a good job with it. And I just wasn't going away. It wasn't just that I was completely letting go, but I was letting go enough that he could take the bulk of it. And he still accepts my input, and we still work together. 

[00:28:24] Jim Jansen: Yeah, that's fantastic. That's fantastic. Jonathan, I want to give you, you know, before we turn on the mics, we were talking a little bit about kind of this concept of, you know, just starting small and failing fast.
Just, just being willing to try some things out. I know that was a big part of your story, and it's a deep conviction of yours. Maybe it's not clear yet in the way we've, we've talked about it. Just want to give you a chance to talk a little bit about. Starting small and failing fast.

[00:28:52] Jonathan: Through quo bodice or everything?

[00:28:54] Jim Jansen: Everything. 

[00:28:55] Jonathan: Okay. 

[00:28:55] Jim Jansen: I mean, whatever, you know, whatever you want, because I know it's, I mean, there's so many different things. We're kind of focusing on this retreat, but just generally implementing things. It seems to be one of the secrets of success. And maybe I'll contrast that, you know, to kind of set you up.
Starting small and failing fast would be contrasted by this. We're going to start big. We're going to have everybody in the parish go through this thing. And, and we're going to, we're going to, you know, it's going to take forever to lay it out and then we'll see if it works and the likelihood that it's going to work perfect is probably pretty small.
And man, now we've taken a huge amount of time and energy and discouraged ourselves and other people, sacrificed credibility. That's a very different approach and an unhelpful one compared to like, let's just, what's the Lord offering? Well, let's just try this out and see how it goes. 

[00:29:51] Jonathan: Sure. Yeah. So I think the, the best examples I'll have for, for that.
One, we can use the retreat. Yeah. We, we had dreams as we were planning and these months and months of planning. Everyone's going to want to go on this retreat. We'll have what we need. We'll need to cap it at what number should we cap it at? 80? 100? That's awesome. I love that. And so we had the beta and I think we had about 40 people at the beta.
Right. Which you intentionally kept small. We intentionally kept that one small because that was going to be their team for the first one that's open. 

[00:30:22] Jim Jansen: But then you're sure it's going to be 150 people pounded down the door. Right. 

[00:30:27] Jonathan: I think the first retreat we had 30 to 35 people. Yeah. Smaller than the beta.
Smaller than the beta. However, that was the first time we were able to truly go through that whole experience where the kitchen team wasn't also a speaker. It wasn't doing all the other things. And so it allows you to fail in some ways. And it's not as glorious of a failure, but it is glorious because you learn.
And this is a. An example of our whole faith journey is that every failure and every success is an opportunity for growth. And so while all of this was going on, I was trying to work on relational outreach and saying, how can we reach the people in the parish that just come to mass on Sundays? And so I said, okay, first we will do, I'd seen a video, everything that every good idea I've ever had.
I stole from somebody. 

[00:31:27] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Amen. Amen. So, which is, it just as a side note, like there's this myth that like, like to, to be a good builder, to be an evangelistic entrepreneur, that you have to be this kind of genius on, on a mountain. And for sure you have to be prayerful, steal ideas from other people for the sake of the kingdom.

[00:31:45] Jonathan: Yes. Amen. So I, I had seen this video of a guy I knew back in Houston, Andy Hickman he's well known. 

[00:31:52] Jim Jansen: Yeah. 

[00:31:52] Jonathan: And he, every Friday. Was just open door. He had people over for dinner. It's a bring your dinner. They didn't talk about Jesus. They might have talked about Jesus. There was no program. 

[00:32:04] Jim Jansen: Right? It wasn't yet like and now comes the time when I preach. 

[00:32:07] Jonathan: Friday night dinners. I think they did a prayer before meals and that was about it. 

[00:32:11] Jim Jansen: Yeah.

[00:32:11] Jonathan: And people were welcome to stay as long as they wanted, and I said this is what I want I don't I live in a small house.
I can't do that. I can maybe do that at the parish And even then, there was not people willing to take that on. And so, I said, what if I just do parish home dinners? And people sign up to have dinner once a month with a random group of people from the parish and they stay together for a year. And that went on, COVID destroyed that.
That was, that was, that was the start of the second year was when COVID hit. However. One of those groups of families still meets to this day and they, they created a lasting friendship because of it. And so, while it was a failure, we were able to learn things and do things from that. Then I had a thought of neighborhood representatives.
What if we have decals on our houses and signs in front of houses of people that live in the parish? And these are leaders. And I train them and say, when we get a new person registered to the parish, You're going to go out and reach them. I had a sheet where they put in their family information. It has things about the parish.
You go to their house, greet them, welcome to the parish. It's just a great inviting way to do things. I love it. We had 80 people come to two different trainings. One was online, one was in person, and everybody seemed like they were on board. 

[00:33:35] Jim Jansen: And drum roll. Wait, wait for it. 

[00:33:37] Jonathan: After about three months of it, I had two dozen boulders waiting to be picked up from the, those parishioners that were all in that didn't have the time or couldn't get to the people or whatever. There's a myriad of reasons why it didn't happen because they weren't formed yet. I just put this expectation on people that we're not ready for it.

[00:34:01] Jim Jansen: Yeah.

[00:34:01] Jonathan: However, I tried. 

[00:34:02] Jim Jansen: And then you learned and then you came back and you're like, Oh, okay. There's a prerequisite I missed. Uh, if I'm going to help people do this. 

[00:34:11] Jonathan: But I learned, and there's still some good things that happen, right? So even in failing, God, God finds a way. And so there were some people that were encountered and there was a parishioner that mentioned that one of the people that are in her small group, she met through that program.
The biggest thing with. Anything that we do, the start small, fail fast, is just getting going because you're not going to know if something's going to work or not. 

[00:34:40] Jim Jansen: Yeah.

[00:34:41] Jonathan: Unless you actually start it. 

[00:34:42] Jim Jansen: I love that. I feel like that's such a good, cause we're all in uncharted territory. I mean, you and I have kind of more experience in missionary work and, you know, kind of the new evangelization like on the ground.
Then, I mean, almost, almost anybody, but we're all figuring this out as we go. And, and just to give ourselves the freedom to say like, Hey, I'm going to try something, and I don't know if it's going to work, so I'm going to try it and then, and then learn and see what the Lord does. Right. Oh, that's awesome.
Jonathan, our time is just totally flown here. I want to, I want to give you a chance here, maybe as we close, just to give some final advice, right? Those who are like, okay, they're, you know, they're in this process. They're like, we're building our clear path and they've done kind of, kind of like the assessment and the sermon and they're ready to build something.
What advice would you give them, uh, as they set out to, to implement?

[00:35:38] Jonathan: So, if this is for people, especially that have, they've mapped out their clear path, what they desire, maybe it would be? 

[00:35:44] Jim Jansen: Right. Yeah. They have a blueprint, you know, they're like, okay, this is, this is what we're hoping. 

[00:35:48] Jonathan: Yeah. So, number one, flexibility.
Because it's probably not going to end up or be exactly as you pictured it. 

[00:35:55] Jim Jansen: Yeah.

[00:35:55] Jonathan: It's because real people are involved. 

[00:35:58] Jim Jansen: Which is, incidentally, that's also the way real buildings are built to write like they draw the blueprints, but oftentimes the blueprints and the final product don't match up perfectly. 

[00:36:07] Jonathan: Right?
The other thing would just be to just get started. You're going to find holes. because there's always going to be holes. There's going to be some things that you realize, okay, we need to cover up that hole because it will not function without it. There's going to be other things that you just say, that's just how it's going to be.
There's nothing that we do that's going to reach every person in our parish and every person within our parish boundaries. 

[00:36:35] Jim Jansen: Thank you for that. Right. The perfect, the absolutely everybody You never get anything done if you, if you try and insist on that,

[00:36:41] Jonathan: Right? It's not practical. Yeah. And so, as we've built it, I think we're on the right path and we have all four phases of the clear path implemented at our parish at this point.
Yeah. That's so good. They all have so much room to grow, and they have so much that we need to change to, to fully equip our parish. 

[00:37:04] Jim Jansen: Amen. Jonathan, thank you. I mean, just, I, I think our, I know our conversation will be a blessing and I know your work has been an inspiration, you know, to other folks here in the Archdiocese.
There's a number of other parishes that have learned from the Quo Vadis retreat and other things and the neighborhood outreach. I mean, we, we didn't really talk about that. Maybe we should talk some time about, uh, about relational outreach and just the conviction to kind of go to people in neighborhoods.
But it's just, thank you for your work. I, I appreciate the time today and I know this is going to be a blessing. Thank you. Thanks, Jim. Alright everybody, you know somebody who needs to hear this. Maybe it's the person who you need to come alongside you, who's your, right, who's your getter done partner. Or maybe it's the idea person.
Whoever it is, take a moment, uh, share this out and thanks for listening. 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.