[00:00:00] Jim: Everybody. Welcome to the equip cast. Alright. I just had a fantastic conversation with Father Tim Donovan. Father Donovan is the founder of Faith and Family Life Catholic Ministries.
If you're familiar with the Pathways boxes, Father Tim and I have a really honest conversation about faith formation and sacramental prep and the difference between readiness and the requirements we sometimes put on people. Fascinating conversation, hopeful and inspiring. Uh, you're gonna love today's conversation. Take a listen.
[00:00:32] Intro: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the equip cast, a weekly podcast as 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. 
[00:00:50] Jim: Father Tim Donovan, welcome to the EquipCast.
How you doing? 
[00:00:53] Fr. Tim: Thank you. Great. Here in Nebraska. 
[00:00:56] Jim: Yeah.
Yeah. We're recording live. For those who don't know, You're a long way from home, aren't you?
[00:01:01] Fr. Tim: A little bit. You guys are like smack dab in the center of the country.
[00:01:03] Jim: Pretty much, right in the middle.
[00:01:05] Fr. Tim: It has snow outside on the ground, which I never get at home. So, yeah, it was good. 
[00:01:09] Jim: Thank you for being here. Thank you for… thank you for braving it.
Just so people know, you're from Orange, California. Right? 
[00:01:14] Fr. Tim: That's right. Diocese of Orange. I live in La Habra, which no one knows where that is, but fairly close to Disneyland.
[00:01:21] Jim: La Habra. 
[00:01:22] Fr. Tim: Yes. 
[00:01:22] Jim: Yeah. Okay. But it's warm there. I mean, like, they call it orange because there's orange trees there. Right? 
[00:01:28] Fr. Tim: There were many more at some point. 
[00:01:29] Jim: Yeah. 
[00:01:29] Fr. Tim: There's a few left.
[00:01:30] Jim: A few left. Right. 
[00:01:31] Fr. Tim: Mostly houses now. 
[00:01:32] Jim: Okay. So, Father, welcome back. We've been out to Nebraska before.
We went four wheeling and explored a little bit around, uh, our home. You've done some work here in the archdiocese. You've been on the EquipCast before. But just for those who don't, just give a short little sketch, like, Who are you? What what what do you do?
What's your job? What's your faith story? 
[00:01:51] Fr. Tim: So, my name is Father Tim Donovan. I'm a priest of the Diocese of Orange, uh, in California. This is my seventh year as a Priest, which is a pretty wild thing to look back on.
My first 2 years were as a parish priest. I worked as a parochial vicar, uh, the parish in Huntington Beach, And then I was asked to be a high school chaplain. So, I always say, you don't see me on the audio, but I most of my hair on the lower part is all gray. I said that's because of those 4 years of the high school. Um, and so it was great, but then the Lord, you know, kind of opened this door to walk through to run this Ministry that I started about 4 years ago full time, and I'm super grateful for that.
It's called Faith and Family Life Catholic Ministries. And, Really, our mission is to really to help rebuild the church 1 family at a time. That's so beautiful. I love that. Yeah.
I was praying at the tomb of Saint Francis in Assisi, And that came to me. I was like, I want you to rebuild the church. Wow. You know, rebuild my domestic church. That's right.
My domestic church. It came to me really strong. He wanted to pray in front of his tomb there and, uh That's awesome. So, I brought that home, really, um, started just to develop resources to help parents really Be equipped to do that role. We do a good job, I think, in the church of telling them they should be doing that, but I've done a not a not a great job at, uh, really accompanying them and equipping them to do that.
[00:03:07] Jim: By the way, this is your job. Good luck with That. Yeah. You're like, I don't know how you supposed to do that. Sacred duty.
Let us know how it goes. 
[00:03:13] Fr. Tim: And so, yeah, that started originally at the parish I was at, and then We released a resource. The world shut down. God gave me a bunch of time, free time to write and to pray. And, uh, and the stuff that church has been releasing recently in our catechetical documents really Bolstered and aligned super great with what he was giving us in prayer.
Now I travel all around the country, form leaders. Um, we continue to write resources, Continue to expand whatever the Lord puts in front of us each day. 
[00:03:39] Jim: Yeah, I love it. That's kind of how we got connected. 1 of those resources, 1 of the Kinda family kits, like a take home box, somehow made its way to the Archdiocese of Omaha, got sent to me.
And I usually just kind of grab those things and just pass them down to Jody. It's like, Hey, Jody. Take a look at this. But I think I started to open it and Like, kinda play with it as I'm walking down the hall to give it to Jody. And I think by the time I got to her office, I'm like, hey.
This is really cool. And, actually, you can't have it. I'm gonna take it home and do it with my kids. We started to do it right away, and it was beautiful. I love I mean, you all I love the way you said that, like, The church has been increasingly telling people or, you know, telling parents, by the way, you are the first formators of your children.
But figuring out how families and parents can actually do that in a way that's realistic, that's meaningful, that actually passes on the faith. I love that you're actually providing a practical equipping. You recently wrote a book, which I love, uh, Mission Field, a framework for the transformation of faith formation structures. I just want to give you a chance. You know, you kind of use the who, what, where, when, why.
And literally, the first chapter, you know, who are we forming in faith formation? It's already Mind blowing. Just walk us through some of that chapter just to get us started here. 
[00:04:59] Fr. Tim: Absolutely. Question ...yeah, who is the subject?
Who are we supposed Focus on in in faith formation. And, uh, 1 of the scriptures that really has rocked my world, and it's there for all of us. And, you know, we return to scriptures Over and over again, they provide us different inspiration. It was at the end of the gospel of John, and Peter goes back to Fishing, you know, after the resurrection, like that didn't happen or something and goes back fishing to what he used to do. 
[00:05:27] Jim: He's like, I'm just gonna keep my options open.
[00:05:28] Fr. Tim: Yeah. Exactly. Right? He's like, can I still do it? I don't know. And but Jesus doesn't let him just walk away or go back to his previous life.
He finds him on the shore calls him off the boat, comes in and takes him aside by himself, and he says to he says to Peter, do you love me more than these? And in that statement, I just every time I hear that, um, what I hear behind that is, do you love me more than what you know? Do you love me more than what's comfortable to you? And then, you know, of course, Peter says, Jesus, you know that I love you. And then he says these 3 responses to Peter, which I think Gives to Peter kind of his pastoral, I guess, mission in a sense.
And so really, he says to them, feed my Lambs tend my sheep, feed my sheep. So, we see in there that he wants 2 thirds Of the focus of the Petrine ministry, potentially of teaching, to be focused on the sheep and 1 third of that Time to be focused on the lambs. Notice the word usage difference to feed lambs. We also feed sheep, But we only tend sheep. He did not just say to tend lambs.
Yeah. And so, in that sense, uh, I kind of had this deeper reflection while, like, What happens at least in the first couple years of a of a lamb's life, they're for sure fed by that sheep. Mhmm. And the reality is, I think, in the same sense for faith formation, if we focus On the people feeding, you know, if we focus on the sheep, they're going to feed the lambs. If we focus on the parents, that's going to be down because they're the ones setting the priorities.
They're the single most important causal influence for the religious lives of their kids growing up. And Yeah. We've have, I think, have sometimes Hoped that the opposite would be true, that if we, uh, invested in the children, that somehow they would bring back their, uh, their parents. And that happens maybe in very Small cases or when I was a youth minister, we were told, like, teens of the future of the church invest heavy cash, lots of stuff in teen resources, and they're going to be faithful going. And it's Both of those things haven't panned out as, uh, they haven't worked out.
[00:07:33] Jim: Yeah. The sociological research, the data shows otherwise. I mean, I think part of it is we tell the stories, those really unusual stories where the faith of a young person somehow reenkindles and draws in the faith of their non practicing parents or the adults in their life. But we also tell stories about people being struck by lightning.
And part of the reason I think we tell the stories is just like, oh my gosh. Can you believe this happened? Because it is kinda miraculous when it does because it's not the way it works. 
[00:08:00] Fr. Tim: It's not the ordinary way. 
[00:08:01] Jim: Right. It's not the ordinary way. 
[00:08:04] Fr. Tim: Right. It's not. It's certainly the extraordinary way. And the church documents, especially the general directory for catechesis, um, it probably goes back before that. I need to find the real When did this when they begin to say this, probably it's been a belief of ours forever, but they say that adult faith formation is the axis of all faith formation. Yeah.
And so, I was an engineering student before I enter seminary, and Oh, there we go. I love that. Tell us about that. Yeah. There we go.
The little the axis or the axle, if you think of an axle of a wheel, that's what the axis This is. And if that's in the right place and it's balanced, then the wheel is gonna roll very easily. But the problem in the church now is that that access is Sometimes altogether missing from most parishes. How much time, energy, resources are we putting toward forming adults Or forming parents in the faith. 
[00:08:47] Jim: Yeah.
If we're honest, you look at the budgets, you look at the personnel, you look at the facilities, We are radically I mean, we're the opposite of what Jesus is commissioning Peter. We're at least 2 thirds, if not 7 eighths invested in children rather than adults. 
[00:09:05] Fr. Tim: That's right. And so, the challenge, I think, for this generation is to really see how do we transform the structure to really invest in parents. And, uh, 1 thing Christian Smith says in his book about the transmission of faith to children, He says that we've kind of assumed that Faith Formation is like driver's ed.
And once you and once you get your license, like, you don't go back. You don't wanna go back to driver's ed I'll tell you, and the only time you have to go back is when you get a ticket. Right. Right. Yeah.
When you have some sort of Something goes really wrong. Yeah. Exactly. And then you have to go back to driver's school. You know?
And he says that, Really, what parents are thinking and what we've kinda set up faith formation to be is like a basic license in the moral life, like learn the 10 commandments Type of a thing. And then all of a sudden, now we're certified for our life to be a good kid. Wow. And he says that that becomes kind of the way that adults See Faith Formation. So, they're thinking, like, I already got my license.
Like, why do I have to go back? Yeah. You know, I did my time. You know? Now it's my kid's Turner or whatever.
You know? And they say that in the cars too. We see that happen because, like, why do I have to go? I was like, I don't know. I had to go when I was a kid.
Get out of the car. You can go. You know? Yeah. And so, what we're trying to do, you know, and I think this is what the church is asking of us too.
It's not like, you know, hopefully it's some just crazy idea father Tim has. 
[00:10:15] Jim: Oh, no. It's clearly what the church is asking. You know, it's But it's confusing if you read the documents And then you look around, you're like, well, I don't know. Maybe I read them wrong.
Because am I the only 1 who read this, like, primacy of adults and evangelization, and then catechesis. And, like, what? You know, it's like it's very confusing because it's so contrary to much of our lived experience, at least here in the United States. 
[00:10:36] Fr. Tim: Absolutely. This yeah.
You look at it and you're like, wow. Has does no 1 else reading these things too? And maybe that's the case. 
[00:10:41] Jim: Other people were learning Portuguese, and you're reading the documents over COVID, Father, you're the only one. 
[00:10:47] Fr. Tim: Maybe. I don't know. I hope not. And I, you know, given my life to hopefully bring some other people into it. And they're not They're not difficult to read, but you do have to have some background, I think, to really dive into them. But I think the reason that we're in the situation where we're in America more or less is because We've really only known 1 model here Mhmm.
In our history. You know, our the Catholic church really began in United States with the immigrant church. Mhmm. Historically, that's not an accurate statement because it began before then. But, like, really, structural church here was, like, the immigrant church.
[00:11:17] Jim: For sure. At least in this part of the country. 
[00:11:20] Fr. Tim: Yeah. For sure. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, um, probably anything beyond Maryland. 
[00:11:23] Jim: There's somebody in Baltimore who's like, what? I know. We're sorry.
We love you. But we're in Nebraska right now, and Father Tim's from California. So... 
[00:11:30] Fr. Tim: and then that was basically what happened is beginning of industrial revolution, and they set up Schools and the religious came in droves and set up these schools who were taking care of that part. Family life was still good. The church was a parish center, a community center for people.
The culture was vaguely supporting the Christian life too at that time. Right. And we see that that slowly broke apart as we went down, Especially post, you know, sexual revolution in 19 70. What started to happen was, uh, they're really become expensive for people to go to school, kind of Became inaccessible for them to go to Catholic schools. Right?
And then what happened was then they created an after-school school. You know, it's called different things around the country, which is always fun to go with, like, Parish School of Peace, Parish School of Religion. It's interesting, even on this retreat that we just led, there was, uh, many times people would say, our 5-day school. Assuming that there's another school there. Yeah.
Is it the 1-day school? Yeah. They have a 5-day school, and maybe the 1-day school or the afternoon school would be faith formation. So, we created these, you know, CCDs, which is fine. I don't know.
Do you know the origin of CCD? 
[00:12:33] Jim: No. I've heard the term, but I don't. 
[00:12:34] Fr. Tim: It's wild. Yeah.
So, Confraternity of Christian doctrine. That's all the way back Like, you're 1500 in Italy. 
[00:12:39] Jim: Yeah. I was gonna say that sounds very French. 
[00:12:42] Fr. Tim: Yeah. And then when I think it was Pope Pius the Tenth, I think, when he really was like, we need to have something. He saw the need in America and the world. He says Right. Our schools are failing, and we need to do something to help Family's out. And so, I forget the document there, and I can probably source it for you later.
But he's seeing this need for us to really invest in Parents, he said there, and dads too. On Sunday, bringing the whole families together and getting them a faith experience. Right? Because they were getting that From the schools and from the cultural experience that they were in anymore. So, it's a very kind of you look back at it, but CCD said, let's use this model, the Confraternity of Christian doctrine, which is, you know, 500 New years old at that point or 400 something.
And let's use that as a model for how to do and that what happened at that time was, they would bring everyone together on Sunday, have some sort of catechesis, and then have families having conversations about that, which I thought was really profound. And that was kind of a cry of that pontiff to really say, like, we need to we need to not just, You know, because you saw it kind of fracturing, but then you know, then what happened was people just set up after school schools for kids. 
[00:13:41] Jim: Yeah. I was like, that's a beautiful vision. What happened?
[00:13:44] Fr. Tim: I know. You just kinda wonder, you know. Maybe that's what they knew. 
[00:13:47] Jim: Yeah. Became a drop off, drive through.
[00:13:49] Fr. Tim: Exactly. So, we always say that, uh, we help people transition from a drive through to a on ramp, You know, rather than just getting something from the first window, ordering it, and getting at the second and driving right out. The thing I've come to realize in working with people from all over country is that unless we see something Mhmm. It's hard for us to replicate it. We have to see it happen.
And so much of our ministry now is creating opportunities for modeling for people just to come and experience the different way. Because if you just hand him a resource, um, that could potentially not go very well because they've seen for so long this 1 model, which is drop off and, uh, you know, trying to trust in that Way. Even though we know it's not working, we kind of are stuck in that because that's the only thing we know how to do. And there are very few people I've realized, and I think I'm 1 of People where I can think about something and take it to the end and execute it. Yeah.
[00:14:40] Jim: That that's my gift too, but it has taken a long time for me to recognize. Oh, that's not That's not common. Like, I can do that, and other people can't, and I can't just get people into my mind. I have to give them experiences. I'm going to put you on the spot here a little bit.
The who of faith formation rather than children is primarily the parents, the adults, Right? Healthy sheep, healthy lambs. How do you do that? Like, what does it look like? Not that do we have to fix it, but just give people just a little bit of an imagination of what that could look like because it's so far beyond almost all of our typical experience.
[00:15:17] Fr. Tim: Yeah. There's lots of people who have lots of responses That question. I'll tell you what our response is to that question. I think there's this temptation to think that the issue is that people just don't know enough, Like it's a lack of knowledge. That I would have to challenge that.
I think that um.... 
[00:15:32] Jim: Right. You set it to temptation, which I just want to like, because most people are like, Isn't that the problem? 
[00:15:36] Fr. Tim: Yeah. And that's the thought sometimes, that the catechesis wasn't good enough and those types of things.
[00:15:40] Jim: We need Baltimore catechesis and to, like, stop with the Play Doh and the butterflies. Like, give them the commandments. 
[00:15:46] Fr. Tim: Right. And so that's kind of been the thing. But I guess the challenge to that is what I've seen in my life is If that was the case, then our Catholic schools should be pumping out disciples in record numbers, uh, which they are not.
And so, I think that that becomes for me the question of what is primary and what is secondary. Is school primary or is school secondary? And is family primary or is family secondary? And for many years, we operated with the assumption that schools were a primary institution, Which was supported by families. And we still think that in most places.
[00:16:20] Jim: Yeah. Well, and I mean, you see that, tell me if I'm Picking up what you're laying down here, but it's like the school sets the rhythm of life. The school sets the schedule. The school set like everything for family life, if your children are in a 5-day school, the school governs the family, and we take vacation when school is not in session. And we eat when school's over, and we everything revolves around the schedule set by the school.
And my job as a parent is to donate and buy magazines and popcorn and all the little things like that. My job is to support the institution, so it can do its job to educate my kids. 
[00:17:03] Fr. Tim: Right. It's kind of a more of a delegation model, you know, where I delegate to someone else to do that, just like we would to mow our lawns or To wash our clothes. This 
[00:17:11] Jim: is a professional realm.
Please don't try this at home. 
[00:17:15] Fr. Tim: But the question with faith is, are we just teaching ideas? Are we teaching virtue? Are we teaching habits? Are we trying to instill something that is not in the realm fully, just of knowledge?
And I think, unfortunately, even our Catholic schools have slid into that trap of thinking that we're just here to form minds. Mhmm. His Catholic schools have always had the mission of forming the entire person. Right. Yeah.
And if that doesn't stay at the forefront of that, You know, but the important parts that are being formed in the home is the human elements. Right? The spiritual and pastoral elements. Right. 
[00:17:50] Jim: And for better for worse, I wish it was just about knowledge.
[00:17:53] Fr. Tim: Right. It makes it a lot easier, a lot less messy. 
[00:17:55] Jim: Yeah. But unfortunately, right, in the whole my example and the habituation to guide my children into a routine and a habit of living. That's the hard stuff.
I can tell him what to do. 
[00:18:08] Fr. Tim: There's this great line from this, uh, philosopher, James K. Smith. He's not a Catholic, but his stuff is good. He says that behind every pedagogy is a philosophical anthropology.
[00:18:19] Jim: Big words. Break it down. 
[00:18:20] Fr. Tim: Big words. Basically, behind every pedagogy, meaning how we do, how we teach People, how our processes is an assumption about who these people are, the human anthropology. So, his question in his book, which I am gonna propose to us today, is a question of who are people essentially?
Are people thinking things primarily? Mhmm. Are we primarily just our minds? And if we get our thoughts right, then our behaviors become right. And Saint Paul says that's false.
[00:18:48] Jim: I wish. I wish. 
[00:18:50] Fr. Tim: Um, but we have a lot of thinking in that. Right? If they just if I just knew more, then it would be okay.
And I just have come to know that that's not true in my own life. I know everything I should be doing, but yet still struggle to be doing it.
[00:18:59] Jim: I love that. Thank you for that example. It's like that as though we're purely rational beings and what oh, well, now that I know the right thing to do. 
[00:19:06] Fr. Tim: Yeah.
It's all ignorance, you know, but that's not the case. 
[00:19:09] Jim: Well, it's Gnosticism, actually. It is Gnosticism. I mean, if we wanna using big word, right? That that somehow our knowledge is what saves us.
No, there's a little we're more than that. 
[00:19:18] Fr. Tim: Because if so, though, we could be saved apart from our bodies. Yeah. And that's a profoundly un-Catholic position. Yeah.
His second proposal to us, he says, okay, then are we believing things? Is it more than just what we think? Is it kind of more about a conviction that Grabs this at a deeper level, but he says that, unfortunately, the believing thing can slide back into the thinking thing. It can all just be about the word. But then he proposed, he says, are human beings more desiring things?
Are they lovers? Are they people who have bodies and souls and not just minds? Are they people who need to be grabbed at that Kind of the deepest part of the humanity. And he says that what's interesting, he says, if that's not the case, if it's just about thinking, then we can delete the mediating Institution, which is the church. And that's a Protestant notion.
Right? Like, I don't need I don't need a church. I don't need an institution. We don't need sacraments, all that kind of stuff. Right?
All goes out the window. And so, the challenge here is, you know, is our formation forming the whole person? Right. Is it grabbing them in their you know, in what they love? Was it orientation of love or an orientation of desire, or is it just teaching people ideas?
I guess I said all that to kinda set up what our approach is to parents. Right. So, we're not our primary thing that we're trying to do with parents is we're not trying to first and foremost just give them the right ideas about faith. That's important, and we do that. But we wanna start by first winning back their trust that this has actually something of value to them.
We have to have them Take that ownership of that. They're not just coming here because they have to Mhmm. But because they are somehow wanting to. Right? And that that there's something here They're looking for a meeting in their life.
We wanna start there. And then really the proclamation of the Kerygma, the way that we do it is very, um, experiential, is very Conversational. Parents are in small groups with other parents. It's very much so giving them an opportunity to get in touch with those deeper desires, you give them some space to do that. I know a lot of parents just run nonstop between everything.
And just to give them a space to stop and say, like, The first question Jesus asked his disciples, What are you looking for? What are you seeking? Like, we have to ask ourselves that probably at least once a year And wonder, like, what what am I looking for? Where am I going? And so... 
[00:21:37] Jim: and as a parent, you know, when Jesus when I get that moment, when Jesus is like, what do you I was like, I don't know.
I mean, caffeine and maybe a nap. Uh, okay. Then a nap and then caffeine. I mean, just like... 
[00:21:47] Fr. Tim: and then when you give them a space to kinda go a little deeper and they start to hear The witnesses of other parents who share about that and say, you know, I thought I was looking for this, but really what I what I wanted was peace and meaning and hope. I was looking for all those things in all these different places and building up the schedules of my kids' lives and all these kind of things the world was telling me, but I found that, actually, I just It's in a relationship with the Lord, like, is really what I was made for.
And so just that approach so for us, we want to bring people into relationship with other people, have a relationship with Jesus. And so that's primarily our ministry model. And then to give them experiences that that grab them on the level of imagination. 
[00:22:29] Jim: Can you give an example? Like, I know what you're talking about because I played with the boxes, and I've done a couple with my family and my children.
But what do you mean by experiences? 
[00:22:38] Fr. Tim: Yeah. So, an experience for us is anything that you can touch, taste, smell, hear. Right? So that's there's a lot of things we throw at people in that in that context.
[00:22:46] Jim: And you throw all of them in 1 box, usually. There's that. All the stuff. All the all the smells and 
[00:22:51] Fr. Tim: And we have the at home and at church pieces. So, we have experiences they do with their families and their kids at Home led by them as parents.
But then when we bring them together at church, parents and children are separated so that the children can have their own age-appropriate experiences and parents are having them as well. Like, we have this 1 we open with. It's called the Taste of Life activity. And, basically, we give them a sweet, sour, spicy Flavor, uh, something. We do it with liquid or candy or however you wanna do it.
There's lots of different ways. What happens is they just can taste that, a sweet thing. We ask them, we want you to reflect on something that is a sweet moment in parenting. Oh. A sour moment in parenting, a spicy moment in parenting, meaning unexpected.
And when the parents just begin to share on that very simple level, then they can start to connect that, like, First of all, I'm not alone that the person over there just shared a sour moment that's very similar to mine. Yeah. And community starts to be formed in that. And then you can now Invite them to consider you know, God says to us in the in the Psalm in the Psalms, you know, taste and see that the Lord is good. And sometimes when we taste something that's not great First, an experience in our life, we might not wanna go back to that flavor again.
You know? And how what is what is your taste of faith in your life at this time? What's it been for? It's just so those moments that That stop us, that kind of elicit our bodies to basically show up to the same place our minds are. Yeah.
And it brings that back into unity, you know, when we have experiences. Either we're touching things. And so throughout each of the experiences, they have different ones, whether that's forming clay, Whether that's light and a lot of our resources, especially our sacramental prep things, are getting them back into a real touch with the sacramental signs. Why do we use oil? Why do we use water?
What is this wheat about? You know, those types of things. 
[00:24:32] Jim: It's funny. Like, I'm glad you went there because I was just like, I had a little out of body experience and I can imagine somebody listening, thinking, Oh my gosh, it's butterflies and Play Doh again. No, It's the fundamental, like, this is the sacramental imagination.
Like, we live in a world that is driving our minds and our bodies apart and rekindling that sacramental imagination to then draw people back to say, okay, now Let's talk about oil in the sacrament. Let's talk about God giving himself to us in wheat because there's no lack of substantive catechesis. But you're I know my words, not yours. You're not skipping the prerequisite. Hey, let's talk about why God uses this stuff to communicate himself and his grace.
[00:25:25] Fr. Tim: Right. And if we skip that, really, I think people can, Unfortunately, try to dismiss their own stuff. Oh, yeah. Their own bodily stuff, the stuff of their life. Yeah.
That's where they live. They live in the body. You know? And we live in a world, like you said, that wants that doesn't actually think that metaphysical things exist, that things beyond the physical exist. They think that what they see is all that.
It's a pure goal only. And we have to fight that in a really big way. Not fight it, but we have to reform people in it in other ways. You know, the only way that that Happens that we have found is through experiences and conversations because conversations are revelatory experiences. They reveal interior elements of us.
Right? So, we can see something on when I look at you, Jim, like Right. I mean, I will never get to know you if I just Look at you my whole life, and you never speak to me. But in your speech, you are revealing your interior life. Peek inside.
Right? That assumes that there's something more to you than just Your physical body, you know. Yeah. And so that's what happens is we actually become and what we're using, we're using these experiences. And so we always follow a structure, which It's like a check-in, get people talking, an experience that's followed by a witness, typically, somebody who now shares on a personal experience, and that's followed by a teaching, which then gets Connects the experience with the systematic teaching of whatever we're trying to do that day.
And then we end usually with the closing prayer experience that then integrates it. And I think for me, the thing that I'm focusing on this year is the question of how is faith integrated? Because faith just learned doesn't mean anything. I worked at a high school with Over 200 foreign exchange students who would get a's in all of their, you know, theology classes. Yeah.
But we had no conversions. What's that about? You know? We can know things Mhmm. Without ever really knowing him, which is, like, so sad to me.
Like, as a priest, I was there. I was like, What am I doing here? 
[00:27:15] Jim: This is crazy, you know? No. I had a similar, you know, one of the activities.
One of my kids was involved in robotics and I'm sitting with 1 Foreign exchange students at 1 of the tournaments and are talking. And it wasn't until a while and he's like, Oh, you know, he loved being at the school, Didn't mind the Catholic stuff, but it was really clear for him it was a philosophical thing. It's like, yeah, this is a system of thought that produces good things. And in his mind, because he grew up in communist China, he's like, Oh, yeah. Like, I'm a fan of freedom and capitalism.
Like, this is this is great. It's like, are you a fan of Jesus? Oh, that was a very different question. He never really, I don't know how many years he had been, uh, at our school. He had never really thought of that.
Yeah. I was like, uh-oh. Like, how did we how did you go through yeah. Anyway, I'll save it. Okay.
I wanna dive in here because really tangibly, what you're talking about I can see somebody listening to this, whether a pastor or a DRE or a parent, you're like, That's beautiful. I want that. Here's where it gets scary. I want to talk about readiness for the sacraments. Right?
So, like, so okay, kids, uh, young people going to Experience the sacrament. Everybody in the second-grade class is ready, if you can hear the air quotes. How do we know if someone's ready? And what's a pastor or a parent supposed to do when a child doesn't seem to be ready, but the whole class is moving forward? 
[00:28:40] Fr. Tim: Yes.
We could talk about this for 10 days, you know, and there's a lot of been a lot of ink spilled about this in church writing, and I've spilled some ink about it myself. But I think for me, at the end of the day, readiness is about our capacity to receive. Because what sacraments are, They are gifts of God's grace to us. You know, grace itself is a free and deserved gift. But they're also supposed to be a celebration of a relationship.
And that's for me the biggest framework change of sacraments for me. They are not magical moments. Mhmm. They're celebrations Of an encounter of a relationship with God who makes himself substantially present to us. Yeah.
If we think of sacraments as, like, these magical conferrals of grace, Then it doesn't really matter who's receiving them. 
[00:29:27] Jim: Well, it does their receptivity doesn't necessarily matter. 
[00:29:30] Fr. Tim: If it's just that's what it's just this magical thing, but it's not. That's not how it's set up. It's set up to be a way that we grow deeper in our Connection with this God whom we know.
So, it's not that sacraments bestow faith, They strengthen that. And in some sense, they generate that in a deeper way. But it's not if someone comes to the sacrament of baptism with no faith or has no concept of it, it will have no Vacations in their life. 
[00:29:57] Jim: All the sacraments presume faith. They presume the relationship.
And, yes, they strengthen it and deepen it, whatever. But it's, like, it's gotta be there at the start anyway. 
[00:30:08] Fr. Tim: And so, when we look at the question of readiness, I think oftentimes, we Uh, associate that with requirements. Like, did the kid, you know, accomplish his service hours, and did he show up to X amount of classes and somehow, we think that Can he recite the prayer? Are those requirements manifesting readiness?
I would challenge us to say that probably not or at least it hasn't been the case. That hasn't been things that have lined up with each other, at least what I've seen in most places. Um, for me, readiness is more about looking for capacity to receive. And so, I think for me, the really, the framework that The scripture that I look to in this is the parable of the sower. And we see there that the sower is the Lord himself.
You know? The Lord is sowing the seeds. And I think we get caught up in this idea. We'll plant seeds. We don't know when they're gonna grow.
And I just don't like, that's just not I just it's hard it's hard because that's not really a scriptural image. 
[00:31:02] Jim: It's very bad farming. Like all of my Nebraska friends that were like, No. Exactly. Tilled the soil.
[00:31:07] Fr. Tim: But if we look back at that parable of the soils, The responsibility of us in our preparation for folks and helping them is to help them to till the soil. And we see there that there's some obstacles In that parable, and the obstacles look like rocks in the soil. Yeah. The rocky path, right, where they can't get deep footing. The seeds can't take deep footing.
Or The sun scorches them, or the birds come and eat them up because the, you know, the ground's not ready. And then you have, like, the thorns and the little, little bushes that come and Poke them out, you know, but it says… But this is the key, the seed that falls on fertile soil produces 30, 60, 90 fold. Yeah. And it's pretty immediate. Right?
I mean, there's some time, but it's not like, you know, this is ready, meaning you produce it 50 years down the road, you know, type of a thing. Like, I don't think the Lord I think he's looking for, like yeah. People encounter him. There should be some fruit of that. You know?
And for me, the other part that I look at too is a question of each of the sacraments has their own essential character. So, baptism's essential character is basically conversion is death. Yeah. And then raising to new life is a change. There's some substantial change happening there, and you're baptized.
Right? And so, we have to see in the person at least some sort of Conversion happening before we confer baptism. That's a very clear thing, yeah, when we're looking for readiness in RCIA for adults. Children are a little different thing. That's why they're asking about the parents.
Do you have a reasonable expectation that the parents will be raising them up in the faith? 
[00:32:38] Jim: Right. Well, they will help them. 
[00:32:39] Fr. Tim: Yeah. Exactly. Because that's how they will receive their own conversions.
Right? Well, because of the example of their parents. Wow. And so, they're giving that, and the church is trying to set this up for success, you know. Does that mean that, you know, if we do confer a sacrament when someone's not ready, that'll never be fruitful. Saint Thomas has this really fascinating concept.
He says that, in fact, grace is bestowed, but it somehow hovers over the person until Their soil is ready to receive it. 
[00:33:07] Jim: Wow. Is that a Summa... 
[00:33:09] Fr. Tim: Yeah. I don't know. 
[00:33:11] Jim: I never heard that before. 
[00:33:13] Fr. Tim: His kind of thing is trying to Find out the different ways, but that's what he says. He says that somehow, like the grace of the sacrament of confirmation, or if someone can bestows it upon them, but they're not ready for it, it can somehow Take deeper root later. 
[00:33:23] Jim: Grace is not lost, but it also doesn't take effect until they can receive it. 
[00:33:28] Fr. Tim: Right.
Exactly. 
But it's not lost. 
[00:33:30] Jim: How do we till the soil? Parents, educators, you know, coordinators, pastors, how do you tell the soil? 
[00:33:36] Fr. Tim: Well, the question is, how do we remove the obstacles?
That seems to be the case in the parable. You know, how do we crack open that heart like, what is hard so how do you fix hard soil? How do you remove the, You know, the thorns and the bushes. So, I think that we have assumed that people are coming to us with faith. 
[00:33:53] Jim: Mhmm.
[00:33:54] Fr. Tim: That's a huge We say in our ministry that our assumptions dictate our strategies.  And so, if we assume people are…
[00:33:58] Jim: Wait, wait, say that again. I feel like I need to make a t shirt. Say it 1 more time. 
[00:34:04] Fr. Tim: You should make one. Our assumptions dictate our strategies.
[00:34:07] Jim: Oh, that's so good.
[00:34:09] Fr. Tim: So, we... the assumptions that we have about the people we're serving basically change... or we make structures based on the people we serve, uh, or we think we're serving. And so, what happened was that we could have probably assumed that people were coming with faith At least in a vague way, like, 30 years ago. Mhmm. I think that was an okay assumption because people were it was in the water.
You know? People were living it. They were talking about it. They were part of Worshiping communities, the biggest thing that I think is the biggest challenge to this is that the practice of faith has dropped off a cliff. Right.
And so that was actually in a crazy way, formation was happening at the liturgy. Sure. Yeah. That's because people were practicing because they did go to church. Right.
And so, we say that the church is like the queen liturgist. Right? She's the chief liturgist. Yeah. Or sorry.
The liturgy is the chief catechist. Sorry. Been a long week. Um, and I think when people do go to worship, that's forming them because it's a habitual Right. Exposure to.
[00:35:05] Jim: But right now, A quarter or less are showing up any given Sunday, and that number, I think that, you know, the 25 percent, I mean, it dropped a little bit post COVID. But what is hidden in that is it's not even the same 25 percent of registered parishioners anymore. So that Even though the twenty-twenty 5 percent of Catholics at Mass, it's not the same 20 percent every Sunday. 
[00:35:33] Fr. Tim: And the other thing that's embedded in our same numbers is they also told us that 70 percent of those, And for our case, it's less. 70 percent of the 10 percent who come, 11 percent this year.
Wow. 70 percent of those are over 35 years old. Yeah. So, they're not the parents of the kids who are coming to Faith Formation. Right.
And so that's even further challenge There. Um, and so I think that if we're not practicing the faith or we don't have some sort of, you know, already imagination of faith in a home, that's why the Catholic thing has always been one of imagination, images, artwork, you know, uh, sacramentals, all these kind of things have Played so far into formation. 
[00:36:14] Jim: Just have teens, things you can smell, touch, taste. 
[00:36:16] Fr. Tim: Right. Bedtime prayers, praying around the dinner table, all of those things that we assume aren't happening anymore on a whole in Some families are still doing that, certainly.
But I would say our findings have been about 95 percent of the people who are bringing their kids 2 church for these sacraments do not have an active faith life. Yeah. And so, the question is, in our ministry, our ministry is really set To say, like, how do I move that 95 percent from a disengagement to an engagement? Mhmm. So, our ministry is focused on that group of people.
Right. And not the 5 percent who are already fully actively engaged. Yeah. Get them into the sacrament prep or, actually in fact, you could just confer the sacrament upon them if they're already living it As a family. They're already intentional.
That's possible. The church has no other requirements for that besides us assuming and it says in the canons, right, That the pastor and his delegates have that responsibility to make sure they're properly prepared. And they may already be properly prepared by just living in a family who is worshiping, And they might need some things around it, but that profoundly challenges us because it decentralizes me as a Dispenser of information. 
[00:37:24] Jim: Well, and it also makes it messy. I just want to say, Dear E's, We love you.
And those of you who have parents, we love you. Pastors, we love you. But those of you who have responsibility to try and keep some semblance of order Together, the thought of, like, what it's all willy nilly and, okay, these people are ready. You guys get the sacrament. You guys aren't.
Well, let's see. Well, where's your faith at? Like, How does it manifest practically? Because, I mean, you know, I'm not arguing with you, and I don't think anybody I can see the citations in front of you in your notes. So, I don't think anybody wants to argue with you because I know you are well versed in what the Church is asking for.
But practically, how do you go from where we currently are to this more readiness-based preparation model. I mean, I think that's just back to our, you know, earlier conversation, imagination. Most of us can't even imagine what a readiness model looks like, and then how to go from now to that. 
[00:38:28] Fr. Tim: Yeah. Readiness for me is always relationships.
And the challenge is that we have kind of let me say this in a really kind way if I can, but We have relied on a very small amount of people to really be accomplishing large structures of formation in a sense. You know? And so, we come to a lot more people who are a lot more formed to be in those relationships with those people. So, it's breaking down larger experiences into smaller groups. Right?
And so that's what the early church was masterful at. That's what the sponsor or the godparent was. 
[00:39:01] Jim: Wow. So, wait. So, I just want to make sure I was following that.
You're saying, like, yeah, part of the problem is you've got one DRE, you know, that's coordinating a program with, yes, catechists, but, like, there's, like, 900 kids in the program. And that just, that just isn't going to work because one catechist or a pair of catechists, you know, in a classroom with 30 plus kids, You actually can't properly assess faith and readiness. You can't develop the relationships. You can't do those things. It's like you need this in home catechesis where you've got 2 people and maybe a whole family, teenagers and whatever, passing on the faith to these young people.
[00:39:40] Fr. Tim: Right. Yeah. It becomes this, I mean, subsidiarity at the max. 
[00:39:44] Jim: Right. Well and the ratios are all wrong, just at a practical level.
Right? For those overwhelmed DREs who have responsibilities to try and keep this system running, that's part of the problem. It's all on them. There's too much. 
[00:39:56] Fr. Tim: Right.
And I think for us, really, we're trying to help missionize more of the adults in a parish, Whether that's your empty nesters, your grandparents who are really hungering for their kids to come back to church, you know, all these different places to really say, like, Okay. Let's form you. That's why this primacy of the adult faith formation is so important for us. Yes. Let's form you in this process, which we call the catechumenate, And then missionize you to be able to come and help us to do this.
[00:40:21] Jim: You know, I dream of this. There's a couple of places, but my parish happens to have, you know, There's a there's an older population. We're surrounded by schools, um, but we have a lot of empty nesters and retirees in our parish. And there's a part of me like, I get it. You know, maybe you don't have quite the same amount of energy that you used to have, but there's a part of me that envies the financial freedom that that most of our retirees and empty nesters have.
You could buy dinner or coffee or breakfast or whatever. Like, you have a financial freedom to be as innocent as doves and wise as serpents to use food and treats to draw young families To God's grace, you have time. You have experience of life. You have a love and knowledge of the faith. Oh, my goodness.
It's such a beautiful vision to mobilize those folks who watch. Oh, our church is so quiet. There's no babies here. There's no children. And they can they know it's headed the wrong direction.
How cool that is it to mobilize them to engage and serve young families. 
[00:41:26] Fr. Tim: And really, so that's why if this year for us, we're investing heavily in adult Portions of this. So Yeah. The way that Pathways is our catechetical ministry. The way that it's set up I shouldn't even call it yeah.
It is catechetical ministry, but it's more Catechumenal ministry. Right. Uh, because catechesis sits in the yeah. You know, in the process of evangelization. And really for us, uh, we wanna help Integrate all the experiences at your parish to be able to work together.
So often, we have adult programs here, kids programs here, teen programs here that all have different Structures that don't actually talk to each other, and all have different sets of volunteers and things like that. We're trying to unify. And, actually, the church is calling us to this in the directory for catechesis, at least this one and the one before that. They use this word like a unified approach. 
[00:42:14] Jim: Yes.
[00:42:15] Fr. Tim: Clear paths. 
[00:42:15] Jim: I know. I was like, oh, it's like You could see it in my face. I'm like, I feel like there's a word for that. That's great.
But yeah... 
[00:42:22] Fr. Tim: and that's what this is about. Which is why we love Omaha. You know, it's because that's what this is about. It's about creating a clear path, you know, that then allows people to plug back into where they were touched in that process and help someone else in the piece of that.
And so, You know, it's one of the challenges I do have to say of working with parish leaders is what we are offering them is Immense. We're asking for a huge process change and a huge kind of need for a brand new set of people. Like, we're not just in catechists anymore. I need companions who walk with groups of parents. I need facilitators who facilitate things for parents at church.
I need A whole host of hospitality people. And I also for us, the other people in the accompaniment team, we also want people who are, like, praying for the mission. Crazy. Yeah. Crazy.
Right? We want people who, like, will say, you know what? During the session tonight, I'm gonna be in the chapel praying for those parents. Yes. I'm gonna intercede for this.
We've forgotten that that's a really important charism Oh my goodness. Of intercession. You know, that somehow, it's just the Martha's that are getting everything done. And then we need them too. Right?
God and they're both they're both sons, you know? I love. Yeah. And so, I think that that having a team in place and that's why we call it an accompaniment team. You are part of a team of people Yeah.
Living out this mission and vision. If you think it's just in the DRE, it never will work. It doesn't work anywhere that that's the case. Right. No matter how some of the pastor.
Exactly. No. It's not the case. The DRE has to become with their own gifts to know that, to also who know who they are not And to surround themselves with the people they need to be successful. Multiple of them.
[00:43:55] Jim: It's an old campus ministry phase, but involvement breeds commitment. And I know so many people whose lives were profoundly changed. Their first step was just being invited You know, to be the host, would you just kind of welcome, just open the door, welcome people, say hi, make sure they know right where to go, grab the packet. Like it's just The simplest jobs, invitation to be a part of something, can make a huge, huge difference. 
[00:44:22] Fr. Tim: I think also helping people to discern what that role is as well.
Like, we have so many great tools out there. Exactly. You know? Um, but also to form them in the same process that we're asking them to form others in. That for me becomes so key.
[00:44:37] Jim: Because you're just doing what you've received. 
[00:44:39] Fr. Tim: Exactly. And what, you know, now you know it, you've seen it. Yes. Now, like, if they've gone through it personally, now I can ask them, would you like to go sit at the table?
They know exactly what that means. It's no longer something I have to basically They created an entire imagination for it because why? Because their imagination was formed by an experience. And so that becomes you know, the question of how do we do this on a large level is that we really have to Raise up an army of missionaries, of adults to do this. 
[00:45:04] Jim: Well, and it's back to like, you know, again, the general directory and all these Church documents talking about catechesis is a communal responsibility.
That's right. And they're like, Yeah. Okay. Father, this is beautiful, and I'm just gonna trust that people are receiving this as they hear this as beautiful. I want to give you a chance to talk maybe I'm going to throw out a couple of right objectors.
A couple of the folks are just like, There's just nobody to help. I mean, just like, this is great, but it really is just me. What would you say to them? 
[00:45:38] Fr. Tim: I would say to them that your gift set is probably not a galvanizer gift set. 
[00:45:43] Jim: That's awesome.
And explain galvanizer. 
[00:45:45] Fr. Tim: for those. I know galvanizer. I'm not. So that's the thing. I can identify Oh, I'm not either.
I'm not a galvanizer. Yeah. I'm an inventor, and I have tenacity, and I will drive things into the ground until they are done. And I do that. But I really struggle to get people around ideas and to ask, and fundraising is a nightmare to me and all that kind of stuff. You know?
But there are certain people out there that, like, love that, you know? And there's also other people out there who just can't wait to be asked, The enablers who just wanna be asked to do something, and they're happy as a clam to help you. And so, I think to assume that everyone is like you is the first step, because that's not true. There are other people out there who can help you and want to, um, but you might just need to ask somebody to ask for you. Oh, that's great.
You know, like, you need to get to with your deacon Say, hey, Deacon. Do you know anybody? Or, pastor, do you know anybody? Or, like, your neighbor, do you know anybody? And just send them my way.
You know? Or here's what we're thinking of. Here's a little paper with the things we need Because somebody, you know, come in. Because you might not be that person. You might need someone else to be your person who helps you develop your team.
[00:46:44] Jim: Oh, that's fantastic. Everybody needs a team, but not everybody is a team builder or recruiter. 
[00:46:48] Fr. Tim: Right. And so to help them to do that, you know, we can and we're also providing this year, um, we're releasing them at our conference in May, But it's just a more robust list and it and it basically an enumeration of who you need to make our resources successful in a parish. And here's a time commitment for that, and here's what that looks like over the course of years if you're doing it, those types of things.
So that people can be like, oh, yeah. I'm that person. I could be there, you know, that type of thing. Yeah. So, I think if you're not that galvanizer, right, then get someone to help you and to know that it's not all on you.
Yeah. And that's a really important ministry realization, I find. Like, for us in our in our work right now, we're pursuing, um, somebody with those galvanizing gifts because there's nobody on our team who has that as a genius. Yeah. And so that for me has become just like this hyperfocus because if I can just unleash them in their gift, then that then that frees me to be unleashed in mind.
[00:47:42] Jim: Yes. 
[00:47:42] Fr. Tim: Because I'm trying to do all of it. And I said, I don't wanna keep doing all of it. I wanna do what God is calling me to and has gifted me for.
[00:47:47] Jim: You know? Remind me later. I need to introduce you to some people. I know some galvanizers I'd like to help you make friends with. Okay.
So next objection. Right? So, what about that person that's like, I want to do this. I believe everything you're saying. You had me at hello, but I'm not in charge.
I am not the pastor. I'm not the DRE. I don't have the power. I don't have the keys, and they're never gonna go for it. What do you say to them?
[00:48:11] Fr. Tim: Two things. So, if I was to redo this whole thing over again, which I'm not going to because it would kill me, um, but I would actually start with adult faith formation Because there's usually none of it happening. Yeah. And so, typically, there's a lot less resistance to bringing in something that doesn't have anything already there Then it is about changing something that's currently happening. Yes.
So, we actually are gonna be recommending going forward that a parish actually spend a year running adult faith formation resources to build up teams before they even begin to think about changing their children or teens or parent formation. Yes. And so, if you go to your pastor and say, hey, I'd love to run this SEEK experience for our adults here to see what you think, you know, maybe root and small groups afterwards, Which is the kerygmatic and the credal piece. Mhmm. Right?
Now all of a sudden, you're gonna have after a year. And then we our new Seek resource is actually Written as a retreat, so you can do Friday night, all day Saturday type of a thing. And what's interesting is so I'll share a story about a parish that we work with in, uh, New Orleans. The pastor there is awesome. Previously married, has kids and grandkids, and he was military too.
It's a great, fascinating story. Yeah. But, anyways, he runs this retreat there, and this is not just there. And I'll share another story about it, but he calls it the ACTS retreat. I don't know if that's something that's known around.
But, anyways, They basically put these adults through this conversion moment and experience on a retreat, and then they are intentional about plugging them into a ministry afterwards. Mhmm. And this provides a crazy amount of, quote, unquote, volunteers, but I wouldn't call them volunteers anymore. We wanna build teams. Yeah.
Team members. Right. These people who we can missionize and put on our team. And they have unlimited amounts of adults who wanna help them because they've invested in that encounter experience and follow-up with it. Yeah.
And so, we're saying, like, if we can do that, let's say that's why we're developing these adult resources and then giving you tools to develop teams. Let's say you can do that, and then all of a sudden, You can now use a model Mhmm. This catechumen model that you've done with adults and now apply it down. Apply it down to parents. Apply it down to children.
It's to get the parents, to get the children, and then teenagers as well. Then it becomes this piece where you're now not just disrupting with no visible Model. Let's say you're producing fruit with adults. All of a sudden, the pastor is way more open. 
[00:50:26] Jim: You know, and I've heard that story.
So many times, I've heard People who desired to do something in the children's space or in some other particular ministry, and they just knew they couldn't get there. So, they started someplace else. And then it was, hey, I want that the pastor came to them, I want that for this place. And that's where they wanted to be the whole time, but they're like, okay, yes. But they had to…they had to demonstrate it.
They had to get some momentum.
[00:50:51] Fr. Tim: Right. 
[00:50:52] Jim: Uh, show that it worked. 
[00:50:53] Fr. Tim: And if your pastor needs somebody who needs to see it, that's the way to do it. You know? He'll probably won't say no to you if there's nothing in that space.
Yeah. And so that's a great place way to way to start. I would also say reading mission field with a team of parents or with your Pastoral Counsel, or with your pastor and his leaders and saying, hey, I'd like to think about doing this and how can I help you? You know, in that place, it could be an interesting Space to go. So, it's a very short I don't even call it a book.
It's a booklet, we call it, because it's 40 pages, and most of those are spaces to write notes. Yeah. This is great discussion questions. And each of the quick little chapters, a couple pages long, has discussion questions, and then basically just gets you to say, like, Yeah. What are we doing?
Is it working? Where do we want to go? And then gives you a lot of the church citations and those types of things underneath it. Priests have found it's particularly helpful because it speaks their language. Mhmm.
It's sensible to them in their philosophical education, their theological education. So, they don't think it's Just another funny idea. The new next new thing. 
[00:51:49] Jim: Right. You tie to the rootedness of what the church has been asking for.
Okay. So, our time is flying here. I want to give you a chance just to speak to those who I mean, we've covered a lot of ground. We've talked about, You know, a lot of different things. What are the patterns of those who are finding success in changing the framework?
Because you're looking now around the country, folks who are like, okay, we got to do better. This is not working anymore. And they've been willing to try something else. Like, what's what are the patterns? Every parish is unique.
Every family is unique. But what are the patterns? 
[00:52:25] Fr. Tim: So primarily, uh, the people we love working with are people who find our stuff and say to us, I've always wanted to do this, but yet I just didn't have the time or money to develop it myself. So those are the dream people to work with because they get it already. You know?
Yep. They've already had their entire mind and framework is already in place there. They've been reading the same stuff. Exactly. So those are a dream to work with.
You know? Um, but the people who come to us now many times are saying things to us like, we should be doing something different, and we heard about you. Um, and so our approach to them is slightly different because we have to now provide much more of that interior work With them. Mhmm. Uh, we're launching a, uh, institute that forms people in the catechumenal process so that then they can go form others in it.
Most people have not had a personal experience with the catechumenal process. Mhmm. We've heard about it. Maybe we can think about it intellectually. But what does a charismatic Experience look like?
What does a visit or pre catechumen experience look like? What how do you teach the creed? What does the sacramental experiences look like? So, we Help them go through those pieces and then give them concrete tools to turn around and actually just do right away. So, we're more method in the model.
You know, we're modeling the method for them. So, I think that that is an important way forward for people. We also have seen that what's really essential is that the Pastor and the director are on the same page. We almost never see success when it's just a DRE or it's just the pastor. Right.
And so that's one of the reasons I wrote Mission Field was to bridge that gap and have them have conversations about that. Um, and then the other thing we've seen as Success is that the people who don't rush. Mhmm. So, we have people who come to us and they wanna be get this done in 2 months or something. And we highly discourage that, actually.
I would Love nothing more than to sell people things. Right? Keeps our ministry going. But we are actually we're like, stop. Hold on.
No. Don't go. Because that actually creates way more issues for them. Because if you don't do this right or well the first time, you're gonna basically lose your window with people. 
[00:54:22] Jim: Yeah.
Violent change Sours people to the idea of trying anything new. 
[00:54:26] Fr. Tim: Right. And so, what we say is if as long as you can manage the change, you can move as fast as you want. Managing change means that I'm willing to have the conversations, to sit down with the people, to, you know, to really invite them into it, to cast it, to have enough Time for people to process it to be open to their responses. Uh, what happens in the most unsuccessful places, I'll tell you this, is that usually people just send an email out in the middle Some are saying, we're doing something different, and this is what it is.
And they've done none of the interpersonal trust building, relational building, that type of thing. And so, then they just get a bunch of pushback because people are like, I didn't sign up for that. Yeah. And 
[00:55:04] Jim: so that's you see that, you know. I know it happened.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 
[00:55:07] Fr. Tim: Or the other part too this This is crazy. I don't know.
I'd say this out loud, but we have a lot of people who will, like, you start using our resources but never read the material, Right. Until they're in it, and they're like, what I know that was what's in here. You're like, oh my gosh, friends. Like, it's been there the whole time. We didn't hide it from you.
You know? We just people are so busy. Right. You know, and I think DREs are busy. And when they're trying to consider new programs and things like that, they're still running another one at the same time.
[00:55:31] Jim: Right. Yeah. Researching the new one while barely keeping the old one afloat. 
[00:55:35] Fr. Tim: Right. So, providing yourself some space to do that would be really important, you know, maybe.
[00:55:39] Jim: You know what would be great, father? If there could be, like, a conference or someplace where people could be away from their day job and be dedicated a time where they could think and learn about This may be in community with other people someday, maybe. Yeah. 
[00:55:55] Fr. Tim: What a great thought, you know? We actually have one coming up.
It's called the Pathways Conference. Yeah. Yeah.
Talk 
[00:56:00] Jim: about it. 
[00:56:00] Fr. Tim: We do a yearly one.
Last year was our first annual, so this is our second annual one. And, uh, what's So cool about the Pathways Conference is that we keep it small format. We actually are limiting it this year to 80 participants, so it'll be filling up very quickly. And we do that because we want to it's really for leaders. It's for parish directors and priests to come, and that's our and diaspora and diaspora and diaspora come as well.
But we really wanted to provide a space because this is such a new thing in many places, and many people feel like little islands doing that, Especially the process changed. Oh, it's lonely. Very lonely. And so, the really, what the conference says is it provides you a space to really just Hear what it looks like in other places, what have been people's successes and failures. You get encouraged just being together.
You know? You start to feel like, Oh, I'm not alone in this? Like Yeah. How crazy. And now you have a whole network of people who you can help troubleshoot with Mindful.
Learning, you know, and you can avoid a lot of The pitfalls. And one of the things that I'll be releasing this year too is kind of, um, transition types and the pitfalls and the blessings of each and so that people can choose, like, You want to cut and run? That's what this looks like. Do you want to do the on-ramp version? That's what this looks like.
Do you want to do the, you know, different pieces? Oh, that's fantastic. It's just that we've named them different things At the level where I've called it where you just, like, put everyone on the same thing for a year to get everyone on the same page. Yeah. Like, there's just different parts like that.
I've seen now working with a bunch of these different parishes, like, Yes. What the benefit of that was and what the drawback of that was. Right. Yeah. Pros and cons.
Exactly. Pros and cons of each of them. So, our conference, we share so much of that stuff there. Um, it's Always though also for us. It's not just about learning our method, but it's about being formed in The heart of it.
So, we wanna give you personal experiences yourself with the leadership formation that we're doing, um, and being inspired by the other we call them trailblazers, Waymakers, trailblazers, and the people who are on the front lines there. 
[00:57:53] Jim: So where do people, if they want to go, find out about the conference, get the date, register, where should they go?
[00:57:59] Fr. Tim: So, our website is a great place. Has a lot of stuff on there. We're also developing out a whole leader learning center with short format videos over the course of the spring That can give you a lot of this, but in short format videos you can share with people too.
It's f f l c m Dot org. So that's Frank Frank Larry Cindy Mary dot org. And you can see on the top bar is a couple things. Pathways is there. Events is where they can find the information about the conference.
It's called the Pathways Conference, and it's May 20 eighth, 20 ninth, and thirtieth, and it's in the Big Easy in New Orleans. So, we have this beautiful hotel outside of the Crazy, Um, but close enough to the crazy if you wanna go there. But it's, uh, it's gonna be wonderful and very comfortable. But we love to pick places that look like homes. Yeah.
And so, it's very homey. Couches everywhere. That's awesome. You know, um, it's in a, actually, a publishing house. So, it was the First woman publisher, Liza Jane, was her name in this big, uh Cool.
Newspaper down there. And so that was the building that they were in, so that's why he kinda named the hotel that. And also, is in a bitter factory. So, you know, if you're familiar with cocktails.
[00:59:08] Jim: That's hilarious. Okay. So, the conference and the book, I would just I mean, I'll plug it for you. Mission Field, a framework for transformation of faith formation structures. Just getting that, reading it very short, but Get 2 copies and read it with a fellow catechist.
Read it with your pastor. Read it with your DRE. Like, read it together and begin this this conversation and this this kind of conversion, uh, experience, pastoral conversion together. 
[00:59:39] Fr. Tim: Absolutely. And we offer it also as a PDF that if you just buy one PDF and print it for as many people as you want, we're okay with that.
[00:59:45] Jim: Boom. Yeah. That's awesome. Did everybody that? Frugal church folks. one PDF.
What? 10 bucks, is it? It's 15, I think. Is it 15 bucks for the PDF printed as many times as you want? You could even scrimp, and printed in black and white, if you want.
That's right. So okay. Father, thank you. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for what you do.
Yeah. I really, really appreciate it. Any final words of encouragement for those listening? 
[01:00:04] Fr. Tim: Pursue the fruit. If it's producing fruit, keep doing it.
If it's not, cut it down and trust that the Lord will, um, produce Fruit where he where he leads us. And that for me has been such a convicting thing that if I do what the church is asking, that the spirit will show up in tow because that's the promise. And if I don't believe that, I don't know what I'm doing here. You know? So, I encourage you to trust that.
It's gonna show up. The lord has shown up Always. In wherever places led me as long as I was just really trying to be obedient to what he wanted. So, trust that. He'll continue to show up.
[01:00:37] Jim: Cool. Fantastic. Thank you for being with us. Alright, everybody. You know somebody who needs to hear this.
You know somebody you probably need to have a conversation with. Uh, maybe you need to have a conversation and say, hey, I want you to listen to this podcast. Or, hey, I just ordered this PDF. And if we're gonna get our money's worth, we're gonna print it, like, 20 times and we're gonna all read it together. When you get to your destination, you're done walking the dog, going for a drive, share this out and start the conversation.
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 by going to Equip.ArchOmaha.org. God bless and see you next time.