You might have the right gear, the right location, the best weather, and be an expert fisherman and yet you still might get skunked some days. While having expertise, training, strategy, and experience are all valuable (and may increase the odds of catching fish) you can strike out on any given day. This is just one of many reasons Jesus connected evangelizing to fishing.

I was about to start my first full-time job working for the Church and I realized I didn’t know a thing about what I was supposed to do. I needed help and I needed it more than I knew. So, before I started, I was blessed to go to a conference where I met my first mentor / coach. It changed the trajectory of my professional life.

When our gaze shifts from Jesus and the purpose of the Church - we start to lose its mission of making disciples. Whenever the Church loses its mission people lose their faith.

Imagine taking a small portion of every item in your fridge and cooking them into one dish tonight. You would probably end up with a gross mess for dinner. It may be “food” and provide some kind of nourishment, but it certainly isn’t going to taste good. Now imagine being served this mess at a restaurant. I highly doubt you would go back. Yet, this is how most Catholic parishes approach ministry.

If I told you that you could transform your parish culture in 5 easy steps, would you want to know how to do it? Even if it was hard, would you be willing to work at it? Would you be willing to pay a steep price to access the steps? If you respond “yes”, then you have “Catholic Silver Bullet Syndrome”.

By 2045 the output of global pollution is expected to be cut in half. Such progress is forecast because world leaders recently sat down for a week of hashing out the real-world problems at the Vatican. Invited by Pope Francis and led by Catholic experts, it seems this might be a defining moment for...

I had a desperate need to be considered cool. In fact, it may have been the thing that I valued most through high school and into college. So when I started college, I absorbed the cultural values of the college campus wholeheartedly. I valued what the cool kids valued. I did what they did and I did it to a greater degree. I partied hard. I chased girls. I talked loud and brash (still working on that one). I hung with the cool dudes who would enable such behavior. But, I was lost.

If there is one phrase which can get a Catholic argument going, it is "a personal relationship with Jesus". One one side there are folks that argue it is a phrase stolen from Evangelical Protestants and is empty of meaning. They might also charge that it shuns the communal aspect of Christianity. On the other side...

as Christian disciples we are called to something better than just living with our bias. We are called to submit it to our Lord and allow him to sift through it to see where we are right and where we are wrong in our bias. Even further...

Sin never stops. This weekend, we got word that a friend and local pastor stepped down due to an inappropriate relationship with an adult. It hurt me, my family, and many others. It has wounded many good people who were shocked to find out...

Easy Christianity doesn’t work. We have tried it for too long and it has failed us (and the world). Passive Catholicism doesn't change lives. Soft Selling tough discipleship means we don't make disciples, but soft Catholics, who will fade away when things (or doctrines, morality, human sin, scandal, etc) get too tough....

In 2017 I drove to Houston after Hurricane Harvey to help with relief efforts. A drive that would normally take 1.5 hours took me twice as long, due to closed streets, debris, flooding, etc. I finally made it to my destination and spent the rest of the day at a home that had 5 feet of water in it. It was a daunting task. You have to wonder

Why doesn’t our parish do _______? We should start a _________ at our parish! Father really needs to _________ at our parish! If you have ever worked in a parish then you have probably heard these kinds of questions / statements and...

It may have been the best compliment I have ever received. One of the young men I had been working with told me once, "until I met you, I never knew what it meant to have a father love a son. Now I can see through you, how much God loves me." Wow. I was not only humbled, but overjoyed at what God had done in our discipleship relationship.

During much of the 20th Century, in both Russia and China, Christians were viciously persecuted under Communism. But in the modern era, we see Russian Christianity stagnating (at best and declining in many ways), even though the government now officially advocates for Russian Orthodoxy. Yet, in China, the growth has been exponential. Why? What can we learn?

15 years ago a book called Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton. It is a summary of findings from a large survey of teens in America and what they believe. Their key finding is...

NOTE - There will be a lot of bold (and frank) statements in this post. Discussion and feedback is welcomed and appreciated, but please be polite, even if you disagree. When the Catholic Church, in the USA, faced the biggest problem in her history (the clergy abuse scandal), the reaction and change was...

There is no arguing with the data, and the facts are sobering and sad - most self-identified Catholics in the USA live like those who have no faith. They say they are Catholics and live like they are pagans.

There were two differences between us. First of all, he was better dressed than I was. The second was that he was black and I was white. As two friends, we entered the convenience store at the same time....

There is a somewhat obscure Bible passage that has been bothering me lately. Whenever that happens, I try to go back to it again and again, until I can discern what God wants to say to me through it. After talking to my spiritual director and praying about it more, I have some glimpses into what God is saying. Here is the passage...