Welcome to the Youth Ministry Mindset podcast season 2 with
voices from Alpha and Y Disciple Out of Net Ministries.
My name is Jordan and I'm here with my friends.
Jason Kidd. Annie Grendel.
And we're talking about specifically confirmation,
moving the space of confirmation from a transactional approach to
a transformational approach. And this episode's title is
Content Still Isn't King, which is a direct call back to what we
did a couple years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And we had a episode titles that said Content isn't King.
Can you just remind us a little bit what we talked about, why we
talked about back then and then where we're going this time?
So last season we had an episode called Content isn't King, and
we had a special guest, Jim Beckman, who's the founding
architect of why disciple and generally known as like the Obi
Wan Kenobi Catholic Youth Ministry.
Yes. And one of my favorite things he
said in that episode is while content isn't king, it it might
be queen. And his point was that the
deposit of faith that teaching true things is vitally
important, but we cannot solve all the problems about, in this
context, confirmation by just throwing the best content at it.
Like that's not going to address the heart of a lot of the
issues. And So what we talked about a
lot last season was context, the context of discipleship, of
relationships, of a compliment. And so we just want to dive in
this season into what that looks like in the confirmation space
because really content is the thing that you and I, Jordan,
bonded over initially when we first met.
That was the moment, Yeah, go ahead.
You you relay your version and I'll I'll sprinkle in mind.
Great. So we've been, we were called on
as content providers. Neither of us had met to put
together a content bundle. It was in the middle of COVID
and Jordan and I were the two people on the call.
So we were the people who were called in as content providers.
Why Disciple and Alpha And we were the ones on the call saying
content isn't the answer We. Actually literally we actually
literally said out loud multiple times contents not the answer
for the season like. It's not.
And we looked at each other and said, did we just become best
friends? No, I looked at you.
I was like, oh man, I like her. Like what she's doing.
She's saying something that is actually she sees something that
I see. And then your daughter came on
screen in the background with a blue marker and used your zoom
screen as a way to like draw on herself and Big Blue marker and
she painted her. Whole body.
Yeah, And you knew what was happening and you saw it in the
screen and you unfazed. And I was like, this girl's
awesome. This is.
She was taking advantage of me being on a work call.
She was four. And she was like, you know, if
mom's on this call, she, she can't stop me.
And so was like off to the side outside using my computer as a
mirror and painted her entire body blue.
And that's Marjorie for you. Like that really sums her up.
Smurfs, that was the best, OK. But from that we launched this
Youth Mission Mindset podcast. You just kind of went over what
we talked about a little bit and that was during a season of
massive reorientation, youth world, post COVID reality.
And it was good. Like a lot of the churches found
that really helpful. And it's actually still getting
a lot of airplay right now, which is people are finding it
helpful to lay down some better foundations.
But there was a common question we got all the time is like, OK,
but what is alpha? And what is why disciple?
Like we never actually would talk about alpha or talk about
disciple we actually like, no, here's things we need to press
into. So Jason, what is Alpha?
Yeah, Alpha is a a ministry that helps the church make space for
people who don't go to church. Or maybe they go to church
occasionally and to really process the life's biggest
questions about life and faith and purpose.
And so, you know, in Catholics speak, it's kind of the inquiry
phase or kind of pre evangelization and the
proclamation of the gospel. So at Alpha, people are invited
to a a space that's very hospitable for a great meal.
Then they hear and discuss like some of the the most common
questions around Christianity. And they hear the the church's
perspective on things like who is God, who is Jesus, what is
prayer, who is the Holy Spirit? And then the majority of the
time is in the in a small group where a host doesn't teach
again, but rather fosters conversation, looking at these
questions where people can start to to process and chew on what
they've heard and and say what they believe.
Yeah. And we're seeing it run in
schools and youth ministers. We're actually seeing people run
in confirmation, which is kind of sparked this kind of like, we
should just talk about this. Yeah.
And and we're seeing amazing, like hearing amazing stories.
And Jesus is showing up in really beautiful and profound
ways. Some of my favorite stories are
actually coming from the Catholic space right now with
Alpha youth. So.
OK, that's Alpha Youth or Alpha and Annie.
Like what is Y disciple? 1st, I want to give a little
love to Alpha because my husband and I, just before we met, so in
2019, our parish was offering the Alpha course and we thought,
you know what, we've heard so much about this thing, let's
just go through it as participants.
And when you're in seats like we are, we very rarely get to
participate in a thing without getting pulled into leadership
somehow. That's real life for.
Sure. And so we just went through it
to be intentional and go through it.
We weren't trying to observe. And it was transformational for
our own personal spiritual lives, for our marriage.
It it changed so much for us. And it was because we just went
back to the Gospel. Pope Francis talks about it like
how we talk about the Gospel, the karigma as primary, not
because it's the first thing you do and then you move on from,
but you come back to it over and over again.
And so for us to go through that was such a profound experience
to go back to the Gospel. So I'm I'm a huge fan of alpha.
Why disciple comes out of net ministries now and what we do is
we create a digital toolbox for adults to do small group
discipleship for with teenagers in the Catholic space.
And so that digital toolbox includes training for adults,
both the ministry leader as well as the adult mentors who are
walking with teenagers and content for them to share in
their small groups for them to look at.
What does it mean to be a disciple of, of Jesus Christ?
And we're really intentional with calling it a toolbox
because because there is no such thing as a discipleship program,
it doesn't matter how good our content is, how?
And we put a lot of energy in to it being high quality content
and heresy free. Hooray.
But if the flesh and blood adults in the room with
teenagers don't know how to engage the real teenagers in
front of them, it's all going to fall flat.
So we want to put tools in the hands of mature disciples to
accompany Catholic teenagers in a small group setting.
And this is that cultural reality that we both share
between Alpha and Y disciple. That was like, oh, we can do
this together. And we've been figuring out
collaboration, Kingdom collaboration together for a
couple years. So all right.
But in this episode, we're talking confirmation.
We're saying the content still isn't king.
And Jason, could you just give us a really quick summary?
We. Talked about and let's introduce
our guest. Yeah, well, we're, we're stoked
to have Edmund Mitchell, who is truly one of the, the thought
leaders around youth ministry, especially post COVID.
And, and so we're we're talking about, yes, there's content and
that's an that's a piece of the pie and it's an important piece
of the pie. It is not king, though, and
we're going to dive in a little bit into the the context of Gen.
Z and in youth ministry specifically in, in, in
confirmation preparation. So Edmund has got podcasts.
He's he's been involved in some amazing projects.
We are. We are so happy to have you,
Edmund. Yeah, it's really great to be
here. All the ministries present, I
really like some of my favorite, so I'm really honored to be on.
Oh, that's kind of you, man. Well, we're just grateful you're
here. So, Edmund, we're starting all
of our conversations with our guests with one simple fun
question. We're talking about confirmation
this season. Who was your confirmation saying
and why did you choose them? Yeah, my confirmation saying I
got confirmed in 8th grade. I picked Saint Michael the
Archangel because he had a sword in the photo.
And he's an Archangel. I mean, why would you not?
So what drew you to the sword? I don't know, just hacking
stuff, Testosterone, being a man, I, I don't know.
It's a great boy. It's the it's.
The 8th great boy, it's like you just walk around hitting
something, but but but that's what you do is the 8th great boy
that's. Great.
Tell us, tell us a little about your experience in ministry.
You know, I know you've, you've been around in different spaces,
but get tell us some of that story.
Yeah, so I'm a, I'm a recovering super Catholic.
I mean, I was cradle Catholic and raised my whole life and you
know, one of those classic first born like do everything right,
try to get straight A's. And I went to Georgia Tech for
college because I just wanted to be rich and people to think I
was smart. And so that was like the best
school I could get into and then had an experience with a campus
ministry there. Well, actually there there
wasn't much of one got involved there in trying to start one
with other people and slowly started discerning a call to a
different career path. And I was really into Scott Hahn
books and I saw that he taught in the in the back of one of his
books that said he taught at Franciscan University.
So I called the admissions office and I said, I think I
want to be Scott Hahn. And the guy on the other end
laughed and he said, I don't think that's a career path.
And I said, OK, well, I'm not satisfied being a volunteer.
Like there's something that doesn't sit right with me about
just volunteering my time. I want to be really involved in
evangelization. And he told me about, I love the
conversation I was listening to before I came on because he
talked about this word catechesis.
And I thought, you know, I'm going to go to Scott Hahnpath.
I'm going to be a Bible scholar. And when this person described
catechesis, my heart just, like, kind of caught on fire.
I was like, oh, that's what I want to do.
Like, I want to take God's message and bring it to people.
So flash forward to, you know, 10 years of parish ministry.
And, yeah, I love it. I think it's a unique calling
for me. And I still consider myself a
parish minister and coach parish ministers.
But yeah. So I guess the short answer to
your question is my experience was good.
That's awesome. OK, real fast.
Can you unpack super Catholic? Yeah, cuz like I mean you said
that and I was like recovering I or no?
Well, he said recovering super Catholic.
Yeah. So yeah.
Yeah. So I mean, I, in high school, I
dated a very sweet Protestant girl and she was very involved
in her faith. And I, I was, I was pretty
involved too, but just as a subject that I could know stuff
about to get favor from adults, you know, and, but one day Jeff
Cavans actually came to our, our parish and put on the great
adventure Bible timeline. And I love frameworks or big
picture. I mean, ADHD, you want shortcuts
and to have like a big picture of the Bible was really powerful
for me. But also seeing someone that
wasn't a priest. I love priests, but seeing
someone that wasn't a priest that had devoted his life to
this was really powerful. So my dad handed me Rome Sweet
Home. They were selling Scott Hahn
books. I guess Jeff Cavans was making
money off of Scott Hahn and gave me Rome Sweet Home to give to my
girlfriend to make her Catholic. Well, I read almost the whole
thing in the parking lot and I just became obsessed.
And so I'm reading all of these books.
And so if people are listening who can relate to this, it's
like you're listening to everything Father Mike Schmitz
puts out. You've read every Scott Hahn
book like you've, you're, you know, if you look at all the
YouTube channels you're subscribed to, like it's just
all the Catholic stuff. But then when I got out into the
world, when I became a, a real adult, like graduated from
college, went out into the world, I realized that
everything I was consuming and most of my time was spent to
bring up the content conversation.
Most I'd reached this point where most of it I would go to
other people to encounter the gospel or to encounter Jesus.
And so I'm hearing how Scott Hahn has been transformed
personally by the content of the deposit of Faiths teaching on
the Trinity. And then he, he incarnates it
himself and it turns to this message, becomes like a prophet
of God's message. And then I'm impacted by it.
But I'm not quoting church teaching, I'm quoting Scott
Hahn. I'm like, you know, like Scott
Hahn says, you know, God is a Trinity of persons.
And so I, it bothered me and I, I realized I needed to go back
to the sources I had my own like resource Mon.
And I started reading about the catechism instead of reading it.
I started reading about it and realize, like, why are more
people not talking about this? This isn't just an intellectual
thing. This is one of the, the most
important gifts of the last couple centuries since the
1500s. And it's deeply evangelistic.
And I hadn't understood the connection.
I hadn't understood how to connect the head in the heart
that I was experiencing in the church and in my faith in such a
powerful way until I started learning what a gift the
catechism really is in the methodology behind it, the
intention behind it. So that really transformed
everything. So I say recovering because I
went down the path of like all about the content and then
needed to kind of, it's not that I, I push the content away, but
I needed to, I was inspired to go like deeper and go to the
sources and yeah. And and so that, that's why I
say recovering. Yeah, that's, that's so great.
I, I love the back story there because the first time I ever
heard your name was when I was a parish ministry leader.
You were the Bible and catechism guy.
You were still in parish ministry as well.
And you, it was blog posts at the time, but talking about the,
the need for both the Bible and the Catechism in, in ministry.
Can you tell us a little bit more about how that became your
thing? Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's
weird. I got, you know, grace builds on
nature. Like it's a combination of, you
know, I'm in parish ministry. I also, you know, I'm very
creative and I have an incessant desire to express myself to
anyone who will listen. And I like the process of being
being affected by something personally, and then and then
creating, you know, creating art or creating messages or speaking
to people about what I've learned.
And so that was just kind of the natural thing for me.
I'm also maybe from earlier, one of my answers gave this way.
I'm kind of a non conformist. So if, if there's something that
everyone thinks is one way, I'm very drawn to how can we pitch
it a different way? And the catechism for me and for
other people I knew it was like, oh, this is just dry
intellectual knowledge. Like we're trying to get into
the like the krigma and preaching Jesus.
And I found the krigma in the catechism, and I found people
like Father in your Cantilla Mesa, who's a preacher to the
papal household, this amazing charismatic Franciscan Friar who
decides to give, I think it's two of his four Advent sermons,
the papal household. He speaks about the catechism
and he described it as he said in one quote, he said, I would
like to try to show you how the Catechism can be picked up like
a violin and used to rouse the heart of man.
And so he spoke of this just like very charismatic language
about the catechism. So, yeah, so obviously I just
started creating from that. Like I, I, I wanted a space to,
I wanted a space to encourage people to encounter the
pulsating heart of the Catechism like I had and begin praying
with it and not just treating it as intellectual, you know,
information. I love that like connection
between the heart and the head that we all must go go through
that journey. When we, when we look at good
content, you know, how, how can that serve confirmation,
preparation. And I'm, I'm, I'm thinking like
of our audience, that might be the mom who's tapped on the
shoulder to lead confirmation this year 'cause she's got a kid
that needs it. Or, you know, maybe you're a
full time youth minister or somewhere in between.
But yeah, how can how can good content serve confirmation prep?
Yeah, I mean, I, I think about many volunteers like they're
they really, they really are the Saints in in ministry and parish
ministry because they're volunteering their time and they
have they have limited time and they might come across these
conversations that we in the ministry world are very familiar
with, which is like, you know, content isn't like you're
talking about like contents, not king or or maybe just confused
about is it OK for me to be using content?
Should I not be using content? Should I be should I be
approaching this hour and a half I have with 8th graders as if
I'm Scott Hahn, you know, reincarnated to hear to give the
most amazing lecture and sermon? Or do I put on something that I
feel is really powerful, like you've come across some of these
resources, Alpha and Y disciple, some of these things that you're
like, this is really moving. I want to share this with
people. So I, I feel for volunteers who
might overhear that. But I, I think about the fact
that like, you know, Jesus didn't use the Internet or
social media or toilet paper, you know, so it's like, you
know, content, like, yeah, every, everything is content.
Jesus himself was handed a scroll and stood up in the
synagogue, read from it, and then taught and connected God's
word, The content in a format that was handed to him, he
selected, but he was handed a scroll and he selected from
within the scroll. And I think of volunteers who
they're handed a curriculum, they have some choice of what
type of content to choose or to proclaim, let's say.
And then they are given the special opportunity after or
before the content to connect to people in front of them in a way
that can be deeply evangelistic and charismatic.
So I think content is is an aid. It's only as good as.
The evangelist, the person there.
But it's such a powerful thing. I mean, like who?
I'm sure if we went around the room, all of us have really
impactful, really powerful memories of consuming some form
of content with someone we love that we'll never be able to
forget. Like the first time you saw Star
Wars. We do Dad some series you watch
with someone that opened up deep conversations and I think that's
what really good content like what you guys may can do.
It can open up good conversations and it's a aid.
I love that. I love that framing.
So what doesn't content solve, especially in the conversation
around confirmation? Yeah, content doesn't replace
the witness. You know, I know you guys all
know this, but the church's letter on evangelization,
Evangela New Tiondi, it says modern man will listen more
willingly to witnesses than to teachers.
And if modern man does listen to teachers is because they were
first witnesses. So the content doesn't replace
the witness of your life. I mean, these people we looked
up, we looked these people I looked up to who are authors or
speakers when I think back on it really was their life that was
powerful. You know, while I was at Georgia
Tech, I listened to a a talk by Jeff Cavans.
It was, oh man, it was on the Eucharist as true food or it was
something I've it was had a really catchy title.
I must have listened to the this this particular talk 100 times.
I memorized, you know, Baruch, Qatar, Aronai, Alhino, Malekha,
Alam, Hamotse, Lechem Minha. It's like Jeff Cavan says that
in the talk. And it hit me and it was
powerful. And I memorized it because I was
like, that was so cool. I want to be like that.
But. But but I think that that is a
great example of what content can't replace is that just
saying the words doesn't make my life witness the same as Jeff
Cavan's. It doesn't make it powerful.
Like, yeah, like, I wasn't living a life that backed up
this cool thing, you know, And so it doesn't replace the
witness. And I think it also doesn't
replace the the application to someone's life.
Like, you know, the kid in your class whose mom is bipolar and
whose dad left when he was 2. Like you have to take this is
literally at the bedrock of the plan for salvation that God gave
the church. Is that what the gospel is
missing is your expression of it today to the people that God put
in front of you and he wants to cooperate with you.
And so yes, like Jesus is the Son of God and that's the same
thing. And we can all repeat it over
and over again. But it means something different
when I say it. And it means something
different. You know what I mean?
Like it means something different, but there's something
behind it. There's a person behind it when
when you say it or when you talk about it.
So those are things I think it doesn't replace.
Yeah, that's beautiful. So I kind of want to go on the
flip then as we think about content, what is the non
negotiable content that we have to share in the space of
confirmation prep? Like in your opinion, in your
thoughts, like we have to share this.
Yeah, I mean, when when I would train volunteers as catechists
and I'm sure you guys have talked about this or do talk
about this a lot. You know, if I only have a few
minutes, it's just the the charisma, the basic gospel
message because we have it's it is true that we might only have
a few sessions, we might only have a limited amount of time
and we might be in front of people that are either
indifferent or actively hostile to the lesson.
So I mean. The the.
Yeah. I mean, the, the correct answer
is it's all essential. The, the, the more helpful
answer is if you had to focus on like one thing, I mean it's,
it's catechism paragraph one, it's the Gospel message, the
Krigma. And, and I think I would
probably say instead of saying what is essential, I would say
what is the most helpful, a simple framework that sets
someone up to fill in the rest. So you're not giving them per
random individual pearls and saying at the end of your life
you'll have all these pearls of Catholic teaching.
You're trying to help them understand the spokes on a
wheel, that the center is Jesus and the Krigma and that
everything else does fit in. Everything else is connected to
that and comes out of that. And later you can figure out
like the varying degrees of spiration in theology.
But we're like, if we can at least get the center of the
Krigma, then you've set people up well with a framework, you
know? Yeah, I.
Love that. I think, I think it was Pope
Benedict that said we can no longer presume faith for the
baptized. And when we look at the the
young people who are coming to us for, for confirmation, many
of them are, are not sure what they believe.
You know, maybe they've had some education, maybe they haven't.
And so I think, I think, I think that comes to mind for me is we,
we have to do it in, in the proper order so that they can
start at the beginning and again, slow down and go through
this, this process to, to understand some of these basics.
You know, I'm thinking of like Saint Paul, when he says, when
you have an infant and you try and give him meat, that the
infant can't, can't eat the meat.
They, they need milk. And so a lot of our young people
need, need milk. They need the Karigma, they need
a, a place to look at these questions, chew on them, and
then we can get into these deeper.
You know, I think the Catechism talks about this hierarchy of
truths that, that we got to start with the foundation first.
So as we, as we look at this and, and, and we're, where we
want to make sure we have a curriculum that we are, we're,
we're utilizing what, what would be some things that would be
essential as we prepare and for these conversations.
How do we help this youth minister or, you know, you might
be, you might have 8 kids, you might have 50 kids.
How do how do we help these conversations take place?
You mean like during during a setting them up during let's say
like a class or a session? Sure, sure.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, man, that's a big
question. I think, you know, one of The
thing is as I was thinking about today in our conversation to get
nerdy, you know, the ecclesial method by Monsignor or anyways,
at Franciscania, I'm doing Franciscan A disservice.
There's a there's a, there was a call in the church to to
rediscover an evangelistic catechesis.
And there's an element to like there is good catechesis and
there's bad catechesis. And good catechesis is whatever,
whatever most closely resembles the method model by the master
Jesus, like God's methodology of catechizing.
And at the at the heart of it is something that's akin to Lexio
Davina or other things like this, where you reflect on
divine revelation or content and and, and you discern the kernel,
the proc, the core proclamation, the thing, the thing that it's
like, you know, love means to will the good of the beloved or
or, you know, God didn't. Yeah, like, like the the core
proclamation in the content. And I think one of the probably
the best things you could teach volunteers or that they could
practice. It's the same with Lexia Davina.
If you, if you really reflect on a short passage of scripture and
there's one line or there's one summary or your your kind of
like way of articulating shorthand, the core proclamation
that carries this like spiritual weight to it.
And and you feel your soul and your heart kind of like pick up
a little bit. You know, Protestants might call
it like the preacher's burden. You can, you know, these
resources in the content of Alpha and Y disciple.
They have the gospel message in them.
And so there's that practice of reflecting on the content that
you might be showing to the point where it there's that
personal reaction to it. Like there's that personal, like
I am being evangelized by this and this is the heart of it.
This is the proclamation. If you just, if you, if you walk
away from this class and you just want this one thing, I just
want you to know this one thing. I think that would be massive.
That practice of prayerfully prepping with the content
beforehand, not just intellectually, so you know it,
but like, what is the core thing?
Like, like God became man, so man might become God.
And like you feel that because that means something to you and
it's changing you. And you just at the end of the
day, you want to talk about that and, and talk about how this
changed you and how it can change them.
If I was to translate this quickly and like a two word
thing, it's enter in. You have to enter in.
Don't just teach or be disconnected.
You have to enter in with the process again.
I love that that image of treating our treating catechesis
like Lexia Divina I, I love that.
I know in my my early parish ministry days, coming out of
college with my theology degree, I was very zealous and I wanted
young people to know all the things that I knew and I wanted
to pass on like I'd fallen in love with the Catholic
intellectual tradition. Edmund, I think you and I would
have been friends because I read all of the books you just
dropped. And were you listening to those
talks on tapes? Because I certainly.
Was sometimes. Sometimes it was, yeah, for
sure. Yeah, that.
Mostly other newer methods though, so.
Well, the newer methods didn't exist when I was listening to
them. Just make sure we establish
that. Connection.
Thank you. But I I wanted to give them all
of this. And the mistake that I made was
by way of analogy, like here in the Midwest, we've been
experiencing drought for the last several years.
My lawn was toast in May last year.
And that's normally when it's like coming to life.
And June happened and we had the floodgates open.
We had all this rain come down and we're like, yeah, droughts
over. Guess what?
Droughts not over because the rain came too fast.
It all ran off and it actually caused some damage.
And I think what I was doing in my early days with content was
very similar to that. I and it was coming from a good
place. I wanted them to know all of
these wonderful things, but I gave it all at once.
It was like a downpour. And because of that, it wasn't
there wasn't the ground wasn't ready to receive those truths.
And so I love what you're talking about, Edmund, with
what's the one thing like? Can we say less so they can
receive that one thing not just into their minds, but into your
their hearts? And I've, I've just never heard
anybody compared to Lexia Davina in that way.
That's beautiful. Yeah, that's one of the that's
one of the beginner kind of mistakes that I fell into.
And then we had to talk about a lot with first and second year
volunteer catechists. Is that what is impactful for
you? What, what the messages and the
articulations of it that have changed your life might not be
impactful for other people. So that's a, that's a huge,
that's a very important point you make.
And he's like, you have to not just look for the books and the
talks and the expressions and the analogies and stories that
transformed your life. You have to go to that
proclamation, to that core message, you know?
I feel like what I'm hearing happened in your story, Edmund,
in, in what we want to do with young people is we want to, we
want to get them thinking. We want to give space and time
for them to reflect on these questions and really arouse
curiosity and, and help them recognize this hunger for more,
right? And so we we don't need to give
it all at once right in this downpour, this fire hose, but
but we want to, we want to allow them to have an encounter with
the Lord and then realize that there's so much here, like this
is a lifelong process. For the majority of people,
there won't be that downpour, but would you guys say that
there may be some individuals, although very infrequent that
maybe one or two that you see like ought to love them best?
It is the downpour. I guess I'm asking the question
because then I'm wondering how do you discern the pace in which
we need to run? Sure.
Yeah, I love that. You know, I Doctor Petrock
Wiley, I always forget how to pronounce his last name.
So forgive me, Petrock, but he was the first person I could
find in, in the early years that I would consider someone might
consider like a expert on the Catechism.
And it's really interesting because I, I was immediately
doing the same thing I would do in the past, which is like, oh,
let me cling to some expert on the catechism.
And it's funny because you did a lot of work at Francis, the
Franciscan at home online, like volunteer training for
catechesis. I went to one of their sessions
where they were training mentors for the program and they gave
this beautiful Doctor Petrarch in particular gave this
beautiful reflection on the difference between experts and
mentors and that catechists are much more like mentors than
experts. An expert stands in front of a
student and says, I want to teach you.
But a mentor in the, you know, in antiquity, in times like in
ancient Greece or maybe Rome, a mentor was a little more like a
tutor, but not in the sense of that they were the one that did
the teaching. A mentor was someone maybe more
like a like a nanny. You know, it was someone who
knew the families kids so well and knew the experts.
And so they knew the student really well and they knew, oh,
you're kind of rough on rhetoric, but you're really good
at math, but you know it and knew and stood beside the
student and knew the students so well that they knew where to
take them to and say, oh, you should look into this.
You should meet with this person, You should read this
book. And so I think, I think, you
know, the answer is it is in the question like if you know that
a, that a teen is really just, I mean, it's, it's like raising
kids, you know, it's like you just encourage the things that
they get passionate about. So I think for sure there's, I
mean, I Thomas Aquinas at 12, I would not want to be like,
let's, let's stop with the intellectual stuff.
Let's just, you know, like you, you want to encourage that you.
Know. Yeah.
Well, and I love that you point out that the key to it is
personal, is knowing the individual and what that person
needs. Like, I can think of two
students in my 20 years in ministry that what they desired
was the firehose. Like they were, they're very
intellectual, both of them young women in this case.
And it was handing them those books that you were talking
about, Edmund, and then not just handing them the book and being
like, well converted and sitting down and talking with them.
But it but it's all comes back to what you're saying.
Edmund is in order for that to happen, I needed to know her and
her desire and her story and her intellect.
And what was interesting about one of them is she was taking
all the things she was learning and then bringing them into our
small groups to other girls who who weren't in that space.
And they were hearing it from her in a way they would never
have heard it from me. And it probably ignited new kind
of conversations and yeah, cool. I I think it's important to, to
just reflect that we have this incredible tradition.
We we have a wealth of theology. You can spend your whole life
trying to consume, but it's that's the the goal is
relationship with the Lord. The goal is to allow that to
transform our lives to be more like his.
And so these, these, these opportunities to learn, you
know, we want to make sure that our faith is growing, right?
Our, our trust in the Lord is growing because nowhere in the
Gospels does Jesus say, Oh, it's by knowledge, you've been saved,
right? So, so, so it has to which which
goes back to this relationship again, like within the Triune
God that we're invited into that space.
OK, So what I'm hearing everyone say is typically right now in
the space of confirmation across the USA, we need to take a
slower approach and go at the pace of relationship.
And that is gonna generally be slower, but very sporadically
are there gonna be moments that yeah, the downpour will happen,
but that doesn't mean it's better or worse.
It just means that the filter comes, that understanding comes
to the filter of relationship. And so the content you should
have be ready to go at the pace in which God is growing
something in the heart of that young person.
Just yes. And and so for the context of a,
the person doing confirmation preparation, this means you
can't do it all by yourself because you have to get to know
the person in front of you and where they are and and have that
accompaniment. So how did you admin in in that
when your space of doing this? Like what were some of the
practical things you did so that they could get content in a
relational way and have the space to to process it?
Yeah, I mean, I mean, these aren't my, my brilliant, I guess
ideas. I mean, I'm a product of yeah,
like Franciscan and then the evangelical renewal of
catechesis. But I think of the methodology
methodologies of John Bosco and then also just the ecclesial
method that we mentioned. But in general, the the method
you see in throughout Scripture kind of takes on a similar
shape. And then there's something that
is that suddenly kind of is surprising that kind of takes
people out of the place that they're already in.
So an Angel appears to marry or there's a Bush that's on fire.
And it's surprising and it's interesting.
There's this preparation for the proclamation of the gospel that
kind of takes them out of it. And so that could be an
interesting clip from a movie. It could be a question you ask,
it could be, it could be the way you restructure all the seats in
your classroom. It could be standing outside the
classroom and talking to people before you go in.
So there's just preparation. Then there's the proclamation,
like what is the core proclamation of the gospel
that's being proclaimed in this particular situation?
And then there's the unpacking of that.
There's the let's together unpack this.
So I think. And then, you know, finally
there's like now what do we do? Like the application?
And I, I also think of Saint Francis Xavier comes to mind and
him running through, basically sprinting through India, just he
can't baptize people fast enough.
And, and you imagine, you know, back then you don't have a lot
of the content, the resources, you know, you might not even
have, but you know, books or things written down.
He just taught them the four pillars of the catechism, but he
he taught them to memorize the creed, to understand, just to
know the sacraments, to memorize the 10 commandments and to
memorize the Our Father. And the catechism really
brilliantly uses that framework. So that's, you know, wouldn't
take that long. You could write down on a piece
of paper those four things, but the framework for the whole
deposit of faith hangs on that. And you could spend the rest of
your life writing books on just, you know, the fact that God is
Trinity. So those are some of the things
that I, I always came up with the best ideas when I thought
about it from that approach. How do I, how do I get people's
attention? How do I try to take them out of
wherever they've been and get them to the point where they're,
they're, they're really asking, really wanting to know the
proclamation before we give it to them.
So like, how do you build that curiosity and openness?
Well, we are, thanks be to God in a digital age where there are
some beautiful resources that, you know, after the, the
confirmation session or even after the sacrament, people can,
can continue to ask these questions and, and what is, what
does the church say? One of the projects I know
you've, you've worked on real plus true.
Can you share a little bit about what that is and how that
connected with those 4 pillars? And actually, can you clarify a
long running debate I've had? Is it real plus true or real and
true or real plus and true? Real plus and true sounds great.
I want to tattoo this as real, plus and true.
And he's good at making stuff up.
The official stance is it's the official stance is it's both.
But yeah, I mean. It's so it's brilliant
marketing, man. It's brilliant marketing.
Just keep people questioning. Those.
That's the startle of getting them in, you know.
Yeah, yeah, the the hallmark of a really good brand and name is
that people go, what the heck is this?
So, yeah, I mean, man, 4-4 or five years ago, I met Edmundo
Reyes and Emily Mentoc, who worked at the Archdiocese of
Detroit in communications and and brilliant content and
digital evangelists. They also had seen me hang car
and read like a paragraph from the catechism on a social clip
or something. So they were like, we got to
like talk to this guy. So the idea of a project came to
mind was, you know, what if we created content that tried to do
what Father Raniero canceled, Mesa said.
Which is like take the catechism, be inspired by it and
create video content that would do some of these step or that
would that would attempt to do some of these steps of what we
talked about the catechetical methodology.
And that was the crazy idea. And then so we pitched the idea
to OSV and they thankfully funded it.
So that's free to the world. And it's a four year project,
one year for each pillar of the catechism.
And then each month is a unit. So we split each pillar into 12
units. Each unit has three videos.
The first one is kind of that curiosity.
It's not explicitly teaching, but it's kind of trying to pique
curiosity about a topic to get you talking.
So 1 is like one of our favorites is on Call and
response. Why is call and response in
music and concerts so interesting and captivating?
And so it kind of sets you up to be asking these deeper questions
about what it means to be human person or spirituality by the
end. And it sets up the next video,
which is explicitly kind of what's the teaching of the
church in three to 5 minutes. And the last video is the live
action. That's me.
It's like a YouTube style video where it's like, how do we apply
it? So yeah, it's, it's translated
into multiple languages. It's really crazy.
It's it's shared all over the world.
And it was recognized by the Vatican Council for the New
Evangelization as like a project worthy of the New
Evangelization. So, and again, we have the same
conversations you guys had or, or you had mentioned, like when
we were talking with OSV about this, we said we, this can't
just be a curriculum that we, it can't be something that is
offered to a catechist or volunteer as like just put this
on and step away. It like has to be these
resources that you could pick from.
So like you're handed the scroll.
Which one are you going to pick and how are you going to use
that? You know, use it at the
beginning or use it during teaching or use it afterwards or
send it in an e-mail. But how do you?
How do you use it to help in your task of catechesis and
evangelization? That's awesome.
That's great. Love it.
Edmund, this has been an excellent conversation.
Your wisdom has just brought so much clarity around all the
things we've been talking about. Where can our listeners find
you? Me.
Yeah. Like my home address?
No. I mean.
What project you working on now that they can tap into?
Yeah, Edmund mitchell.edmundmitchell.com or
I'm the most active on Instagram.
And so that's the main point. And then if if you're a parish
minister, I I started a community for parish ministers
where it's it's an online membership community that
specifically focuses on the other 35 hours of your week.
So how do you do your job really well and still, you know, keep
that missionary spirituality so. I love that.
That's so great. That's so great.
So we've been asking every guest the same question and that's how
we end our time. So get ready.
There we go. OK, if and it doesn't have to be
about the topic. Well, it has to be about
confirmation, but doesn't have to be about what we talked about
with content still isn't king. But what is your one piece of
advice to anyone listening regarding confirmation?
To anyone listening, particularly volunteers or.
We will definitely have volunteers listening to this you
want. The audience meaning youth
ministers. DRE's maybe the bivocation.
Minister. Who's a volunteer?
Oh, you know what? Yeah, my one piece of advice.
This is kind of a secret about my personality and myself, but
my one piece of advice actually would be ask yourself, what if
your disadvantages were your unique advantages?
So whatever your confirmation program or situation or context,
if you're the director, if you're a volunteer, if you don't
have enough sessions scheduled, if you don't have kids that
really want to be there, like what if, what if you took some
time prayerfully to ask yourself, what if this could be
a huge advantage? How would I capitalize on the
fact that none of these kids want to be here?
And I think throughout my, my time in ministry, that was
really helpful and allowed me to stay grateful and joyful, but
also come up with really, really creative ways to yeah, to, to
actually reach people, person to person.
It's. Great.
It's reminded me of the loaves and fishes, right?
Like all these people, I'm, I'm at a disadvantage here.
And then bringing that to the Lord and saying multiply, fix
this and letting the Lord do it. Love that.
Oh, brother, thank you for for joining us.
Thanks for your your ministry and witness.
And we look forward to doing this again sometime soon.
Yeah, I really appreciate it. I'm really honored you guys are
pros. No, I think you're the pro, man.
We want to lean in more into what you're doing.
That sounds incredible. Really grateful for you, man.
Thank you. All right, Jason, Annie, that
was a lot. We went through a lot there and
probably addressing one of the big things that people think
about when they think through confirmation.
And I think, Annie, you told me like 1 of the number one things
searched on Google is confirmation resources and
content, right? And we're saying content still
isn't king and then talk about content so.
Because it matters. It does matter, right?
It totally matters like. The truth matters, but we can't
just throw truth. Yes.
Yes, at young people without doing the work of accompaniment.
Yes. So my question for you guys is,
what's the thing that you're walking away with in this
conversation with Edmund? Two things.
One, as we contextualize this, we have to know our audience,
right? And I'm thinking of Saint Paul
in the Aeragopigus and he finds a way to bring the gospel into
their culture and present it in a way they can understand so
that they can process it. So contextualization and then
relationship like, like we, we talking at people with truth
does not bear fruit there. There has to be this movement
that we see in Jesus when he encounters people and his love
for them and the love opens their heart which allows them to
hear the truth. Yeah.
And, and the big thing that I want to take away is his focus
on saying less right? And, and, and even in our
preparation, being focused and doing, doing one thing.
I think, I, I think that's a mistake that we often make.
And again, it comes from such a good place.
Like, I have encountered the truth of the faith and I want
other people to know it, but we often jump many, many levels
beyond that. And it it just doesn't land.
You know, one of the things I was thinking about, as in in
that conversation, was there's an article I read from Notre
Dame's Church Life Journal. The author, I, I believe his
name is Leonard De Lorenzo. He's talking about how looking
at content, he's specifically talking about curriculum and
making it the best, most orthodox curriculum, which is
again, super important. But if we are, if we're giving
it to people who don't have a lived experience of the Catholic
faith, don't have a lived experience of what he calls the
Catholic imagination is just doing a wrong thing.
Writer is what he says in the article.
And that that has always stuck with me, that we can't just
throw better content at people. And one of the things that
Edmund was talking about that I would have loved to spend more
time talking about was he kept bringing up questions.
Questions like, what are we asking them?
Not just what are we giving them, but what are we asking
them? I think we could do an entire
episode which we do not have time on, on asking great
questions, right? Because it's not just enough to
present true things. We need to have a conversation.
And I love at the very end that he was talking about, what's the
one thing that you give advice for for anyone, you know,
stepping in this leading confirmation.
And he was like, whatever is your disadvantage?
What if it could be your advantage?
Yes. And OK, I know we got to wrap
this up, but quickly when you think of that, it'll go back to
your younger self running confirmation.
What's the quick disadvantage? It'd be like, what if that was
an advantage? Like what?
What was the disadvantage for you, Annie?
It's what he was saying. Like I have all these kids here
who don't want to be here. Is that a?
That's a common thing. Yes.
Oh, it is. If you're listening to this and
you feel like, oh, I'm a terrible human because they
don't want to be here, it's actually quite common.
Yes, it's OK. Yes, and it took me a really
long time to realize like, Oh my gosh, Jesus has just given you
150 souls who don't know me yet. And and that was.
A gift. Yes, instead of a burden.
Yeah, And, and what about you, Jason?
Confirmation parents were the bane of my existence for many
years. God bless them.
And I made the arrogant mistake of being like, oh, give me your
kids. I got this.
What was me, forgive me, Lord, actually empowering and helping
parents become a faith witness in their home, reminding them
that the first church is a domestic church.
They're the primary catechists as the church, like we have to
be doing this with them. And that's not easy, but we we
got to start. So if you're listening to this
and you feel disappointed or disadvantaged or overwhelmed,
you're in good company. And I, I love the posture of
like, let's give it back to the Lord and say, Lord, this is your
mission to begin with, that I get to engage with help.
That's probably the most brave thing that we could do is say
help. And I think the Lord will unlock
some innovation for us. But all so all right my friends,
the Lord has you where he wants you and this is good.
Let's keep chatting about the space of confirmation and love
young people well.