[source: 1][00:00:00] Jim Jansen: Hey, everybody, welcome to the EquipCast. So today I sit down with Father Jeff Lowsky and Adam Stevenson of St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Gretna, Nebraska, and we talk about neighborhood outreach. what if when Jesus said, "Love your neighbors," he actually meant your literal neighbors? You know, the people who live by you in your neighborhood.

Well, that's exactly what St. Charles Borromeo Parish has taken seriously. Adam and Father and I have an amazing conversation just talking about what the Lord did in them, their convictions, their responsibility to care for everybody in their mission field, how they reached out, how they empowered others in their parish to reach out, the beautiful fruits they've seen, the growth, how simple it is, and how hard it is,

It's a really cool conversation. Whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, whether you are responsible for all the souls in your parish boundaries, or whether or not you're just an ordinary person who wants to be a better neighbor, you're gonna love today's conversation. Take a listen.

Welcome to the EquipCast, a weekly podcast powered by Everyday Evangelization. I'm Jim Jansen. Making disciples and leading church renewal is a big commission, but it shouldn't leave you feeling overwhelmed and stuck in a cycle of endless activity. We're here to help. Consider this your weekly playbook for practical evangelization and parish ministry tools, built on real stories from leaders seeing real fruit. Let's get inspired, let's get equipped, and let's go.

All right. Well, gentlemen, I am super excited to have you guys here. We have Father Jeff Lowski and Adam Stevenson. Gentlemen, how you guys doing?

[00:01:46] Fr. Loseke: Doing very well. Thanks for the invitation. It's great to talk to you today.

[00:01:49] Jim Jansen: Okay. So I wanna give you guys an opportunity to introduce yourself. Father, you have been on the EquipCast before. I don't know what episode number, but it's been a minute.

[00:01:59] Fr. Loseke: Yeah.

[00:02:00] Jim Jansen: And Adam, this is your first time, right? Okay. So Adam, why don't you start? Who are you?

[00:02:06] Adam Stephenson: Adam Stevenson. I live over in Gretna, and I work at St. Charles Borromeo. For a long time, I suppose I didn't work at St. Charles. I probably went there, probably gone, been going there for 13 years, but I used to work at St. Pat's in Elkhorn. But I think I'm probably a lot like your typical... Like, you'll have the re- like, regular guys on here that are like: You know, I grew up in church.

I was a Lutheran, and then when I got to middle school and high school, you're not gonna believe it, things went off the rails, and just didn't really have... Can you believe it? I know.

[00:02:30] Jim Jansen: I'm shocked! Wow.

[00:02:31] Adam Stephenson: Just didn't really have a lot to do with religion. But I got married when I was probably 22 and became Catholic at that point.

[00:02:37] Jim Jansen: Wait, when you were probably 22?

I guess you don't have to know how old you are, but you do have to know when that happened.

[00:02:43] Adam Stephenson: 2006.

[00:02:43] Jim Jansen: Okay, that's good. Do you know the date?

[00:02:45] Adam Stephenson: Been 20... Uh, no. In 2006, I know where it was.

[00:02:48] Jim Jansen: Do you know your wife's name?

[00:02:49] Adam Stephenson: Rachel. Okay, good. Well, I mean, that's, that's a good start

'cause if not for Rachel, I probably wouldn't be Catholic. Her aunt said, you know, "Let's be of the same faith," 'cause her aunt had seen things in their family that, you know, there's always this tension when you have people of different faiths.

So she said, "Choose Lutheran and Lutheran or Catholic and Catholic." And I didn't have a lot to say for Lutheran, so we chose Catholic. And so I came into the church and it was a good time, but I wasn't r- I don't know if I was... I was somewhat convicted. I was, like, convicted like I was at the time. But then, you know, seven, eight years pass, and probably at a CEC retreat here in Omaha.

I had met some evangelicals before that, which is not uncommon for people to say. And I went to a CEC retreat, had a great moment there, and just really kinda from that day on, and that was probably back in 2014. Kinda really took off and never looked back. Started working for the church over in St. Pat's in Elkhorn, youth ministry, young adult. And then, but I'd always went to St. Charles Borromeo as my home parish. Probably the only place I would've left St. Pat's for. I enjoyed a lot of the people over there and still do. They got a beautiful new church over there. And um, I never got to work in the new church, but when the job came open here at St. Charles, that's where I lived by, you know? I was like, "Well, shoot I'll work there." So that's kinda who I am. A wife and seven kids.

[00:03:50] Jim Jansen: That's awesome. All right, Father, remind everybody, who are you?

[00:03:54] Fr. Loseke: Father Jeff Loseke, a native of the archdiocese here. I grew up in Columbus, Nebraska. Catholic school my whole life. Probably wanted to be a priest all my whole life. This is something that, gosh, I remember third grade was probably the first time I enunciated that, that vocational call.

So I've kind of been one of those guys. I never had the big conversion moment, never had the big falling away sort of thing. It's just been, I think a deepening along the way. Went from high school to college seminary. Did my seminary work at the North American College in Rome, and then I've served in several places here across the diocese in not only parish work, but then I've done a lot with high schools both teaching 12 years of teaching on the high school and college level, and served as president of some of those schools and pastor. Now 10 years at St. Charles Borromeo.

[00:04:43] Adam Stephenson: Wow.

[00:04:43] Jim Jansen: It's at-- I was gonna ask how long.

[00:04:44] Fr. Loseke: 10 years. Yes. Time flies, and I feel like I'm just getting started.

[00:04:48] Jim Jansen: So give uh, give a quick, like, t- St. Charles Borromeo, Gretna, Nebraska newest parish in the Archdiocese of Omaha.

[00:04:57] Fr. Loseke: Yeah. It is. I b... There's been, like, new parishes in the sense that parishes have been combined- Sure ... and so they form new parishes. But from inception, like, this is the newest from nothing ex nihilo parish

[00:05:10] Jim Jansen: Out of a cornfield.

[00:05:12] Fr. Loseke: Exactly. That has grown up. So St. Charles is 20 years old as a parish. It literally did stand in a cornfield. When I arrived there, there was a cornfield to the south and a cornfield to the west and, you know, dirt roads all around us.

[00:05:27] Jim Jansen: You're confirming every every Nebraska stereotype for the non-Nebraska listeners.

[00:05:32] Fr. Loseke: But now we exist in one of the growingest parts of the state, and I think even a few years ago it was the growingest part in the country.

[00:05:41] Jim Jansen: Right. Huge suburban sprawl. Absolutely. The Omaha metropolitan area is growing huge in, right, the suburb we call Gretna. Not a suburb. It's a town. Sorry.

[00:05:51] Fr. Loseke: Yeah. But it seems very much like we are not actually in what I would say Gretna proper. So we feel like we are very Southwest Omaha suburbia, this whole thing. Many of our families are young. They're coming from different parts of the state and putting their homes down here.

We are getting more generational s- situations where grandparents are moving into Omaha because they wanna be near the grandkids, and so... But that's something that you don't see a whole lot. Just to put it into perspective, I do, on a busy year, three funerals.

[00:06:28] Jim Jansen: Wow.

[00:06:29] Fr. Loseke: In a year.

[00:06:29] Adam Stephenson: We had one, we didn't have one for 18 months.

[00:06:31] Fr. Loseke: Yeah. We... it's a long... Yeah, funerals are not our... We don't have many of those, but we have lots of baptisms. Yeah. You know, over, you know, 50-some baptisms a year for sure. And our numbers, our mass attendance is growing up. We're still trying to build our facilities, and it's just we're in a building and growing situation where everything is new. Nobody's actually from here, so we really have to do the job of creating and forming community.

[00:06:54] Jim Jansen: Yeah, you really are like establishing an entirely new community of faith.

[00:06:59] Fr. Loseke: Yes, and adding a culture on top of, like creating a culture. Right. Who are we? What do we stand for? How do we relate to each other?

[00:07:06] Jim Jansen: Okay. Well-

[00:07:06] Adam Stephenson: Cities too, because, you know, our address is Gretna. I live across the street, it's Omaha, and for years we were known as a... We were in a Millard school to start out with. Oh, sure. So, like, many people are in Millard, but then now we're becoming more and more of a Gretna parish.

But also, we have many addresses that are in Elkhorn, so we're not always the first thing people think of. You think about Gretna, I'm thinking about St. Pat's. You're thinking about Elkhorn, I'm thinking about St. Pat's. You think about Millard, I'm thinking about St. Stephen's. And we're just kind of in the middle of all of that.

[00:07:30] Jim Jansen: Right. There's an intersection of like these kinda like, oh, these little town city limits, the extension of Omaha. I mean, all that's a great setup for what we wanna talk about today is this beautiful ministry that is like, you know, talk about like new things springing up, where you've been trying to engage the households within your parish boundary. Father, can you get us started just to kinda give us an orientation to what you've been doing?

[00:07:59] Fr. Loseke: Trying to understand or trying to bring this parish together as we grow. So imagine you're at the helm of this ship where you see the growth happening exponentially, and the question is: How do we keep from becoming a mega parish? How do we keep from becoming lost in the numbers where I'm just a face and nobody knows me and I don't know anybody?

And so there really became this drive to say, how do we stay small, and how do we feel connected?" And that began, I think with focus on neighborhoods, that we want to create... Connect people in your neighborhood with other Catholics who, from your parish, i- in this expanse of territory, is also St. Charles, is also a Catholic, so that you begin recognizing people and knowing people and connecting them to the church and connecting them to each other. That, I think, was the impetus for then how-- Asking the question: How then do we go out and connect people in their neighborhoods?

[00:08:58] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Gosh, that is so good, 'cause you're, you're answering the question in some ways that I had, and I think probably some listeners had coming into this. You were already a growing parish, right? There's already this like, you know, people are just-- They're moving into the neighborhood. New houses are being built all the time.

And this is not some like, "Well, we were desperate. We were about to close. Nobody was coming, so we decided we better go get people." There was a different, there, there was a different set of convictions that was driving this. Part of it is like, "My gosh, we have to gather them. They're here, but we have to bring them together."

And I can really hear your pastor's heart on that. Adam, I wanna give you a chance to jump in as well. I know you well. You've got-- You're a passionate man. You've got some opinions, right? You've got some convictions around this. Talk about your own, like, like what the Lord was doing in your heart and mind for neighborhood outreach.

[00:09:52] Adam Stephenson: One thing about what he said about how this came to be as we were talking just on the way over here, like trying to, like, "What are we gonna say when we..."

Like, we-- This isn't anything new. You know, people have done things like this.

When you really think about it, this isn't... Like, we're not doing anything insane. We, even at St. Charles, we did neighborhood dinners. Or we... or parish dinners, and people would connect. They would just go have dinner over at somebody's house, and we knew that was good.

It may or may not, it only had a certain shelf life, but we knew there was something good there. And we've tried, around the pandemic, you and Jonathan tried this thing called neighborhood reps, where there were people in each neighborhood that were the known Catholics there and would connect people with other people in their neighborhoods.

[00:10:30] Fr. Loseke: They would put a yard sign in front of their house. A Catholic representative. Boom.

[00:10:34] Jim Jansen: Oh, that's awesome.

[00:10:34] Adam Stephenson: And it, worked as it did and it, it had a certain shelf life, but it was like a step in this direction. And the things that we've done, they're just, they're steps into... Like I say all the time, like, "We're just gonna get this plane in the air, and we're gonna, and we're gonna build it while we're up there."

I love that statement. And we're like figuring things out, and we've done things that he hated, and he's like, "This is the worst thing ever." And I'm like, "This is awesome." But then he comes up with a... I'm like, "Oh, that is a better idea. Let's do it that way." So just to say, like, we're not doing anything that no one hasn't done.

But but it's interesting to, to just think back on how some of those steps got us to where we are. And it's really... You know, I used to work in Elkhorn. When I was in Elkhorn, I think this is maybe the crux of it. When I was in Elkhorn, I loved working in Elkhorn. I loved knowing the people in Elkhorn.

But I lived in Gretna, and so when I would go home, I was able to talk about being a professional Christian. Like, I was a professional Christian. In my neighborhood, I was somewhat unknown. I might have known... Like, when we first started this, I had to ask a gal down the street, a parishioner of ours, a friend of ours named Terry Darby, I asked her kinda who people were on our street as we were kinda figuring this out.

'Cause she's sitting in her sewing room. You know, you think about Gladys Kravitz, if you're of a certain age for, I don't know, "I Dream of Jeannie" or "Bewitched" or something, peeking out those blinds, seeing the kids walk by after they get out of school. Like, she knew who lived where and they had kids, they didn't, they just moved in.

She knew that. I didn't know any of that, and I w- I thought I was a pretty Catholic guy. Maybe I was in Elkhorn, where people knew me ministering or professionally, but in my own neighborhood, I was an unknown factor. I knocked on a door a little bit ago of someone who I know is a Christian, and on their step it said, "Bloom where you're planted."

But this person has a church 15 miles away. And I thought about myself. I was like, "That's been me," where I've been blooming far away from where I actually live, and where I actually live, you wouldn't even know a Christian lives there. And that's kind of what this has put on me, 'cause I went from knowing...

Like, we got, we have maps and all kinds of things where we're putting dots and stuff. And my, my, my neighborhood used to have six dots in it. Now it's got probably 306 dots in it of folks that have been encountered in some way. You know, not that they're all.

[00:12:31] Jim Jansen: So, the dots represent people like, "Hey, we have connected with this household or this individual.

[00:12:35] Adam Stephenson: Yep, and we don't know their religious affiliation, or we do know that they're Catholic or fallen away Catholic or they're a Christian or a... that's the business that we're in. We wanna know that information um, so we can follow up on those, those later.

[00:12:46] Fr. Loseke: One of the things was we started this wanting to know where our own people were.

So it was taking our database and dropping our database into a Google Map, and all the pins fall, and you see where all of our St. Charles Borromeo parishioners live.

[00:13:02] Adam Stephenson: Unbelievably easy. You could do it in three minutes.

[00:13:04] Fr. Loseke: It It is, yeah, it's incredible. And then it's now you can begin color-coding those dots as you encounter them, and then all of the people that are not there as part of our membership, and when you run into them and encounter them, and you begin to know then from the 300,000...

You know, the 30,000-foot vantage point, look at where the people are, who we've touched, who we've encountered, what their story is, all those things.

[00:13:30] Jim Jansen: You know, this reminds me, again, years ago when I was a missionary at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln we would get... The university was very forward-thinking. They recognized that the approved campus ministries were their best ally for student retention. And so they would actually provide for us, "Hey, here's the list of all the kids on the ACT who said they're Catholic, and don't be creepy, but go say hi.

Tell them you're here. Help them connect, 'cause it really helps our ri- our enrollment and r- and student retention." And so what we would do is we would put that information in a database, and then we would map a dorm. So we knew, right, fourth floor of this dorm, we knew every kid that was Catholic, who said they were Catholic at Mass, versus the kids who just said they were Catholic and maybe interested in Bible study 'cause they thought they might win a free bike at the, you know, at the student fair raffle.

You know, and then we knew which ones were not Catholic. And suddenly we had this map that then the student missionaries on that floor, they knew at least where to start, right? Okay, these are the people Who would say, "I want to come to the Newman Center. I wanna come to Mass."

And it, it just was this source of wisdom and understanding that, that helped spur their initial like missionary outreach to their peers.

[00:14:48] Fr. Loseke: Sure. Yes.

[00:14:48] Adam Stephenson: I'm ashamed-- I'm even ashamed to say how we do our map 'cause knowing, I mean, like, you were probably doing that, the campus outreach in Lincoln back with St. Ignatius a long time ago. I know that you FOCUS guys are al-

[00:14:58] Jim Jansen: He was a year ahead of me. Yeah. Thank you. It was another millennium, 1999.

[00:15:02] Adam Stephenson: I mean, if that's... I mean, we're doing similar things like that in 25 years later, and I'm kind of ashamed even to say it where someone might hear this, that how we do it.

Like it, when you showed me, when we're trying to figure out how do we make our parish, the boundaries, seem small even though it's growing, and we're mapping this out, I was surprised on how simple it was to put an Excel document into a Google Map. It takes no time at all, as long as you clean up some of the m- the messy loose ends.

You got a pure map, it looks great. But I'm seeing, like, what the government does when they come by your door and knock for different things. Like, they have maps and apps on their phone. Unbelievable, that you can click into and know everybody that lives there. You know what they voted for in the last election.

I'm just like, we're so, like... this is a g- I would recommend this to our parishes. Right. But, like, know that you're doing some caveman stuff right now compared to what's actually possible.

[00:15:50] Jim Jansen: You would think for the kingdom, can we take a little bit of time to put this in an Excel sheet and drop it in Google? And maybe, I don't know, like if... Father, I think you can follow me in the nerdiness in this.

But there's several places all over, you know, I'm thinking like the writings of John Paul II, but I'm also thinking canon law. Like w- you are, the pastor is, but the whole parish responsible for every soul-

[00:16:13] Fr. Loseke: Adam and I talk about that a lot that I am responsible for every soul in these, in my territory that I've been assigned, this parish. Everybody that lives there, Catholic, not Catholic, baptized, not baptized; in some way I have to stand before God and say, "What did you do?"

Or He'll ask me, "What did you do?" And I have to have some kind of answer for Him, and that's a big, that's a scary, awe, terrifying...

[00:16:38] Jim Jansen: Yeah. That's a lot.

[00:16:39] Adam Stephenson: I think an offensive thing I said to him one time, we're-- He w- he had said that to me, and I go, "I'm not morally certain of your salvation."

I was like...He's like, he goes, "Excuse me?" I go I don't... What do you want me to say? That's a lot."

[00:16:49] Fr. Loseke: No it's a lot. And of course, it doesn't all fall on my shoulders individually, and that's the sharing of the mission and the sending out and the, all of the things that we do. But it does beg...

So many of us as Pope Francis, you know, always used to say, "You gotta get out of your office. You've gotta get out of the office and go to the peripheries." And so literally, we are going to the very boundaries of our parish. And so to make that manageable, we took the parish boundaries and then divided those into what we call Bethany neighborhoods.

And we chose Bethany because that was where Jesus found a home with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and a small community was there, so that whenever he went to Jerusalem, he stayed with his friends in Bethany. So these Bethany communities, so we broke up our map into smaller bite-sized things. So this neighborhood has 25 households in it, and then then it's a different neighborhood and a different neighborhood.

And so we can connect people. We tell people what neighborhood you're in. "Here's all of your neighbors who are Catholic." We have them grouped in email distribution lists so that we can communicate easily with them. When someone new moves into the parish, you send them a picture of their map with where their pins are, who their neighbors are, and we just immediately begin connecting people and making this manageable.

'Cause if you just look at it from, "My goodness, how many acres or miles do I have to cover?" Put it down into a neighborhood, this is much more doable.

[00:18:16] Jim Jansen: I love that. And then just, again, just to kind of complete the picture for people, you then have a schedule and a routine where you go out and you visit them. Talk a little bit about that, 'cause I wanna dig in more there, but just kind of give people an orientation. Like when do you do it? What do you do?

How long do you spend? What do you say when you knock on the door?

[00:18:34] Adam Stephenson: And that's prob- it's probably good 'cause I've, we've been asked this question before, and we start talking about it, and then we have to back way up 'cause if you don't understand the landscape that we figured out, you know, that when-- Now that we have that, what we do is within those neighborhoods we started walking together.

I swear it's because he said, "We should go on some walks together." I think he said that because I was going on walks, and he wasn't certain as to what I was doing. Like, like we sh- so I should join you just to make sure.

[00:18:58] Jim Jansen: Code for I'm gonna supervise you.

[00:19:00] Fr. Loseke: Yeah.

[00:19:01] Adam Stephenson: He's like, "I'm not staying in this office all day long.

I'm getting out." And he's like, "Well, I'm gonna make sure I know where you're going." So I was like, "That's a great idea." So we started walking, and the original walks that we would do were just kind of like scouting. I remember us thinking about like, "Let's go two by two, Old Testament style. We'll just do some scouting.

If we see some giants, we'll run." But we'd walk out there, and I think he hated it m- more than he even hates what we do now, because what we would do is we would just walk into a neighborhood and like whoever we would see-

[00:19:28] Fr. Loseke: We weren't ringing doorbells. We weren't going to door. We weren't doing-- We were just walking, and if we encountered somebody outside.

[00:19:36] Adam Stephenson: Even if they looked at us. But, at the end, we would pray for that. We, remember you would, you'd raise your hands, and we'd pray for that neighborhood, Remington Ridge or Bellbrook. But in the midst of it, we'd be walking, and if we'd see somebody outside their house moving or on the other side of the street walking, I'm like, "I'm gonna get them."

[00:19:51] Fr. Loseke: He'd make beeline right to them.

[00:19:53] Adam Stephenson: He's like, Don't. Like, make it normal." I'm like, "Nope, I'm gonna go get them. I can't..." And I just run, I just go across the street and I'd say, "Hi, my name's Adam. This is Father Jeff, a priest, and we're just here visiting your neighborhood. How can we pray for you?"

And they're like Hello. It was-

[00:20:07] Fr. Loseke: That's a lot all at once.

[00:20:08] Adam Stephenson: Was met with um, with mixed results. I think that you sensed, like I- sometimes I know social boundaries and choose to go through them. He's like: "You can't do that." I'm like: "You can do that." And he's like: "You shouldn't do that." So that's how it started.

What it's morphed into now is, now for us on Friday mornings, we walk the, what I call blue dots, so our parishioners. We go to a neighborhood and we walk to blue dot, to their houses, until we're done with that neighborhood. So every Friday we're gonna walk, unless it's Easter or unless it's Good Friday, we're gonna walk in that neighborhood until we get all that neighborhood done, and then move to the next neighbor.

We let them know that over the next series of Fridays, we're coming to your house and we're gonna knock on your door. And this is the easy walk. He gets the easiest walks. Every time we walk, I go: "You have it so easy." We walk over there, we knock on their door, and they're like: "Oh my gosh. Father Jeff, what are you doing here? No. Come in." It's so great. And-

[00:20:57] Jim Jansen: Where are the cookies? Yeah, that's-

[00:20:59] Adam Stephenson: And sometimes they will.

[00:21:00] Fr. Loseke: this, and this is... but the w- some of the beautiful thing, we went, we stopped by this older guy's house and, you know, he invited us in and he says, "I have been a Catholic for 80 some years, and I've never had the priest come to my house.

This is a day." You know, and we let the people know, as Adam said, I'll send a, on Wednesday, I send an email out to the neighborhood and say, "Adam and I are gonna be walking through your neighborhood, and we're gonna stop by and visit your house. And if you're not there, send us a response to know what to pray for."

"And we're gonna pray at your doorstep." And then we leave a door hanger that we've created on their doorknob to let them know we were there, to let them know they were prayed for, and then we move on to the next parishioner. So our... We really have focused the Friday walks to visiting our parishioners and having the, you know, you are seen and you are known and you are loved moment right there, and we move on.

That's what Adam and I do on Fridays.

[00:21:54] Adam Stephenson: And, but my mind-

[00:21:55] Fr. Loseke: That's not the only thing that happens at St. Charles.

[00:21:57] Adam Stephenson: I think it means a lot to people. Like 15 minutes of Father Jeff sitting in your house, seeing where you live, praying for the things that are heavy on your heart.

I'm, in my mind, I'm like: This could've given this person the wind they need for the next 10 years or at least right now. You know, it's real- I would call it deeply edifying. It's like really tender moments.

[00:22:13] Jim Jansen: How long do you spend? Like, I mean, is this like a two-hour thing on Friday, one-hour thing on Friday?

[00:22:18] Fr. Loseke: We typically try to leave the parish at 9:15, and we're back by 10:30. You know, so we take an hour and 15-minute chunk.

[00:22:25] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Okay.

[00:22:26] Fr. Loseke: Sometimes it has gone over, but the hour-

[00:22:29] Adam Stephenson: We got 'em one for one one time. We went to one hou- we knocked one door, one person answered, and we spent the whole time there. And it was great.

[00:22:34] Fr. Loseke: Yeah. Yeah. It totally

[00:22:36] Adam Stephenson: Sometimes oh for six, but we leave the hangers, and we pray for their intentions at the door, and it's still good.

[00:22:40] Fr. Loseke: And then we have this other ones. We have two versions of the hangers. Oh, yeah The, because there's the other one that we're walking by and you see a statue of Mary in front of someone's house. And it's like, huh, they're not on our list. They're not a registered parishioner. We're gonna go knock on that door and find out who this Catholic in disguise is.

[00:22:57] Adam Stephenson: They stole somebody's Mary statue.

[00:22:58] Fr. Loseke: I know.

[00:22:59] Adam Stephenson: Best time to go, I think, is Christmastime, 'cause everybody has nativities out. And I'm just like, I'm like, "Father, look, a nativity." He goes, no, it's not, that doesn't count." But I'll... You know, one day, one day he had a lot going on with, it, I forget what holiday it was, and he's like, "I can't walk today."

And I'm like, "What? What do you mean? It's Friday." So I said, "I'm walking without you." So I went out and walked without him. It was a lonely walk, but I found, I saw this house with two Catholic statues on it, and I'm like... And it was actually at the end of my walk. I had finished up, and I drove by this neighborhood just in case I'm gonna do a drive-by, and I saw two statues, so I park.

I go into, I knock the door, and this, the folks that lived in this house were, they were definitely off the beaten path. Like, you would not have expected to knock on this door and find what you found. And I spent an hour at their house and just thinking of... I came back to the church, and he was there, and I just said, I go, "Come into my office."

I was like, "Just for a minute, you're in my office." And I told him what I found in there, and I started crying. I was just like, "I can't..." I covered my face. I couldn't even look at him. I was like, "I can't believe what I found in there." And it was like, and like from that day on, like we were walking maybe once a week, maybe the missionaries that we'll talk about later were walking once a month.

But from that day on, I'm like, "I have to go out here. I have to revisit those people," because of who they were, like their story their, you know, messy story, like many, like everybody has. Everybody that you talk to has a messy story. Like we talk about, "Oh, they're so wounded." It's like, "Dude, I'm wounded, bro."

Like, they're so wounded. But just going to that house I was like, it, I was pierced by that meeting.

[00:24:23] Jim Jansen: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:23] Adam Stephenson: It wasn't even the beers that we drank there at 10 o'clock in the morning. It wasn't even that. But just like, look at these people who are on the fringes and are so good to you right now. Like, it's the least you can do to knock on their door and say, "Happy Easter."

[00:24:34] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Wow. Okay. I'm overwhelmed. There's so much cool stuff that I wanna, like, go after here. I just wanna give... I mean, this is maybe obvious as people are listening to this, so I'm gonna go out on a limb here. Adam, scale of one to 10, extraversion, my guess is 12, 13?

[00:24:53] Adam Stephenson: Like I'm telling the guy who was calling us boy at our-- We, we were having lunch and this guy goes, this guy said, "What can I do for you boys?" I go, "Boys? We're grown men. Look, like w-" And he wasn't-- I'm like, "Are you not offended at that?" You know?

[00:25:03] Jim Jansen: Yeah. But you...

[00:25:03] Adam Stephenson: Imma talk to anybody.

[00:25:04] Jim Jansen: Yeah, you super extroverted.

Father, where would you put yourself?

[00:25:07] Fr. Loseke: you put yourself? I am much more introverted. I am very, very-- yeah.

I do well in, you know, put me in front of a crowd of 1,000 people, I have no problem talking to them.

[00:25:15] Jim Jansen: Right, you're a gifted teacher.

[00:25:16] Fr. Loseke: Yeah.

[00:25:17] Jim Jansen: But that doesn't mean knocking on on doors and-

[00:25:19] Fr. Loseke: It does not. It is, this is the hardest... This drains me. This, I mean, going out, talking to people, strangers, make, making conversation.

If I don't know you, it drains me. So this was not my brainchild. This is, this is-- I recognize this was definitely something of the Holy Spirit that I had to respond to, and it doesn't work. I could never do this myself. And I'm sure there are many people out there who are thinking, "I'm not even gonna-- Should I even bother finishing this podcast?

Because I'm never gonna do this." I'm that person. I'm not gonna do this. I will never do this on my own. But finding the right guy for Adam and me to do this together this is a-- we're two sides of the same coin. There's a lot that we have in common, and then we have two completely different opposite gift

[00:26:04] Adam Stephenson: You have to have it. You can't have two icebreakers at the door because you talk over each other all the time.

Like, if you have two people that are extroverts at the door, you're both trying to bridge the gap between the spaces in the conversation and... But when you have somebody who... you have to be different. Like I said, with the Paul Barnabas ... genders.

[00:26:19] Jim Jansen: Right ...

[00:26:20] Adam Stephenson: It helps.

[00:26:20] Jim Jansen: Well, yeah, say more about that 'cause w- we were talking before we turned the mics on, like, you know, having two well, let's just say actually in shape, right, 30-year-olds isn't maybe the ideal. No, I don't-- oh.

[00:26:32] Adam Stephenson: No, oh, there was- And I'm actually 40. But yeah, so we have a guy on our missionary team that you might... that we might get into. I hope we do. And we look very similar. He's got a bald head. He's got a beard. We look very similar, so much so that someone in my own neighborhood thought that I had came by to his house and knocked, and I go, "Oh, no, that's the other guy."

We look so similar. But it's it-- people don't wanna come out when they see in shape, bearded, bald head. It's more what's that word? Like-

[00:26:54] Jim Jansen: Intimidating.

[00:26:54] Adam Stephenson: Intimidating. But when you, when I'm with a boomer mom or, like, old grandpa, you know, like I-- There's this guy named Dave. Dave's great. He's probably not gonna listen to this. The boomer mom is listening to this. But.

[00:27:05] Jim Jansen: We love you, Boomer mom.

[00:27:06] Adam Stephenson: The... But Dave comes and he says, "I'll walk with you, but, like, I don't wanna do any of the talking." I go, "Oh, don't you worry.

[00:27:12] Jim Jansen: Yeah. You're like, "I got it."

[00:27:13] Adam Stephenson: I got this. All you gotta do is sit back there." And 'cause we'll carry things with us, too, to write on. And not like we're being creepy, like they said to you at Lincoln. Like, I just wanna know what... Like, if you give us your name, I'm gonna write it down. If you ha- if we remember your intention, I'm gonna write it down 'cause we write follow-up notes as well and say, "Hey, just know that we're continuing to pray for your family. Please join us in this prayer as you should..." No, I don't say that, but, "As you should for your neighbors. Pray with us."

[00:27:36] Jim Jansen: Well, let me-- So I just appreciate that because you know, like the differences in gifting, temperament, just even just, you know, kinda like, oh, just human differences. Like, I'm a man, she's a woman, and there's, you know, a couple of generations. Like, that's actually really helpful, and this is not, right, for those listening, like this is not the super extrovert only episode.

[00:27:57] Adam Stephenson: Yeah. And Austin Habash, maybe this could be— 'cause we're forgetting just a piece on our walks. Austin Habash, as we looked into his stuff, Jody Phillips had sent it to me, Jonathan from our own parish had sent it to me, and I was like, "I don't know who this guy is." But they saw neighborhood, so they were like, "Maybe you'd like this guy. This guy's got it thought out." His stuff's all on formed.org, and just how we're one body...

[00:28:15] Jim Jansen: Sent Evangelization.

[00:28:16] Adam Stephenson: Sent Evangelization. And we don't do exactly what they do, but we've modified it to our own parish, and it's so easy to do. But someone's like, "Well, I don't wanna go knock on a door.

I don't even wanna be in front of anybody at all, but golly, I can pray." Like, every time we go out in the morning, we got two ladies every Friday morning that are sitting in the church praying for us. Sometimes when we go out as a miss- as missionary teams, where we're sending out nine or 10 people at a time in teams of two, we've got 10 people back at the church praying for us. And that's a...

[00:28:40] Jim Jansen: yeah. You have prayer cover.

[00:28:44] Fr. Loseke: Adam is the guy who just starts running with these things, and that's why you do need the different personalities 'cause then I'm the one that sits down and like thinks through some of this stuff.

It's like, you know, if we're gonna ask people to pray for us, I don't want them just shooting an Our Father into the air or whatever. But so let's create... So I created a whole prayer booklet that now we can give to these folks and say, "Here's our missionary prayer booklet. Would you use this to pray for and, you know, just give us some real intentioned prayer for what's about to happen and what's going on?"

[00:29:13] Jim Jansen: Oh, that's awesome.

Let's pause here, take a fast break to share a word from our sponsors, and then we'll jump right back in.

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[00:29:47] Jim Jansen: All right. Let's get back to the conversation. Talk about, you guys have mentioned it a couple times, talk about the missionaries that you have joining you.

[00:29:54] Adam Stephenson: So we're blessed at St. Charles to have the noon mass. So e- every day after the noon mass, or on Mondays even when there's... I don't know if you know that. When you're gone on Mondays and you don't, you're not there for the mass and all that, we still... Do you know we still walk?

[00:30:06] Fr. Loseke: Oh. I'm glad you said you didn't still...you have mass.

[00:30:07] Jim Jansen: Yeah.

[00:30:10] Adam Stephenson: So, it's great 'cause we'll just... it really, it-- Like, that's taken on a life of its own. Okay, we're having mass, and then he says... What do you say at the end of mass? I'm not a-

[00:30:18] Fr. Loseke: Go announce the gospel of the Lord.

[00:30:19] Adam Stephenson: Yeah. Yeah, that one. Yeah. One, you know, one of those.

[00:30:20] Fr. Loseke: Get outta here.

[00:30:21] Adam Stephenson: Go... Like, you can really go do that.

So all, all-- I got a sign-up that I send out through Flocknote, you know? We got Flocknote through the archdiocese, and it just... And there's a group of folks that are interested in this, and if you wanna go walk on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, sign up here. We'll meet after the 12 o'clock mass.

We find plenty of intercessors. There's plenty of prayerful folks that are just hanging around after mass. And we say, "Will you pray for us?" We go up to the vigil candles, and people are invited. Now, this is the hard job that Father Jeff... It's-- I'll say it, maybe it's this: it's high risk, high reward. Mm-hmm.

'Cause it's risky knocking someone's door you don't know. But just yesterday, I met a guy. He, he-- I'll just say he he wouldn't fit, he wouldn't fit in every church. And I think he would fit in Catholic churches because Catholic churches are for everyone. Like, you can find someone like you in Catholic church.

But some churches wouldn't accept this guy because of the way he looked. He steps right out the door and he-- and we start pr- we pray for his trip or whatever, and he makes a sign of the cross. And I'm like, "Ooh, you see that?" So I say, "Are you Catholic?" And he goes, "As a matter of fact, I did grow up Catholic."

He didn't say it like that, but, "But then I became LDS, and now I just don't really go to church." Off we go. You know, now we're real- But, like, so it's high risk. It's-- Sometimes you wanna... I have a friend who fights. We both have a friend who fights. He doesn't like this friend who fights when he fights because he also serves mass, and sometimes he gets punched in the face and he gets a black eye, and you don't look so good serving mass when you got a black eye.

[00:31:42] Fr. Loseke: He's he's doing legitimate fighting. He's not out there brawling.

[00:31:45] Adam Stephenson: He says when you fight in a fight, you want the... You, he hopes, maybe this isn't true of all fighters, but he's like, "I wish the other guy would just quit. Like, just so I wouldn't even have to fight," you know? Because it'd be easier that way. It'd just be easier he just said, "I give up." But like, it's high...

Fighting is high risk, high reward. When you enter that ring and the bell ta- like, it's high risk, but it could be high reward. And the same thing goes for a door. Like, when you ring a doorbell, we have hangers for our doorbells too. I wanna say, "Please don't answer. Please don't answer." 'Cause it's easy just to put the hanger on there and say, "You're welcome, God.

I'm doing this for you." But like, when you hear those footsteps boom, it's like, "Oh, here

we go." And you don't know who's gonna be over there, and like, it's a risky thing. And I think that scares folks a lot. But you soon find out after two swings, you're just like, "All right, we got this." Like, "I hope we find somebody good.

[00:32:30] Fr. Loseke: But also, I-- w- this is not... and I don't know, as people are listening, th- w- what the heck are you doing out there? W- we're not doing what maybe the Latter-day Saints are doing or the Jehovah's Witnesses are doing.

We're not out there trying to convert anyone or trying to, like, share the gospel or say, "Here," you know, "read about Jesus," or whatever. Right? That, that, that's not the main... That's not where you start. You start by introducing yourself that we're up from this parish here, and we're out in the neighborhood wishing people a merry Christmas or a happy Easter or-

[00:32:59] Adam Stephenson: Being Catholic is so easy. If you were a Jehovah's Witness and didn't have holidays, it'd be so hard. Every time I just choose the latest holiday. Like r- like right now we're saying, "Hi, it's Adam and Jeff. We're from St. Charles." I don't say... If he were a layperson. "Hey, it's Adam and Father Jeff. We're from St. Charles, and we're just out here wishing everybody a Happy Easter." And they'll say, "Easter? That was like two weeks ago."

And I'll say, "Well, dude, we're Catholic. If we're gonna spend 40 days on Lent, you better believe we're gonna spend more than that on Easter."

[00:33:25] Jim Jansen: We are still partying.

[00:33:26] Adam Stephenson: And then, we're talking. Or or fish fries. "Hey, we're just here from St. Charles Borromeo. We're letting you guys know about our fish fries." "Are you kidding me? I love fish fries."

And so you need a bridge if you don't know them.

[00:33:35] Jim Jansen: Well, I mean, you're trying to like... Or not afraid to preach the gospel. Right. But

like-

[00:33:40] Fr. Loseke: "Hi, my name's Adam." But y- that can come first, right? Making a, developing a relationship, making a friend.

[00:33:47] Adam Stephenson: Puttin' a hand out.

[00:33:48] Jim Jansen: Yeah.

[00:33:48] Adam Stephenson: Then, you know, one thing that Austin... I haven't said this yet, but I wish I would've said it to my guy yesterday that I met who was a fallen away Catholic. I wish I would've-- 'cause I said to him like, "Well, hey, I'm at the 9:00 AM mass if you wanna come." Like, like that's true, but I wish I would've said to him, "Austin Habash will say this, like, 'You know, you're just one confession away from being back or coming back to the church.'"

That's a risky thing to say. Like, you don't know who this person is. Like, that's a heavy thing to put on somebody. But he says he'll just say that, and he's knocked thousands of doors. I mean, no, no, sorry. Probably, I've knocked thousands of doors. He's probably knocked hundreds of thousands of doors.

He's done it for 10 years. And he says he'll just let it sit and just look at them. And I'm like, "God, I should've said that to that guy," 'cause I want him to know that. Like, come on, bring your burdens, like the things that are weighing you down, the divisions, the anger, the anxiety, bring that. That's what we're here for.

And then see where that conversation... 'Cause the conversations, if they're open, you can have some unbelievable conversations. Yeah. But he, and he brings up a good point, like in general, we're just there to start the fuse, just to light the fuse 'cause the conversations are gonna get deeper later on in their life when they say to their grandma like, "You're not gonna believe it.

This Catholics came into my door and they said, 'Happy Easter.' I didn't know Catholics did that."

[00:34:51] Jim Jansen: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:52] Adam Stephenson: And then they, "What else did they say?" "Well, nothing. They just said that they're praying for us and asked if we had any intentions, and I quickly said no because I don't." And then, "What do you think about that, Grandma?"

And then that's when the real conversation happens. Or their spouse is Catholic and they say... Then it takes off. We're just lighting the fuse.

[00:35:08] Jim Jansen: Or their neighborhood captain who is like, hey, they're the one who's like, you know, they're constantly like, you know, loaning their rake to... And now suddenly there's a real relationship and you've sparked something that another parishioner can maintain and deepen over the course of, you know, weeks and months

[00:35:25] Adam Stephenson: And

[00:35:25] Jim Jansen: you

[00:35:25] Adam Stephenson: have to have that. That's the ordinary-- Like, we're doing extraordinary work. He's only gonna come by once in a while. I'm only gonna come by another neighborhood once in a while. But in my neighborhood, you know, we just walked in, and to the point about what we're delivering, I, there was just a Facebook post just this morning, and someone showed a letter that I wrote them, and it said, "Who is this Adam, and how did he know that our...

We had car problems." And I'm like-- and there's a picture of the letter right there. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, what happened?" So I went back in our notes on our map, and I'm like, "Oh, that's right. I walked by that person's house. They were on the phone." It was a guy, it was the husband, and I said, "I don't wanna bother you.

Happy Easter. God bless you. I'll be praying for your car problems." And so then I wrote him a follow-up note, and that's all it said. It said, "Hey, didn't wanna bother you when you were on the phone. Praying for your car problems. God bless you. Happy Easter." And she got it, and she was like, "What the heck is this?"

But I felt good as a Catholic. Like, if anybody read that on Facebook the letter that I wrote them, my, my personal correspondence was, "I saw you had car problems."

[00:36:22] Jim Jansen: Yeah.

[00:36:23] Adam Stephenson: "I'm praying for you. Happy Easter."

[00:36:24] Fr. Loseke: You never know what you're gonna find. The things that we have found at these doors, y- you, you encounter the folks who've been away from the church.

You encounter folks who are, you know, all kinds of things. They need to go to... They need to get back to confession, or they need to figure out how to get back to church, or they've moved into the area and just didn't even know there was a Catholic parish, in that- direction behind the r- you know, whatever.

You meet people who are in irregular marital situations. now it's like, "What do we do about this?" Well, I can help you. and let's come... Now come up to my office and come to my house, and- Yeah ... and I'll help you get on the right track." And so you can begin bringing the sacraments to people, bringing the love of Christ to people in very real and tangible ways.

You just don't know what you're gonna find. But y- that's just it. You don't have to solve everything at the door right there. It continues on.

[00:37:08] Adam Stephenson: It's enough to see. You remember that gal who just said, "I was on Reddit last night just complaining about the Catholic Church, and all the people on Reddit were like, 'I'm praying for you, I'm praying for you.'" And she goes, "And here you are." I thought you-- She thought he was a Halloween joke.

[00:37:20] Fr. Loseke: It was a house call. It was the next day. The next day I showed up.

[00:37:22] Adam Stephenson: He's in a cassock, and she thought it was a Halloween joke. And we're like, "No, we're f- we're real Catholics." And she's like, "And here you are." And like even that, you know, let alone her story,

[00:37:30] Fr. Loseke: And that's the thing. When we go out, when we go out and take a walk, Adam, you know, puts on regular clothes. You know, he's not dressed up in like professional business out- you know.

[00:37:38] Adam Stephenson: Because you're a salesman right now. Polo shirt. Kakki pants.

What are are you selling me?

[00:37:42] Fr. Loseke: Puts, puts on the normal stuff. I go ahead and I put on a cassock, 'cause when we go walking in the neighborhoods, I want to fly the flag. You know, I want people's heads to turn, and I want them to see clearly a Catholic priest walking in the neighborhood. You're not gonna mistake me for anything else.

[00:37:58] Adam Stephenson: You see these soccer moms driving by with those, you know, they have those big new glasses that are all like, like rainbow-ish reflective? They'll break their necks on him. They'll just be like... I'm serious. They'll get, they'll pull the 180 on that.

[00:38:09] Jim Jansen: That's awes- So- Oh my gosh. W- what have you been most surprised by? As you think back, maybe a story or maybe just like, what has really surprised you?

[00:38:20] Fr. Loseke: I have been most surprised at how this has hit my own heart. That it was something... we invited Austin Habash from Send Evangelization to come to St. Charles to do a training with us and give us an experience of this. I watched his videos on form.org and as I'm watching it, I'm getting tears in my eyes because something is just hitting my heart.

And then as I go out and do it, one of the things he said is, "We don't go out doing this to, to... for other people, to save souls, et cetera, necessarily. We do this because we have to do it." Like, it is for my salvation that I have to do this, and that hopefully then brings someone else to salvation. But it's really that there is something about truly being a missionary and stepping out into the breach and being unafraid to do this, and I know I have to do this.

There were times, there were days where I didn't wanna do this, and I would throw all kinds of attitude, and I would be crabby, and I would be like, "We can't do this." And then, you know, we'd go out, and it's just amazing to see. And the... just even our own relationship that Adam and my relationship, I think has grown through this as well.

Because when you share ministry like this the Lord... I mean, the Lord's there. When two or three are gathered, there the Lord is in their midst. And so I'm finding it personally in this relationship, in the work that we're doing it has affected me on so many levels.

[00:39:46] Jim Jansen: Well,in, you know, as you say that, my mind was drawn. I feel like there are some moments where we feel a slightly more intense spiritual warfare, right? I mean, the Lord, you know, the Lord is always fighting for souls. The enemy's always, like, working against it. But we all know, like, the, right, the retreat phenomenon.

You know, like, somebody's schedule... Either we're going on our retreat or somebody's scheduled to go on a retreat, and all of a sudden things are really busy, and then, you know, the air conditioner breaks and blah, blah, blah, and they can't do it. And there's just this kind of low-level resistance and annoyance that sadly sometimes keeps people.

And that's what I thought of when you talked about like, "Oh, I didn't wanna go." Yeah. And then, and for a season, but I mean, I also hear you saying like, yeah, pretty much every time it's like, "Oh, I don't wanna go." And then you're there and you do it, and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so glad I did this."

[00:40:31] Fr. Loseke: You have to do it. And that's what I say. It's like I know the goodness of this, and I know that I have to do it. And it also be- just becomes part of a mindset thing too, that I know that if I go into this with a closed heart, doors are not gonna open, literally and figuratively. But I need to go into this with an open heart because that's when things happen.

And I do think there were days where I was just so under a gray cloud when we would go out walking, and I still wasn't convinced of this or whatever it was and we just had terrible, you know, a terrible morning. There were other times w- you know, you learn from that. And as soon as you open yourself up, even if nobody opens the doors because nobody's home, it is a great experience because of who we prayed for or the intentions that were given to us or the conversation that we had or whatever it was.

Where you open up your heart, the Lord can, He can do so much.

[00:41:24] Adam Stephenson: I've never-- I don't believe I've ever been shut out. I know you just said if nobody opened the door. Have you, do you remember ever not talking to anybody?

[00:41:31] Fr. Loseke: We've probably at least had one or two people open the doors. Yeah. But there's been some scant, you know, mor- mornings, but-

[00:41:36] Adam Stephenson: Yeah, like where you might get one or two. Like in, in this it-- we walk Sat- Sunday afternoons when you would think a lot of people would be home.

Sometimes you get one person to answer on a Sunday afternoon, but then you'll walk like a Tuesday... Like, I walked in this neighborhood of acreages on a Tuesday afternoon. We probably knocked 23 doors, 19 answered. We didn't get out of that place. We had to pack a lunch. Like you never know, like, "Oh, it's a rainy day."

[00:41:55] Jim Jansen: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:56] Adam Stephenson: Like you really-- it, they're gonna let you in 'cause it's raining, so they, "Oh, come on in." You have the best conversation ever. You never

[00:42:01] Jim Jansen: know.

Wow. I wanna get... So none of this is, I mean, I'm gonna say something crazy here. Like, none of this is rocket science. This is not okay, the Google Sheet. Okay, figure out how to do that. Yeah. But like, none of it's rocket science, but it's not as easy as it seems to actually do it, to actually get out and make it a habit. What had to change in your routines, in your thought processes to actually make this happen?

[00:42:29] Adam Stephenson: Well, I just had to... I mean, I don't know and get mad at me too. He's like: "You can't just, you can't just go off in the afternoon all the time and just be gone all afternoon." Like, "You're an employee of St..." And I, but I'm on the, on this, on the other... Like, I'll walk all the time, and no matter if I'm walking with him or another person, I'm just like: "We have to do this.

It's the least we can do to come to somebody's door in our boundaries and say..." Like, 'cause he's responsible for them. Like, I'll look at him and, "What do you mean? I'm doing this for you. My soul's not tied to these people. Your soul is." So I'm like, "We have to do!"

this."

[00:43:01] Fr. Loseke: But then what-- I think what I help with there is to draw out the follow-up, and that you can't just... And I told them, it's like, "I'm not gonna count that person until you bring-- I wanna see the fruit.

You bring me the fruit. I don't care how many conversations you've had out there. Until that fruit is over here in this bushel basket, it count.

[00:43:19] Adam Stephenson: What, like, you know, in church we can say, "Oh, we just had the most spiritually uplifting conversation today, and God is good," and, like, so many fruits. But you, like, you know, in church you can't put numbers to things always, and that's true. Yeah. But like, okay, what's the next step? And is it they came into our fish fry? Man, they took the next step. Awesome. You know, what is it? Like, like really, like, when we talk about, like, okay, we have numbers on all this stuff, too.

Like, how many missionaries went out this day? How many doors were knocked? How many answered? How many got follow-up notes? How many hangers did we drop? Like, like our goal, or my goal personally for us was to meet 1,000 people this calendar year and to put on 3,000 hangers this calendar year. This month, 'cause we're starting to go crazy, we might get 1,000 hangers.

But I didn't walk today 'cause I'm here. That's okay, though. It's worth it. But I feel like that, like we gotta get out. We might get 1,000 hangers this month. Like, and that's been a surprising thing to me, like just how it's grown. And then what things that you've added to it, too. You know, you're saying, "Okay, well, where is this gonna go?

Are they gonna-- Do they come back to the fish fry?" And that's good. You know, do they... Like, where on the clear path do they go? Like, is, are they now gaining trust? Does somebody wanna come back and go to confession for the first time in 20 years? Or like, and y- and those are the real... Like, not that the, not that it's not good when you talk to them, 'cause it is good. Every time it's good. But then what's the next step for that person? Where's the follow-up?

[00:44:31] Jim Jansen: Yeah. I wanna let you talk about that 'cause Father, I mean, you're bringing that genius the organization and the system of like, "Okay, what's next?" How does this fit into the overall plan of evangelization for the parish? How does it fit into your clear path? Like what is... You know, it's a step. How does it fit?

[00:44:48] Fr. Loseke: Yeah. So we... A couple things that guide us. Recently, this past year, we really kind of focused on putting together our mission statement and it fo-focuses on four major touchstones, if you will, that, that at St. Charles, we want to inspire with reverent liturgy. We want to connect people to God and to each other. We want to teach them how to live the faith, and we want to send them to love their neighbor. Yes. These four things are the things that now everything we do ought to wrap in there. And so neighborhoods, clearly sending to love the neighbor, connecting them to each other.

We're hitting two of these two of these things. It is... But it then, as you rightly say, how does it fit into the whole evangelization program? Well, here especially, you're reaching out those people who are tangential, you know, maybe they're connected, maybe they're not. It depends on... My walks are more connected than the missionaries going out and they're meeting whomever they find.

But then it's like, do we have something that they can come to? Do we have the invitation thing? We learned during Lent how great it is to be able to take a Knights of Columbus flyer and say, "Fish fry this Friday, join us." Non-threatening, you know, open to everybody, and it just keeps building trust. So it, it's finding those things.

What do we have to offer? What's the next thing that brings them in that isn't saying, "Hey, do you wanna come to mass?" The most sacred moment of our, you know, existence that you may not have attended or ever even, you know, heard about.

[00:46:14] Adam Stephenson: It'd be like knocking on somebody's door and say, "You wanna get intimate?" You know, know, like- Yeah. It's in whatever way you might think I'd be talking about that.

[00:46:19] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Ple- please come. You'll be very disoriented, but you're welcome.

[00:46:23] Fr. Loseke: Right. Right.

[00:46:23] Adam Stephenson: What's the next... And when we walked Lent with those fish fry ones, we felt so em- so empowered. Mm-hmm. When w- the moment Lent was over and we didn't have those anymore, I said to the missionaries, I said, "I feel naked right now.

I feel like we're out here, and I don't know what I'm doing, man." Like it was we leaned into that so hard, and now we're trying to find something, a priority for our parish. Like, how can we link with what's happening at the parish? We're gonna look, do something this summer for Sacred Heart. Okay, so how do the neighborhood missionaries go out to our parishioners or people in our boundaries and promote this consecration to the Sacred Heart?

What do, what does that look like? And how do we play a part in that? But it was the relational outreach piece that we never had. It's so hard to figure out what that is, and we're like, "Donuts." And it's like, well, that's like relational in-reach 'cause everyone that comes to donuts already went to mass.

Yeah. So they're already in there. How do you get out? And it's like, I don't know. Yeah.

[00:47:10] Fr. Loseke: Yeah. Yeah. But you gotta have the landing pad- You gotta ... of events. And so it is. It's just...

[00:47:15] Jim Jansen: Yeah, you know what's next.

[00:47:17] Fr. Loseke: At least connecting them to the other people in their neighborhood. That like you don't have to come back to the parish, but here's a Catholic in the neighborhood.

[00:47:25] Adam Stephenson: Yeah. 'Cause even, maybe even better than a building, you know, "Okay, come to the church. Hey, you need to meet this person right here 'cause there's something greater than a parish building here. It's it's J- it's Jim. He's great."

[00:47:34] Jim Jansen: D- tell me a little bit-- You've mentioned, right, scent evangelization, Austin Habash. How do you prepare people for this? I mean, I love there's like multiplicity of roles and opportunity. Just a little bit, like how do you equip people to join you in this?

[00:47:48] Adam Stephenson: We, the first one we did was back in the summer with Austin, and I think that he is... You know, you, there, there are certain neighborhood books out there that we, that many of us in the archdiocese have encountered with the Within Reach movement. You know, there's many books, and people have been on here, on here.

[00:48:00] Jim Jansen: Yeah. The Art of Neighboring. Dave Runyon.

[00:48:02] Adam Stephenson: Really good things there. I think that Austin takes it to the next level when he- Yeah ... when he douses it in Catholic theology, and papal documents, and church history. I was absolutely impressed with how smart he is. And he's on the, he's all over the internet.

Really great. So that was an easy way to say, "This is how it's done," basic. This is how he does it. Now, we've changed things, and I would say probably just because of myself being a big driver of this, just say like, "Hey." What, y- like we, we have the advantage of having mass, where we just go right after mass.

So I just go up to folks and say, "Hey, would you pray for us?" Or, "Hey, would, do you wanna walk with us?" And they always say like, "Well, I'm not that kind of person." And I'm like, "Don't worry. This is all you gotta do." And then a lot of it's just going out there. Like, a recent convert that Father Jeff brought into the church last year, he wanted to go out when it was cold.

We were out on an, like a 15-degree day, and he's like, "Now, we're not gonna be proselytizing anybody, are we? Like, I don't wanna like make people become Catholic." And I'm like, "I do."

I'm like, "Dude, this is so chill. You're not g-" And he got done. He was like, "Well, that was really easy and nice and not all that con..." We're just starting the conversation. But the more we go out and find ourselves in these random conversations, he came back next year and, this year, and gave a talk for OCIA, and he was like, "I wouldn't have been able to give that explanation of my journey through OCIA had I not gone door to door and had that experience about talking about my faith on a regular basis." So, like, as far as to answer your question about how do we train folks for this, sorry.

[00:49:29] Fr. Loseke: This is where he's not strong.

[00:49:32] Adam Stephenson: Ouch!

[00:49:32] Fr. Loseke: I'm sorry!

[00:49:33] Jim Jansen: He's got a lifeline.

[00:49:34] Adam Stephenson: Yeah. It's just, you know, it's like, like right now we're just figuring this thing out. We got the plane in the air. We're figuring it out. We're working it through.

We do... You know, I'll tell you this, we do have a monthly meeting that our missionaries and intercessors come to where we talk about our, I think I call it our stats and strats meeting, where it's our statistics and our strategies. Yeah. Okay, here's what we're, here's what we're seeing at the door.

This is the side of the door to stand on to best entice that individual to come out. Like, there's certain things you start realizing, like if I stand up on the handle side, they can hide behind the door. But if I stand hinge side, it kinda makes them wanna come out. They're like, "I can't hear this guy.

I've gotta come out." And letting them come out. So giving them best practices during our stats and strats meeting. I'm sure all the LDS out there are like, "Duh." "You didn't know that?" Or, "You're thinking that's the right answer? Wait till you realize this answer." 'Cause you f- you gotta figure it out as you go out there.

But we do share some best practices in those monthly meetings.

[00:50:25] Fr. Loseke: Yeah. We, we- Gather people together. We definitely gather people together. And it started with, you know, kind of a bigger thing where we had some people trained, as it were.

[00:50:34] Jim Jansen: Right it was like almost, it was a full weekend.

[00:50:36] Fr. Loseke: It was a, yeah, Saturday. We spent a Saturday doing this. We need to do more of that probably. We need to communicate this more to get the word out to folks, and then we need... It's always the personal invitation. You have to just invite someone to go with you.

It, the blanket invitation doesn't often work.

[00:50:52] Jim Jansen: Right.

[00:50:52] Adam Stephenson: I'd love for him at our, at our... he said that he would do it. I don't know where it fits in the mass or what, but I'd love for him to say at the end of our daily mass, like, "For those of you that wanna walk the neighborhoods, for those of you that really want to go out and proclaim the gospel, they're meeting right over there.

And for those of you that wanna stay here and pray, by the vigil candle. It's right over there." And like have that missioning after mass.

[00:51:10] Fr. Loseke: We probably will get there. We'll formalize that kind of invitation-

[00:51:14] Adam Stephenson: And even just hearing that, like, what did that priest just say? Did he... I'm new here. Did he say, "What are they doing?"

[00:51:19] Fr. Loseke: Yep.

[00:51:19] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Well, it, you know, it's shocking. I mean, I love just the simplicity of like, "Hey, we're just doing it. We're learning as we grow. Yes, we had a kind of a Saturday training to get started, and we gather people once a month." What do you, what are your dreams for how this could look a year from now, three years from now? What do you want?

[00:51:40] Adam Stephenson: Wonder is my one of my weaknesses.

[00:51:44] Fr. Loseke: Yeah, I would like to see... I would... And I would like to see people in every neighborhood, or again, the way we've divided up our parish into various neighborhoods, I would like to see people who really have taken ownership of these neighborhood mission drives, that it's less reliant upon the steering and the driving of Adam or me or whomever from the parish office, but that this starts getting instilled within individuals.

And then we've got, like, several teams are gonna be going out in several different directions. You know, you kinda magnify and multiply the thing. But I just want people... I, for-- I would be even content a step before that, that the people in the parish know that we're doing this, know about it, and could even speak to it even if they've never done it before.

So it really is ingraining this into the fabric of who we are as a parish, and then getting people kinda plugged into it in some way, shape, or form.

[00:52:46] Jim Jansen: You know what you should do? You should record a podcast where you talk all about it and then share it with your parishioners.

[00:52:51] Fr. Loseke: Wow, I'm gonna think about that.

[00:52:54] Adam Stephenson: Yeah, I think I would def- I would agree with that. If the pope has universal jurisdiction, if Archbishop McGovern has jurisdiction over the Omaha Diocese. if Father Jeff has jurisdiction over the parish boundaries of St. Charles Borromeo, as a baptized, confirmed Catholic, I think that's where we lose it.

You know? Like, he kn- he knows canonically this is his responsibility. As a Catholic, it's like, eh, you know, as a lay person if we knew that this wa- this street is my responsibility... that would change things. Even just, now we're putting out more signs and like in my neighborhood, we had 38...We have 38 Catholics that are registered, and we put out 29 St. Charles Borromeo signs.

[00:53:29] Fr. Loseke: What he's talking about is as we were getting ready for Christmas or getting ready for Easter we had yard signs made that just, you know, basically had our big, the picture of our church on it, a big QR code, and St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church. That's it.

And then you put these all around, you know, it's like how many of these can we get into each neighborhood? And after mass, it's like I'm inviting you to take one out, put it out there 'cause people don't know St. Charles exists, or we just wanna be invitational and hospitable.

And when you drive down a neighborhood and you start seeing all of these signs taking over, it's like, wow, the Catholics really have a presence here.

[00:54:04] Adam Stephenson: Yeah, you don't re-

[00:54:05] Fr. Loseke: That's what I want.

[00:54:06] Adam Stephenson: You have no idea. Like, 'cause you see the occasional sign from a different, you know, church, and you're like, "Oh, that's a sign for that church. I've heard of that church before." You have no idea, especially in Omaha, what we can do. Like, what kind of what that means to the community when you haven't seen 29 signs in a neighborhood.

Like, where we have three or four in a row. S- like, we're playing tic-tac-toe out there. I'm like, bang, we got three in a row there, we got three in a row there. Down my street we got 10. Like, the, it's something where people in the neighborhood are like, "What's going on?"

something...

[00:54:32] Fr. Loseke: St. Charles is so cool, you want to be a part of this place or you wanna learn more.

[00:54:36] Adam Stephenson: But it's also something for, just like he said earlier about going out does something for me. It says something when you say, "I'm putting this sign in my..." Like, think of, think about the recent election. Would you have put the person you voted for in your yard? I wouldn't have.

I would've been like, "Okay, I'm gonna vote for that person, but I'm not gonna I'm ready to put, like, it in my yard." You know, c- ...either way, you know? But with St. Charles, it's like, "This is my sign." And, like, that means something in my soul that I'm coming out, and you have no idea. So, it, that's my hope too, that we all g- we even had a,

[00:55:05] Fr. Loseke: Be proud of being Catholic.

[00:55:06] Adam Stephenson: We We found a senior living center in a neighborhood from one of your mentorship program people, and this mentorship pers- this is one of the boomer lady I was talking about earlier. And we wa- sh- we walked to that with a bunch of young adults. We walked to that senior living center, and we found somebody in there that said, "I haven't been to mass in five years, but if someone would drive me, I don't have a car, I'd go." And this person was a little hesitant because of certain circumstances. And somebody you don't know. You know, like, who is this person? But they lived in that person's neighborhood. So I met him the first two times, and then this person was like, "No, I'm doing this."

And this person and her husband they interact with this individual on a weekly basis. They take this person to mass. They involve this person, who was uninvolved in the past, in the neighborhood activities, the groundskeeping. Like, this person is now invested in this neighborhood because of this other person.

And so just thinking, like, in, in your mind, like, "I'm close to this person. This is my neighbor. I will love them. I will do what it takes to get them to these places that's good for them." And that's, I would hope that.

[00:56:05] Fr. Loseke: Yeah.

[00:56:05] Jim Jansen: Yeah. I mean, the times that like my family and I have done that, I'm flashing back to some folks in Lincoln, you know, when we lived there that had some severe physical disabilities, and we would, you know, we'd go there early, we'd take them to mass, and it's like, oh my gosh, it was so...I mean, it was never easy, but it was so worth it.

[00:56:24] Adam Stephenson: Yeah. And we want everybody, by the way, this is a universal church. We want everybody. There are people that we, we-- People that we talked with yesterday man, it, it... Like I said, with certain churches, you kinda get a vibe for that church. People might say like, "Well, I don't really fit in there or fit in there."

At St. Charles Borromeo, everybody's here. Like, we want who- whoever lives here, I'm not gonna try to manufacture the who should be here, who shouldn't be here. If you live in these boundaries, you should be here, and there's gonna be somebody else like you in here, too, and you fit no matter how you don't fit the mold of Omaha, West Omaha.

[00:56:53] Fr. Loseke: So many people when they're t- sitting in with, in counseling with me or asking questions or whatever and they're think- And I'm like, "Oh, I just dealt with that with someone else the other day."

And it's like, "Oh, I'm so glad that I'm not the only person who has this problem," or, "I'm not the only person going through this thing." It's like, yeah, you have no idea. You are not that special. I...

[00:57:09] Jim Jansen: Well, it reminds me...

[00:57:10] Fr. Loseke: We are all experiencing these things.

[00:57:12] Jim Jansen: Oh, reminds me of that, yeah, that Flannery O'Connor quote. You know, the Catholic Church, "Here comes everybody."

[00:57:16] Fr. Loseke: Yeah, "everybody."

[00:57:17] Adam Stephenson: It-- like, I'll walk into houses sometimes that smell like cat pee, and I love cats, but it-- my sense of smell is really good. And man, it's tough.

You know, it's tough, but I know that the Lord wants that person. And the Lord and me might be the only people that want this person right now, 'cause their house is a-- people's houses are crazy. I think my house is crazy, but these people are cra- th-their houses are crazy. And I walk in there and I'm like, "God loves this person."

And I think it-- I wanna believe that it means so much to that person, b-because our neighborhoods are so disconnected, and that person who spends a lot of time in their house, like, I wanna break through that door and say, "God loves you, and I'd love to love you, too."

[00:57:53] Jim Jansen: Well, I mean, this is like there's so many ways to kinda evaluate our faithfulness, but if St. Charles were to disappear, people would feel it. I mean, people in your... Not because, "Oh, well, I lost my convenient mass time," but like people are feeling just a little bit more seen, just a little bit more loved. Like-

[00:58:13] Adam Stephenson: That's the goal.

[00:58:14] Jim Jansen: Yeah.

[00:58:14] Fr. Loseke: We want to, We want to have an effect on this place, you know, this territory- Yeah ... these neighborhoods. We want to have an effect here. So for that very reason that, like, this place is different because this parish is here. Yeah. We... So often we, like, look at the state of the world or the state of the country or the state of whatever that's so much bigger than we are.

I can't do anything about changing the trajectory of where the world is going, but we can change the trajectory of where these neighborhoods are going. And if we can be that kind of positive influence and just help people see the light and the calling, you know, like a lighthouse in the middle of the storm.

If you've got problems, you come here. If you're in the dark, here's the light. And you can- Yes, we'll make a difference.

[00:58:58] Adam Stephenson: You can do that anywhere. Like, know, there's so many parish... Like, so we live in a place that's growing and everything's great and it's awesome, but it shouldn't matter where you're at because, yeah maybe a parish in a different part of Omaha or in the rural areas doesn't have the XYZ that we just mentioned. Okay, fine.

But if there's people around your parish, you have ABC, and you need to minister to ABC. But if you have XYZ program at your church, no wonder nobody's coming 'cause you're not ministering to ABC. So I don't care where you're at. If there's people there you've... There's something to be done there.

[00:59:28] Jim Jansen: No, I mean, you're... Reminds me, so again, my home parish we are not a growing parish. We've been shrinking away for decades both of us c- combined parishes. And God bless, I'll quote him, give him a shout-out Deacon Al Olner was like, "You know, it's not like there's any less people in the neighborhood."

Yeah. And it's like, oh gosh, that's so good, 'cause it just, it says so much. Okay, our time is just, like, flying here. I wanna give you a moment just for a last word. I mean, 'cause we've been, you know, we've covered so much territory. I want you to speak, and you're both kind of, like, in, in different places.

You know, Father, you are the pastor. You're the organized one. You're the more introverted one. Adam, you're the layman. I wanna give you a moment just to speak to somebody who's listening, who, like, needs... That they're feeling the conviction. They're like, "Dang, I wish I had shut this off 20 minutes ago." You know? They're like, they're feeling it. I want you to speak to them.

[01:00:27] Fr. Loseke: The Holy Spirit is not timid, and He will drench you with the grace that is necessary and needed. I would just say that has been my experience, that I love-- I've truly-- I love this and even though it wouldn't have been the thing I would have devised on my own or... I am totally convicted by it, and it is one of the things I am most proud of when I talk about what's going on at St. Charles. I will talk about this. I will talk about how we send people out. You know, you know what those other Christian d- places do, you know, sending people out? We do that. We send people out. I go out and b- am in the neighborhoods. That to be church outside of the church walls, it is so freeing, and I think that's it.

It's just, it is about breaking down walls and breaking down barriers, whether they're the internal barriers or the false barriers that we set up or the structure that we're, quote-unquote, "supposed to be living in," that all just gets knocked down. And as soon as that, that, that landscape is a little bit more clear, you may have no idea where you're going, but all of a sudden the journey itself becomes the end.

That becomes the exciting point. And for me, that's huge because I am kind of a point A to point Z person. Like, how do I get from here to here? And I just wanna get through that middle section, and it's where life happens in the middle section. And so I would just say start living life and start living the Christian mission.

Don't set it as a goal. "I am not the destination," the Lord said. "I am the way. I am everything in between."

[01:02:05] Jim Jansen: That's so good. Adam?

[01:02:07] Adam Stephenson: I couldn't think of anything like that. The thing that came to my mind was just like a, like taste and see the goodness of the Lord. Like when you knock that door... Like when I knocked that door of those Catholic statues and found that person who was just diff- who was off the beaten path.

And I came back and I looked. I don't know why. I don't know what came over me, even that day. Like I was in the walk, and I just looked at him, and I was just, I just couldn't stop crying. I still don't know why, but it just taste and see the goodness of the Lord. Like a come and see. Like y- you knock that door, and you taste these fruits.

Like I can't, I cannot stop walking.

[01:02:37] Jim Jansen: Mm-hmm. Man, gentlemen, thank you. So beautiful. Thank you for coming on the podcast and skipping the walk, at least for a period of time today.

[01:02:47] Fr. Loseke: He'll get over it.

[01:02:47] Jim Jansen: It's still ni- it's still nice weather. You can go out and do it. So thank you. We're gonna link to Scent Evangelization, Austin Habash's website.

We'll go to St. Charles. We'll link a couple of resources in this. Again, thank you, gentlemen. Thanks so much. Thanks for being here. Thanks for the blessings. All right, everybody. You know somebody who needs to hear this particularly somebody who doesn't wanna hear it. No, I mean, it's fine.

You can send it to your extroverted friends too, but like send it out to somebody who needs to hear this. Tell 'em why, pray for 'em, and thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening to the EquipCast. Don't let the fear and fatigue convince you to settle for a ministry that's just a job. True renewal happens in the messy middle, and we're here to walk with you. So head on over to everydayevangelization.org to grab your free tools and discover a playbook that helps you actually change lives. And let's leave your ministry better than you found it. See you next week.