[00:00:00] Jim Jansen: Hey everybody. Welcome to the Equip Cast, a weekly podcast for the Archdiocese of Omaha. I'm your host, Jim Jansen. Now let's dive into some encouragement and inspiration to equip you to live your faith and to be fruitful in your mission. Let's go.

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Equip Cast Coaches Corner, where I break down important topics to equip you and your team for mission. In your family, in your church, and in your ministry. So my name is Jim Jansen, and today I'm gonna give you a vision of how to bear the fruit that we seek. So we're gonna talk about fruit and branches and roots.

I'm, forgive me, right? I'm an amateur fruit farmer here, so I wanna share some of the, the lessons I've learned here. So, let's talk about fruit. We, we all want good fruit, right? To flow from our family [00:01:00] lives, our ministries, our parishes. We want things like mass attendants. I mean, who doesn't want a full church?

We want vocations. We want young people who are open and responsive to the call of the Lord to serve him as priests and religious. We want stewardship. We want people who recognize that their time and their talent and their treasure, that their gifts from the Lord and who steward those gifts for the building up of the kingdom.

In our ministries and in our parishes, we want justice, right? The divisions in our larger community are sad and even frightening, and the systemic injustices that are plaguing our cities and our towns and our country seem pretty overwhelming right now. We want Reverend Liturgy. I mean, who doesn't want beautiful music and an atmosphere of Reverend Worship that communicates even without words, that God is here in our midst.

We want deep, authentic community. We. I mean, you can feel the [00:02:00] difference when people really know and love each other, whether it's in a family or a ministry or a parish. Things are different when there's real community present, and not just for those who've been there forever, but for newcomers as well.

But we, we want respect for life. Who doesn't want respect for life when it's most vulnerable? From the very young to the very old? I mean, I could go on and on and on. The problem is not that we don't want good things. That we've forgotten what produces those good things. You see, all of these things have at least one thing in common.

They're fruits of discipleship and missionary discipleship to be specific. Let me give you some examples, right? It's only disciples who give sacrificially, like you're not a steward. If you're not first a disciple of Jesus. Those, those who are disciples, then they can give as stewards for the sake of the kingdom, right?

Disciples are the only ones who listen to the call [00:03:00] to find their vocation, who, who worship regularly and with reverence. Disciples are the ones who work for peace and justice in the world in a larger community. But here's the hard truth. There are no shortcuts to making disciples. What do I mean by shortcuts?

Well, none of these things that I'm gonna say here are bad, but they're things that if they're done apart from making disciples, they're just shortcuts and they're tweaks and they don't really bear fruit, right? Things like changes in architecture or professional musicians, they don't inspire worship if people aren't already disciples.

Pep talks and nice brochures don't turn people into stewards. If they're not already disciples, changes in sacramental ages in order doesn't lead young people to embrace their faith if their parents are not already living as missionary disciples. Political involvement, it will not provide the justice we seek in our world without disciples who engage in the temporal order [00:04:00] led by the spirit of God living inside them.

So what do we do? Well, that's what leads us to the branches. We need to give the best of our efforts to making and maturing disciples, and that's where the branches come in, right? Branches are those, those things. First off people, but ministries that bear the fruit we seek. They're the ones that make disciples.

And disciples are the ones that bear the fruit that we're interested in. So you have to make sure that the individual missionary disciples and the ministries that support those disciples are really healthy. This is where the hard pastoring work comes in. This is where patient accompaniment comes into play in helping disciples mature and bear fruit.

Things like supporting them in their prayer life. Helping them find and develop community, very practical, equipping for their mission, providing a simple structure for making and maturing [00:05:00] disciples. Things like building a clear path of discipleship. But there's one more element we need to attend to if we're actually gonna bear fruit.

And that's the root. You see, all of the stuff that we've been talking about beforehand is above the surface, the, the trunk and the branches and the structures of our ministries and parishes. The fruit that we seek, but the stuff below the surface, our vision, our mission, and our culture that's not as easily seen.

Our priorities, what we celebrate, what we tolerate, have to be consistent with the one who ultimately causes us to bear fruit. Like what does the Lord want? We can't simply be seeking these things out of our own self-preservation, otherwise we're like the bad thief next to Jesus on the cross. He cries out Jesus, save yourself and us.

He doesn't really have faith. He's only interested in Jesus for what he can do for him. So what does the Lord ultimately want? Well, at the climax of his life, he calls [00:06:00] out from the cross that he thirsts, and I'm gonna lean on Saint Theresa of Calcutta here, that of course he's physically thirsty. But more than that, he's thirsting for souls.

First, our souls, and then those of our neighbors and friends. And if that's not enough, you know, at the climax of his life, he's saying he's thirsty for souls. But then in his last moment on earth, the ascension, as he's going up, he gives us the commission to go and make disciples. You see, we can't simply focus on the fruits that we're looking for without attending to the branches.

Care for the individuals and the ministries that produce the fruit and for the soil Underneath that, the vision and the mission and the culture. See, there's no shortcut to the fruits we seek. We have to commit ourselves first and foremost to the root of the matter by satisfying the Lord's thirst for souls, and then to the health of the branches, right?

Those individual ministries that produce disciples. And when we do that, we will again [00:07:00] experience the fruit we seek in abundance. Alright, I'm gonna pray. Father, lemme ask your mercy. Direct our hearts and our minds. Your. What you desire most deeply, Lord, grant us the grace that we would satisfy your thirst first with our own love and our trust.

And then by bringing others to you. Lord, we we offer to you the fruit that we seek, the desire, the hopes and dreams for families and ministries, and parishes flourishing. Again, Lord direct our hearts and our minds to the heart of the matter. Where you desire us. Amen. Amen. Alright, what are your thoughts?

You can respond back in the chat at Equip.ArchOmaha.org. Again, that's Equip.ArchOmaha.org. Thanks for listening to the EquipCast. We hope this episode has inspired you [00:08:00] to live your faith and equip you to be fruitful in your mission. Stay connected with us by going to Equip.ArchOmaha.org. God bless and see you next time.