The Quiet Crisis in Our Pews: Why Saving Marriages will Save the Faith

Jim Jansen

Jared Smyth, welcome to the Equip Cast. How you doing?

Jared Smyth 01:14

Good. I'm, I'm doing well, Jim. Uh, it's nice to be here and it's a real honor to be working with you again, even if it's just for an hour while we're, while we're talking to each other.

Jim Jansen 01:22

I know this is fun, but I'm gonna be honest, I'm a little afraid it could be too much fun. I was like, I'm gonna have to like, watch the time here because we, what, three years, two, three years. We, we got a chance to work together, regional roles and focus and it was a, yeah, it was a lot of fun. Some of my, some of my most. Enjoyable years as as a missionary. And, uh, now you are, gosh, we're old. Like, we're like married.

We've got kids. You are, uh, working for Communio and we're gonna talk about that. But for everybody else who doesn't know you, who, who are you? What's your story?

Jared Smyth 02:03

Well, well, Jim, yeah. Great. Thanks and thanks again for, for having me here. I, I also, I just wanna know, like, one of the things that's been nice to see, I mean, we've been working in ministry for a long time. We have a lot of friends who, whether that's mm-hmm. People in focus or people right. That you just know in the small Catholic world, uh, who have gone on to build the kingdom in different ways. So it's, it's, it's just always nice to see, you know, with you in Omaha what you've been doing. And I, I remember, you know, one time we were talking about what, what the Lord's called us to and.

You had said, you know, if this is fine for podcast talk or whatever else, but you know, whether it was Yeah. I was like, oh no, what did I say? Um, you know, there's a time of prayer or there was a time where, uh, you were in, you were in a particular group of people and um, I was a mission trip or something like this and, you know, you got a particular insight that God had called you as people were speaking to the crowds or whatever else to sort of be with the people.

And, um, and that's a particular calling that, you know, look, it's always fun to look up at the stage and see people, you know, getting, getting laughs at their dad jokes, or at least that's what I, that's what I hope for in my, my heart. Yeah. But I, I do find, you know, when I look at stuff like a clear path or I look at even other diocese that, um, right, that are, that are thinking about, you know, the unique stuff you guys are doing in Omaha, I think there's a nice sense of, we always wanna have an aspirational Catholicism and an aspiration, an aspirational Christianity, but.

From the sense of this is what parishes are, are really like, and how do we really help them? Uh, I I think there's a, a really pleasant insight in, in what you've do, been doing there. So anyway, I, I just wanna say thanks for all that, and it's, it's been nice to see from the outside.

Jim Jansen 03:45

Yeah. Thank you. It's there, there's something about, I, I mean, have to remind myself about that. You know, you find yourself sometimes, you know, you're like late at night, you're out, maybe in the, uh, rural parts of the archdiocese. You're like, okay, I am gonna go sit down. We're in a parish hall. We got fluorescent lights and stale coffee and cold metal chairs. And man, this is exactly where the Lord wants me.

And this is exactly where he is. This is where he's at work, where he is laboring. Mm-hmm. You know, I, I really believe that parishes. Are the hope of the world. I mean, Jesus is the hope of the world, but like, I mean, 90% of Catholics get 90% of their exposure to that person, Jesus, in the context of their parish community. You know, and for better or for worse, this, this is our, this is our vehicle, this is our, our missionary outpost. And I love ecclesial movements and all the, all the things, but it's like there's something special in the ordinary ness of parish life, and it's an honor to be kind of Yeah. Right, right. You know, on the ground.

Yeah, that's right. Uh, side by side with the parish leaders. Mm-hmm. And, and you're, you're there too. I mean, that's part of the work of, of Communo, you know, really helping parishes rediscover what it means to come alongside, uh, marriages and family. But you can't dodge the conversation forever. Jared. Jared, who, who are you?

Jared Smyth 05:14

Yeah, right. Enough about, about you. Let's talk about me. Yeah, sure. Well, so, uh, so I'm living out here in, in Denver. Grew up half my life in Pittsburgh, half my life in Colorado. Got five little kids all nine and under. We just had our first boy about a year and a half ago. And whenever I. Talking at different things. I, I like to say, look, there's this river in Boulder where 90% of the fish have turned female because there's so much birth control in the water. So I used to blame, you know, everything on that. But we got our first boy, which is great. Um, my wife Mallory, she's from, uh, HOA, Louisiana, uh, ho of Thibodaux, which is 45 minutes southwest of New Orleans.

You know, the diocese there, they're, they're doing some good stuff down there, actually. Mm-hmm.

Jim Jansen 05:53

Wait, wait, isn't that, isn't that the Gulf of Mexico? Southwest of New New Orleans? How do you do that?

Jared Smyth 05:58

So, so being more of a Yankee, I basically thought that was the ocean. Yeah. And, um, uh, yes, but it's, yeah, you know, HOA is sort of the last place with a, uh, with a target, you know, uh, before you get to your. You're shrimping and crabbing, little bayou places. It's great. I mean, we got married in downtown New Orleans.

Jim Jansen 06:13

I was there, I remember, remember the wedding. It was fantastic.

Jared Smyth 06:16

I, I feel guilty. It was such a cool wedding. They do this thing called second lining, where after, you know, after the party, the band goes out into the streets, they stop the traffic and there's a parade with sparklers and the band down to the hotel. And, you know, it was, it's awesome. So it's great. You know, the excesses of Catholicism are in South Louisiana, both good and bad. And, um, uh, so Mallory, she, she's wonderful. She, we worked at Focus Together. True. She, uh, worked for Endow for a little bit. She, and she worked for Walking With Purpose, wrote three of their Bible studies.

Jim Jansen 06:43

Mm-hmm.

Jared Smyth 06:43

So does some speaking

Jim Jansen 06:44

an, an EquipCast alumnus. Right. Whatever. She, she was on the podcast first. Yeah. I'm gonna start with the best, best sm and then work down.

Jared Smyth 06:51

Yeah, that's right. We can work down from there. Um, and so she has a little podcast called The Gospel, and right now where she's doing, you know, some commentary on normal events and everything. But yeah, so, so for me, you, you know, my story basically grew up in Pittsburgh. I would say, when it comes to. Talking about a faith journey. I never had a particular aversion to Christian things. You know, it's the thing some people grow up and they feel like it's forced on them or for different reasons.

They feel like it limits their freedom in negative ways. And, you know, I always thought it was great. You know, I thought it was good when I was a kid. You know, one, one story to illustrate how I would think about things. I was thinking a lot. This is in second grade about heaven. Maybe it was in kindergarten. I can't remember what Pittsburgh time this was. And, uh. I was like, mom, you know, I'm having a hard time understanding what heaven is like, can you give me an example? And she said, yeah, well, heaven is the nicest place you can imagine, but just imagine that forever and with all of your friends. And the nicest place I could imagine is an amusement park in Pittsburgh called Kennywood, which is really a great place.

And uh, and you know, it was like Kenny Wood and it's sunny and all your friends are there and great. It's, it's awesome. And then in my mind, private party. Yeah, it's a great party. And um, you know, after riding the Thunderbolt a hundred thousand times or the steel phantom a million times or whatever else, you'd start to get pretty bored and, uh, eventually so bored that you'd probably wanna die and go to heaven, but you're already in heaven, which would mean you'd either have to go crazy or be popped out of existence, you know?

And so I I, when people talk about heaven, I used to go and hide under the bed and I would have deep existential dread a about these sorts of things. And, uh, so, so that was, uh, you know, kinda like how wow, if, if I had a, if I had a temptation in my faith life, I think would be more towards the, uh, sometimes I, I find people who are. Tend towards atheism, right? They kind of spiral a little bit in their own rationality, right? They go into circles and everything. Mm-hmm. And I would say in some ways that could be a natural temptation, but at the same time, there were certain spiritual experiences I had when I was a kid and growing up, whether that be, you know, some, some demonic experiences or some experiences of people with, with physical ailments that got healed or things like that.

And so that doesn't mean, you know, my whole life has been charismatically going on and praying with people, but understanding that that's a real thing and that I, I feel in some ways that's another way to get a truth. That's, that's kept me grounded. So, key points, I guess. In seventh and eighth grade had a world champion weightlifting theology teacher who taught us the why's behind the what's we believed.

And number one, it was nice to have a dude that, you know, knew his way around the weight room. Yeah. Talking to us. But, uh, yeah, you know, things like the first cause argument or the trilemma or, you know, we were learning this in seventh and eighth grade and it just, like, it clicked with me immediately. The, there's, this was a foundation that you could build what was really an effective faith in a lot of ways into something that was more rational and stable.

Um, not that the effective isn't important, but, uh, but I, but I didn't know it could go there. And so I feel like that really gave me a good basis for then, you know, going to a Catholic high school with, I, I would say. In my experience, poor theological education, we never learned things like that.

Jim Jansen 09:57

Mm-hmm.

Jared Smyth 09:57

Caused me to read a little bit more or to argue in my classes, you know, when we're having a class where the book on Christology says Jesus, you know, did he rise from the dead? We didn't really know, and it doesn't really matter. Okay. That's, there's problems with that, you know, and I didn't realize the.

Jim Jansen 10:11

Yeah, don't get technical with me, Jared. Death problems. Yeah, no, I mean, I could relate. I had a similar where like, you know, I had a, my heart was Catholic, but my mind was not, and it wasn't until, I mean, junior year in college, it was a little crisis where I was like, oh no. Mm-hmm. This makes sense. Mm-hmm.

Jared Smyth 10:33

Mm-hmm.

Jim Jansen 10:34

And, and I remember exactly where I was basement of the library. Great Books course. And it was the first time that I started to recognize that my truth, like. Was like true. Mm-hmm. That it was rational, that it connected and that was, that was pivotal for my conversion. Yeah. It was a crisis. 'cause like, crap, this is gonna change my weekend plans.

Jared Smyth 10:54

Mm-hmm. Yes. Right. Yeah. It makes, it makes your fun a different kind of fun. A deeper but a different kind of fun. Yeah. Yeah. That, that's all to say, you know, kind of growing up, my parents took the faith seriously. Right. I lived in a supportive family. I had some friends, uh, especially in high school who, who took the faith seriously. I did some reading the, the real grace of the sacraments.

And I think all those things just sort of led to a faith that can always get better, but I think at least was stable. You, you know, and, um mm-hmm. And so I, uh, when I was in college focus, the fellowship of Catholic University students, uh, that focus, um, showed up my, uh, my junior year. I, I'd been to a focus conference before that and, and at that time, you know, campus ministry 20 years ago is a bit different than it is now in a lot of ways.

Jim Jansen 11:39

Very much, yeah.

Jared Smyth 11:40

Going to a conference where. Again, this is 20 years ago, but were, you know, sisters were wearing habits or there were books about apologetics or there didn't seem to be a posture towards the faith that was very defensive, but a bit more robust. Right. And sort of proud.

Jim Jansen 11:55

Yeah.

Jared Smyth 11:55

And deep.

Jim Jansen 11:56

Yeah. It vi vibrant.

Jared Smyth 11:57

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jim Jansen 11:58

Free, joyful again is my first experiences like that is like very disorienting. I bet It was. Like, I, I, I, I was just talking with somebody today about this. I remember the first time I encountered, uh, someone my age who again, they had just gotten involved with focus a little earlier mm-hmm. Than I had. And this guy, okay, I'll give him the shout out. Dean Wirtz Benedict and of the rugby team, and I'm like, well, this is weird. You're actually cool and normal. And I, I, that did just not fit mm-hmm. In my preexisting categories mm-hmm. Of what it meant Right. To be a person of faith. Yeah. And, and he was like, happy and free and it was just, it was a great witness.

Yeah. I really appreciate it.

Jared Smyth 12:39

And we can maybe talk about this later, but it's, it's also hard to to explain how much in the Catholic world, apostolates in books and movements have, have grown in the past 20 years. You know, I used to teach confirmation and the books we would use for confirmation, this is to high school students for 40 hours over two weeks. The books, the books that were there, they just made faith sound like the most boring, pathetic, defensive thing I've ever heard about. And so you, you just make your own stuff. You, you know, that's what, and that's a lot of my friends did and we're in a completely different place where now there's been an explosion of good Catholic things.

Uh, the question is, can we get people to do it? You know?

Jim Jansen 13:14

Right, right, right. Which is, which is probably a nice bridge between like, you know, again, when we were first starting in ministry. There was, I remember very early on people were confused because there was such a gap in quality content. People thought the secret sauce to focus, or to ministry in general was the content. Mm-hmm. Like, all right, what's in the Bible studies? And I'm like, ah, I mean it, and it was good stuff. It was very, but it, but like, the secret sauce wasn't really in the, the content, the, the, the material. Again, unless we're like being super, uh, you know, abstract as like, I mean, Jesus is the content, the spirit is the content, but it, it was the, there was some methodologies there.

So I wanna dive into just your work with Kimo, but maybe to start with this is, I, I'm, I don't know what percentage of our listeners are married, but pretty high percentage. And yet there's a big picture context of the challenges that marriages are experiencing today. Local churches, engagement in supporting marriage and family. I just wanna give you a chance to lay that context. 'cause even though it's the water, many of us swim in, we sometimes don't see it. So Sure. Give us some of that background.

Jared Smyth 14:39

Yeah, that's great. That's great. So, you know, you know, one thing I'll, I'll start with is I, you know, I love my time and focus there. I always tell people in certain ways, I'd rather be at a coffee shop at Berkeley or a bar at Harvard doing direct evangelization.

Jim Jansen 14:51

Amen.

Jared Smyth 14:52

Right. We did this together, right. I ran about 47 campuses in the Northeast and the west. And so my background's a much more an evangelization. I love it. I feel like I was built for that in a lot of ways. But the reality is, if we don't fix the family thing, everything else we do down the line is really difficult and, and limps quite a bit. And so, you know, a book I would point to you for this, Mary Eberstadt in 2017, Mary's a, um, she's theologian out on the East coast, I think she's in the DC area. And she wrote a book called How the West Really Lost God. And she says, look, there's a lot of different reasons for secularism in the Western world, uh, and a lot of different theories.

People say Post World War ii, atheism, science and technology, urbanization and, uh, sexual revolution, whatever you wanna say. All these things certainly had a point. She says, the only statistic I see consistently. Is that the rate of marriage and family decline starts in a particular country and then the rate of religious participation decline follows. Mm-hmm. A lot of people think if you stop going to church, you stop getting married. And what she says is the data seems to say the opposite. Or at the very least, these things are very, very intertwined. And so when we talk about, uh, when we talk about, you know, what does it mean when we say, you know, marriage isn't in a good place or relationships aren't in a good place.

So Ameritrade have gone down 31% since 2000, which is crazy.

Jim Jansen 16:12

Yeah. Which is like, that's, that's 2000 do. Yes. Do you know what it is? Far farther back, like sixties, fifties, because that's like.

Jared Smyth 16:18

So 1970 is, is a, is a point a lot of people will sight and it's gone down 61% since 1970. Even when we talk about, you know, what some people call the nuclear family, mom, dad, and some kids. 40% of all homes look like that, uh, just over 50 years ago. And in the last three years it's been under 18%. And look, this is a. The church always isn't the fastest moving institution properly right in the world, but this is an entirely new place that our culture is living in. There are certain things that supported marriage in the family not too long ago that do not anymore, and the church is still figuring out how do we address that.

I, I'd note Jim, you know, sometimes people talk about a priest vocation crisis because there's been 38% less, uh, ordinations to the priesthood since 1970, which is a lot 'cause there's more Catholics now, uh, in an absolute number than there were 50 years ago. But two things. Number one is the, the Teradata last year, I think was above 97% of priest surveyed said they came from continuously intact married families.

So almost everybody who enters the seminary, uh, is, is from this, this stable, uh, relationship. But also we've had 75% less Catholic sacramental weddings. So we're actually even worse than the general population. I, I, I mean this is a, um, wow. It's a crazy statistic. You, you know, and so when we talk about things not being healthy, right, of course. Even, even with those who are married, just 'cause you're married doesn't mean everything's going swimmingly. One thing to note right to the audience is when Communio comes in. So I, I should mention Communio briefly, I guess as I'm getting to the data and everything, but, um, sure.

Jim Jansen 17:46

Yeah. Yeah.

Jared Smyth 17:47

And so if we had a tagline, it would be evangelizing, uh, through the renewal of healthy relationships, marriage in the family. And so we come out of a successful $20 million test in a few different areas of the country, mainly in Jacksonville, Florida, where the divorce rate went down a quarter in three years in the whole county. Well, it went down 24% if I wanna be precise. And, and how did that happen? That happened because we had about somewhere between 50 and 80 churches, depending on how you talk about participation rates.

And they all took this kind of ministry seriously, and they moved about 30,000 people through at least four hours of skills-based relationship ministry. What does that mean? It was more than a homily. It's more than just a Sunday message, but this was something where people actually had to work and get deep right into some content to improve their relationships as it turns out. You know, the academic data says eight to 12 hours a year of skills-based relationship ministries, a pivot point for increased satisfaction, decreased propensity for divorce and separation. And so not to get like hyper-technical with all the data and all the numbers, but, but look, that's not a lot of time for people to have healthy relationships, but almost nobody does it.

Jim Jansen 18:53

Right. And just to be clear, you, you're talking about skills. This is like communication, conflict resolution, uh, maybe like family budgeting. These are like, hey, these are things that if you can figure out how to solve problems together, basic conflict resolution, communication, it makes a difference in your experience of marriage.

Jared Smyth 19:14

We've gone to a few different seminaries to do some workshops with the guys there. And of course in seminary, uh, you always get great human for, or, or I should say like. Philosophical formation, theological formation. Seminaries are known for this, but you need a good human formation as well so that you know, you don't have people who come out kind of weird. You need to know how to talk to people as well as, uh, you know, know how to preach the gospel. And, uh, when we've been, uh, at these seminary workshops, one of things we'll do is just take them through a really practical exercise on look how, how do you walk somebody through a dating relationship? Like, what are really practical next steps for that?

When we were in focus, I remember sometimes what was dating advice. Uh, it's a little too simple, but it was something like, run after Jesus. And when you get there, look at who's around. And that's not bad advice, you know? Uh, yeah. Sometimes there's a lot of people around and in the right kind of friendship groups, right? That that can be healthy. But that's also not very specific in particular with okay. Mm-hmm. How healthy is that relationship and how is it moving forward? And so just, just as one example to get deep into one aspect here, uh, we might take 'em through something called the relationship attachment model, created by guy Dr. John van out in California relationship attachment model. If you think of a, kind of like a, a music mixing board with sliders on it. From left to right, uh, has a, you know, has different categories called know, trust, rely, commit, touch, and, and the general gist is like, hey, look, if you have any sliders on the far right hand side, touch or commit, right, that are higher than the sliders on the left hand side, no trust, you're adding danger into the relationship, right?

So if you trust somebody more than you know them, yeah. If you commit to them more than you can trust them, right? If you touch them more than anything, you know? Or even know some people who they commit to earlier, they always have to be in relationships. So it's just a very practical way to walk people through how are we thinking about this relationship and how are we making sure we don't step into something that's gonna do damage to us and do violence to a potential healthy future relationship?

Right. The, the reason I'm bringing all that up is because most divorces, most separation, most difficulty in marriage doesn't happen because someone stops believing the Eucharist or because they don't have a good understanding of theology of the body. As awesome as, as those things are, and as much as we'd encourage that, it usually happens 'cause people are terrible communicators or they can't deal with conflict or.

They don't know how to set the right kind of expectations. And so what you see is that the best kind of content to help a relationship is one that combines that good biblical theological sounded stuff with the very practical day-to-day, how do I treat my significant other better? And I, and I think for those of us who love Catechetics, right, the church is very deep in its theology.

Jim Jansen 21:55

Mm-hmm.

Jared Smyth 21:55

Sometimes that can be a new, little, little piece to add to our knowledge base.

Jim Jansen 21:59

Yeah. No, I mean, it was, it was huge for me. I mean, that was, you know, part of my own conversion was like, uh, an intellectual recognition. Like, oh my gosh, this is true. This is makes sense. But I did come from an intact family. My parents were together and more and more getting kind of further out into the peripheries of evangelization. Mm-hmm. It was like, man, I can't just start catechizing people or even introducing them to Jesus with, without also attending to. These very human elements of what it, what does it mean to be a friend?

What does it mean to be in conversation? What does it mean to work through, uh, a disagreement?

Jared Smyth 22:41

Right? Right.

Jim Jansen 22:42

And and you're, and I hear you saying like, yeah, and it turns out for marriages too. Like, like there's a, there's a human natural foundation that the faith needs to live in.

Jared Smyth 22:52

Yeah. Grace builds on nature, and, and we gotta, we gotta build up the right kind of habits and dispositions, uh, to, you know, to be better at these things. You know, you were asking me earlier, Jim, you know, where is marriage right now? But, you know, one of those questions is how does it impact than like, our ministry in practical ways when marriage isn't going well? Y you know, what is the right, you know, I kinda made the statement things we try to do down the line, limp a little bit.

So, so what do I mean? Well, couple things. Number one, when we do surveys where people self, you know, it said a homily. Tell me how healthy you feel like your relationship is. We see at least one in five in your average parish couples. Right. Who are generally, that means they're coming to mass every Sunday self-identify a relationship and need,

Jim Jansen 23:33

which is huge. Yes. 'cause I'm just like, okay. If they're, I, if they're at mass on Sunday, that means they're at most places only a quarter at most of the registered Catholics at that parish. And certainly not every Catholic is registered. Mm-hmm. And so you've already got this kind of elite faithful who are present and you ask those elite faithful that are present on Sunday. Yeah. And, and, and a significant percentage of them, 20%. One, one in five. They're like, yeah, we need help. We need help.

Jared Smyth 24:05

That's average. And that average is men and women. Now, uh, women, not surprisingly, are far more likely. To self-identify that things are not going well as opposed to guys. Right. Guys tend to be a little slower on the emotional upkeep. There we're more simple creatures, Jim.

Jim Jansen 24:20

Yeah.

Jared Smyth 24:21

And so, you know, if, if we were to say, look, if one of the two members of the relationship are not doing well, the whole relationship is not going well. Right. It gets closer to 25 to 30% on average. You know, and it just look, just 'cause you're not heading towards a divorce or a separation or annulment or whatever, like that doesn't mean the relationship is as healthy as it could be.

Jim Jansen 24:39

Yeah. Well, or that you're happy or fruitful. Right? Yeah. I, I mean, I think about just, it's funny, I mean, you know, having seen so many young people discover their, their vocations start to live, you know, in, in the sacrament of marriage. For many to, to know that like divorce is just off the table, that's not an option for us. But for some of them, they're like, oh crap. Like I, I will not allow myself to get a divorce, but man, this is really unhappy, unpleasant, right, right now. Yeah. And to be able to say, no, no, that there's, there's hope. This, this can and should be a life yes. Across, but a, a life giving experience turns out it's, it's maybe not more faith or catechesis as much as it is just, Hey, why don't you guys figure out how to like resolve through these, uh.

Persistent problems. Disagreements. Yeah. Communication issues.

Jared Smyth 25:35

You know, sometimes in prayer classes people would talk about prayer. That's too much of a obedience is sort of like a loveless relationship with God. Right? Like you do it out of obedience, but it's not fruitful, it's not dynamic, it's not, you know, helping you be happy in a certain way. Though sometimes obedience is all we can muster at the time and, um, you know, so, so the reason I'm setting that up is 'cause there's just some real problems even within those who are most active within the church to say nothing. Of the 75% of people who say they're part of the parish who come on Christmas and Easter or just have kids at the school or, you know, this sense of right.

The Matthew 28th sense of everyone's called to Christ in his church. What kind of needs does the external, you know, community have that the church can help?

Jim Jansen 26:15

Yeah, I mean, the wider community, they're, they're our mission field, you know, and it probably makes sense to start with those who think we have something to offer and they're still showing up.

Jared Smyth 26:26

Mm-hmm.

Jim Jansen 26:26

But they're all our responsibility.

Jared Smyth 26:29

Yep. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So one other piece then to, to the argument of, of why this is important. There's a little bit of the need, but the other thing is, is more or less, almost with an 80 20 role, if you're not from a continuously intact married family, you probably don't go to church. And so mm-hmm. Uh, when we do our surveys, well over 80% in some diocese, it has been closer to 90% of the respondents will say, yeah, my parents were married, at least through childhood. Okay. Why is that meaningful? Mm-hmm. If you're under 35, your parents are probably not married. Our churches do not look like the general population, which means soo things.

Mm-hmm. Number one, you know, it just continues to solidify the connection between your family life and, you know, kind of knowing your father and then wanting to know the, uh, God, the father, and uh, uh, but also it means we're not very good many times at reaching out to those who are in irregular stages or situations. Mm-hmm. When it comes to marriage and family life. When I was on campus, you know, we were doing a lot of outreach to millennials and, uh, even though millennials like myself are getting a little gray now, unfortunately, um, the data would say 36% of them were religious nuns religiously unaffiliated, which is mm-hmm.

You know, twice as high as, as boomers and the highest that we have on record. And there's some interesting, you know, positive trends there, which we can talk about later. But, um, but the reality is, you know, if we know just one thing, if we just hold for one data point, uh, that they come from a married family, we know that a 28 year, year old guy and a 58-year-old guy go to church at the exact same rate if they come from a married family.

Right, right. The real thing that distinguishes is the family situation.

Jim Jansen 28:02

Yeah. I mean, that's mind blowing. I mean, that's what, when I first saw this data, you know, and, and I kind of summarized it, it's like, yeah, baby boomers and millennials and Gen Xers and iGen all go to church at the same rate. And then I like pause. People are like, wait, what? No, no, no. They don't. It's like if they come from a family with an intact marriage and it, it's like, but what's changed is millennials and iGen are not coming from intact marriages. Anymore.

Jared Smyth 28:34

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Jim Jansen 28:35

And I mean, it's just like, it, it is, again, it's not the only thing, but man, it is like, that's a really, really powerful, uh, piece of data that I think clarifies a lot of the root issues that I, I think it's that people are distracted. I think we're often spending a lot of time, if we're paying any attention at all, we're trying to deal with symptoms. And I appreciate community is like, Hey, let's go right after the root. It seems like this, this human and divine mix of things we call marriage and family, we gotta attend to that.

Jared Smyth 29:11

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, even, even if we were just to look at social outcomes, right? We look at poverty, we look at, you know, negative outcomes for children, different things like that. One of my favorite statistics we're, we're doing a pilot with Catholic Charities in St. Louis. And so we'll, we'll see if, if we can actually help, right? The, the kind of people that they help. It's a true pilot, but one of the reasons we're doing it is, um, if, if you're born into the bottom 20% of income earners, for instance, to a never married mom, 74% of people stay in the bottom two quintiles. Okay? The bottom two fifths their entire lives, okay? They basically never move up.

If you're born, uh, in that same bottom 20% to a continuously married mother, you actually more likely to be at the very top income level or at any other income level as opposed to the bottom. Okay? So, so even just the social science right there is nothing. Having a mom and dad stably in the home is a sociological cheat code to positive outcomes, uh, for society. If we wanna get really strategic okay. About how to help society, how to help the church, this would be something that we would find, uh, a significant investment to be worthwhile. And mm-hmm. We're talking about marriage and family here, but even just relationships in general. Yeah. There's a deep poverty.

Mm-hmm. And, and I'm sure you, you talk about this all the time in ministry, you know, um, people have half the close friends, they have, people are on antidepressants. Uh, 2014 to 2017, first time since World War ii that the average life expectancy in the United States went down mainly due to what people call deaths of despair or drug overdoses, suicides, all these kind of things that come from severe loneliness.

And in, in fact, in, in our dataset, the loneliest people, you know, who self-identified homilies on the weekends or whatever, um, the loneliest group of people are single 30 year olds, even, even lonelier than the loneliest widows. So we just, we just see that all relationships in general have a deep need. Right. And certainly, you know, the fact that marriage is so less frequent and it's hard to build these relationships is, um, is a central piece. We could talk about the sociological data forever, but of course, the one of the biggest reasons we're in this is because we're all Catholic and like, Hey, as it turns out, scripture starts with a family and then it ends with the wedding face of the lamb, right?

You can't understand how God relates to his people if you don't understand that, let's say nuptial, right? To use an inside baseball term here, uh, the nuptial way, right? It's like,

Jim Jansen 31:21

it's, yeah. It's like it's a theme, like it runs all the way through. Jerry, I wanna, if we can pivot a little bit, like how does Kimo step into this? And there's a little bit of like, you know, like what, you know, like warning or disclaimer for those, like, the part of the gift that Kimo brings is a, a mix of like a super common sense. Like, hey, here's how you meet people where they're at, and a kind of uber nerdy, you know, deep data mining, uh, approach to helping find those who need.

What the church has to offer in terms of mm-hmm. You know, enrichment for, so like, good luck with this, but what does Communio do?

Jared Smyth 32:06

Great, great question. There's two key strategic frameworks that we walk through with every church they're probably worth talking about here. And, and the point of these mm-hmm. Is really to change the culture of the church so that this kind of ministry is the kind of thing that is normalized that everybody does. Right. It's not just the super Catholics who drive 15 passenger vans Right. To talk about their marriage. And even, um, uh, you know, when we were in Kansas City, we, we did a workshop for other marriage prep leaders, and I asked them all in the archdiocese, like, Hey, if I told you my wife and I we're going and talking about our marriage at church for the last couple months, what's your reaction?

And the reaction was all, what's the problem? What's wrong with your marriage?

Jim Jansen 32:45

Right. Are you, okay? We'll pray for you.

Jared Smyth 32:47

Yeah. Right, right. So if it's always only for people who have problems or, you know, the, the top five people who do everything at the church, we're never actually gonna, um, shift culture and, and make this a normal kind of thing. Yeah. And so the, the way we try to do that is. One framework is what we call a data informed full circle relationship ministry. We say data informed, very particularly, and not data-driven. The Holy Spirit still converts hearts, okay, this is still a ministry, but we just wanna be as savvy as we can by actually trying to figure out what are some of the real needs in the parish, in the community.

Like we can admit, uh, augment that with what father knows from confessions or what people know from living there. But we wanna give a good sense of, hey, look, if one in five year marriages is struggling, you know, is our ministry uh, adequate? You know, to adapt to that.

Jim Jansen 33:30

I really appreciate that there's a, you know, I am not, I don't have the, you know, maybe the analytical intellect to be that data nerd, but I, I know again and again from my own experience how easy it is to be blinded. 'cause it's just the water I swim in. I can only be me and know my life and circumstances. Mm-hmm. And what data and surveys and some of that effort does is it helps me see things that I can't see as clearly from my own experience or my own vantage point. And I, I really appreciate that. I, I love, like the other way Kimo talks about this, like, there's, there's no gospel mandate to be unsophisticated, right?

Sure, yep. It's okay to, to leverage an Excel spreadsheet and a, you know, and some, uh, qualitative analysis to, to accomplish the mission of the gospel. And I, I appreciate that because it, it matters and I, and I think we just often don't see things without the benefit of utilizing some of those, those tools.

Jared Smyth 34:39

Yeah. You know, back when we run in the West for focus, I think a lot of our conversations centered around how much, uh, systematically can you do to help with evangelization versus how much is it based on per conviction and prayer. And I, I think in ministry, you know, I know a lot of people would focus and a lot of other ministries, this is always a tension, right? How much to lean into those. Oh yeah. But the reality is you, you probably, at least at the minimum, need a little bit of both, right. To, um, to get the best result.

Jim Jansen 35:04

I mean, I think about, you know, like, it's not quite the same thing, but I think about cyril and Methodius and others where like, they literally invent a whole new alphabet for the, for the, uh. The, the ability to articulate the gospel, you know, to the, to the Slavic peoples. And I'm like, okay, I'm not inventing a whole new language. I'm just, I'm just gonna like, spend a little time studying the data, doing some surveys, trying to give myself a perspective that pretty quickly gets verified. Just like, oh yeah, I didn't see that.

I could have, maybe should have if I was paying more attention to my neighbors and to what was going on. But this, this shows me really clearly that there are people in my own backyard who, who need help.

Jared Smyth 35:47

Yep. Yeah. So, so that's a data informed piece and so it helps diagnose, but it also, when we get to marketing, helps us outreach kind of strategically full circle. So we've been doing this, you know, for at least our, our test in Jacksonville was 15 to 18 communal really formed in 2019. So we've been doing this for a while, but really it matches with, um, a, a nice document from Rome that came out a few years ago. Catechumenal Pathways for Married Life, and what's the point of that?

Mm-hmm. Document in Jared's mind. Uh, it's look, uh, most parishes off for marriage prep. The quality of which varies widely, but not a whole lot then until somebody has a problem. And as it turns out, there's a lot of time in between those two things. So how can we broaden out proactively the way that we're helping people at key moments of their romantic relationship? So we'd say, look, single life, what does healthy dating look like? And many times, how do you attract more guys to church? Because if it's always 70, 30 women and men, you know, you're not gonna fix the marriage rates. Marriage prep. How do you do that effectively if you know, marriage prep? On average, if 30% of the people stay in the sacraments after they get married.

There's some content pieces that, that have an 80% success rate. What do they do that's different? You know, marriage is a need. And our surveys, it's 96% of pastors say they do coaching or counseling. Uh, 56% self-identify, thinking they're good at it. And, uh, you know, even if they're great at it, it takes a lot of time. You, you know, how do you scale that up if one in four or one in five couples needs it? And then, uh, in a lot of ways, the key then is what we call marriage enrichment. And the analogy here is you can bring a smoking car into the garage or you can do regular oil changes. And what this does is, is it helps the paradigm of look, how do you help good marriages get better?

That's, that's how you talk about it to people. How do you help good marriages get better? We wanna invest in more deeply in your most important relationship after God. But what that also does is then it gives permission for those relationships that are starting to form cracks in the foundation to get some help before it becomes a more difficult situation down the road.

Jim Jansen 37:46

I mean, there's so much I love about that, but part of it is, again, where we started our conversation being deep in the, the life and challenges of parish ministry leaders. Everybody's tired, everybody's got way more to do than they can possibly get done. And to, to, to do the old right announce of prevention, you know, is worth a pound of cure.

Jared Smyth 38:11

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jim Jansen 38:12

Like this is, this is in the prevention space and, and if we can do just a little bit of shoring people up one, I mean, it prevents, it's actually just, it saves time and energy, but there's a gratitude in those people that they're now. Uniquely by their right, by their, their vocation and their experience, they're able to do that with others. And before long you've got, you can really start to make a dent in the culture and in the, the deep needs before you've got divorces and children suffering from broken homes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Jared Smyth 38:47

Yeah, absolutely. So, so that's kinda the framework of, of how are we adding particular kind of ministry help or, you know, suggestion there. But, but in a lot of ways, communio is, we're more of an operating system Okay. Than a content producer because like we said earlier, there's been an explosion of good Catholic stuff. We don't need to reinvent the wheel when there's good marriages, prep marriage preps out there. Okay. The problem is, uh, a lot of this stuff stays in our bookshelves and doesn't get to the people who need it the most.

And so that's where evangelization and outreach and everything comes in. And so we, we've seen some impressive, we can talk about this later, like members of new people showing up to the parishes and parish growth. But the reality is for us. Evangelization and outreach is, is kind of a means to an end. Okay? If we would just reach the people in the pews and strengthen the relationships, right? That would be transformative for the entire church. But the reality is it's kinda like, you know, we had a pastor once who they had a, um, mission to Africa, right? That they would continue to fund and go there and he is like, look guys, this is like, it's like building a well, you know, people need water.

And when you give them something that's a real felt need, it's another avenue for the gospel. Right now there's deep real felt needs when it comes to relationships with people. And so this is just a really nice, a avenue to invite people right into the parish, right. For support, for depth of, you know, faith, for friendship, and, uh, and you can slowly walk with them then into right, their own deeper discipleship.

So we, we talk about this in terms of, we call it a ministry engagement ladder. It is general outreach, right? It's very similar to, um, what you guys were talking about as well, right?

Jim Jansen 40:20

Yeah. A, a clear path to discipleship.

Jared Smyth 40:22

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Jim Jansen 40:23

Jared, let's talk a little bit about that because there's something so common sense about the concept of a ministry engagement ladder. But I have to say, in my experience, it is not common practice break. Break that down for us a little bit.

Jared Smyth 40:36

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I use my focus experience, right? At University of Pittsburgh, every year students would come back like they do every fall. And so we'd have a Catholic rush week. Well, I go Greek when you could go Roman, ha ha ha ha. And you know, you'd invite a bunch of people to show up to a kickball thing or a wing eating competition and a normal student would get up and say, Hey, love being a part of the Newman Center. Next week there's free pizzas on a speaker. And you just slowly walk with people in relationships so that when you invited them to the small group, to the retreat to join choir, they were more likely to say yes because they have some kind of relationship of familiarity or trust.

Mm-hmm. At a very minimum with the church. And so what we're doing is we're building a similar operating system, or I guess a similar. Kinda outreach system at the parish where a couple times a year we'll encourage a parish to run a large outreach event. And this is, you know, we have nerds on staff who get into the details. So like, we're very specific, right? Not that it's a stray jacket, but some people have never done this. So we're very specific with the recommendation there. This is 90% fun, 10% content. So this is not having, you know, Scott Hanh or Archbishop Meredith Lucas or someone come and give a talk. That'd be great.

Right. But not for the general population who's not already involved.

Jim Jansen 41:44

Yeah. Well, and I mean, again, it's like I am sympathetic towards those. So like, oh my gosh, I love Theology of the body. And that's what these, that's what these young couples need. Yes. But it's not what they. Not, not the need they feel. Mm-hmm. Yet. Mm-hmm. And so they're like, Hey, let's just start with some fun. Let's get people con connected and let's have, you know, let's have like, just, just a low key, you know, moment in this fun conversation about, you know, uh, about whatever you know about marriage. Like, that's just like, that's just, it's common sense, but it often doesn't happen.

I mean, we often plan things, if I can be honest. We plan things that we would like to do that have like zero appeal for those who we would actually say we're trying to reach.

Jared Smyth 42:38

Yeah. It's, it's tough, right? 'cause people give, right? They're, they're peripheral. They have good intentions, right? They put a lot of work into some of these kind of things. And so you wanna thank them for that. Uh, but the reality is. It's not very good to have answers to questions that nobody's asking, and sometimes it takes a little while. Right. To, to get them to a place where they can do that.

Jim Jansen 42:55

I mean, that's like what, what the ministry engagement Ladder is, is like, Hey, we're gonna meet people where they're at when, you know, like, when they're just interested in fun and connection and then like a light couples date and just slowly progress it and like Sure. It may end with, you know. Deep couples retreat, you know, praying together with theology of the body. But we're gonna start with the felt need for some fun and initial connection.

Jared Smyth 43:19

Yeah. And in intentionality is really important on this. Right? So we, you know, one cool thing about communal, we've invested, you know, at this point, at these probably $14 million in software outreach, marketing systems, predictive analytics. So we'll run data on likelihood for divorce or separation based on 80,000 people who got divorced or separated last year for the church community just anonymously. It's just another way to say, what do the real needs look like right around your church? And, um, but one of the other things that allows us to do is be very specific with some marketing campaigns to reach out into the community and invite people into those easily in, in invitational events.

So these, you know, when we say 90 10, it's like an October fest. It's an outdoor movie night with food trucks. Okay. Okay. These are things that anybody could wanna do, right? And, and they're an easy invite.

Jim Jansen 44:06

You know, as you're talking there, it occurs to me. You are just using technology to listen and to like hear what people actually need. It's a tool just to be able to listen on a broad scale to the repeated patterns of loneliness, need connection, uh, so that when you actually plan, uh, an event or an effort to reach out to people you can connect.

Jared Smyth 44:32

Yeah, that's right. You know, my, um, communio founder, JP De Gans, great guy, lives out in dc. He was really involved in the political world for a while before joining Communio. And you know, he's got eight kids of his own, uh, family member, you know, their marriage had failed and he, he ended up adopting their four kids as well. Right. And, you know, just, just saw the, the needs that are out there in, in many different ways. And, you know, one of the things, one of his paradigms is, look, we spend an awful lot of resources and strategy and sweat and blood on getting a senator elected.

You know, uh, we're very sophisticated with how we do that. You, one of the things we offer to church is door to door block walking app. We're like, Hey look, you know, in the political world you can say, I'm gonna walk down the street in a likely swing state. Like in, in Pennsylvania, you know, swing state voter, or who's a swing state voter? Lemme talk to 'em and try to get 'em to vote for my people. We can do that for the church and say, Hey, who's likely to have young kids? Let's invite them to the parish where maybe for this particular event, the parish is offered babysitting. Because if you want young couples mm-hmm. To show up to your church, you might have to figure out what to do with the kids.

You know, that's a huge barrier. Mm-hmm. And by personalizing these invitations and adding a little sophistication to the marketing, to the outreach. Yeah. There, there's just, there's just a higher hit rate on these things. So, you know, last year on average, 36% of the signups to these kind of things were new to the parish, which I'm not even promising that Jim, like, that's ama, like, 10% would be really great, you know?

Jim Jansen 45:58

Oh, yeah. I mean, for, for most parishes, if they offer a thing and it works, they're just like, oh, we're just so happy somebody came. Mm-hmm. It's like, okay. How many of those people are current members of the parish? Uh, pretty much everybody. Okay. It's like, well, great. I'm glad people came, but you know, the real win is when people who aren't yet members of the parish start to come. Exactly. And you guys are killing that. I mean, I wanna give you a chance to just, to like share some of the stories of parishes that you've been able to partner with and the, the, the really, the pretty dramatic turnaround and transformation they've seen in, in connecting with. Couples and, and others around, uh, marriage and, and relationships.

Jared Smyth 46:44

Yeah, that's, yeah. That's a great, that's great. I mean, the stories are always the best. Right. I'll just mention briefly, right. We talked about the outreach just to flesh out these stories a little bit, you know? When new people show up, intentionality is important. Right? So sometimes we talk about, mm-hmm. Like I think Catholics from home, from what I understand, was a really successful marketing campaign. A lot of new people came back to the church, uh, or people who relapsed, but not every church was ready to receive them. Okay. And so they, they didn't stick around. And so we try to be really specific with, hey, great high five new people showed up.

What are their names? What's their contact? What's the next step? And we build out monthly things that flow into, Hey, we're running a retreat, we're running a small group. And, and, and so that's right. That's kind of when I talk about an operating system, we're driving demand into the good stuff a church is now offering. And the, the cool thing is when you, um, when you add just a little bit of you, you know, like let's say you infuse would be a term we'd use, infuse a little bit of this relationship ministry into things that already exist because there's such a need out there. Okay? This is a very simple thing to do, but we have seen people come out of the woodwork.

So one example is we had a, um, a church in Florida, uh, just south of Lake Okeechobee. And, uh. Seems to me to be one of the poorest areas of the country. You know? So a lot of people, first generation, Haitian, Mexican, sugarcane, farming migrants, you know, it, it was, um, very similar. What when we were training in Ave, what was the, was the little city, uh, near Ave? Uh, ah, I don't remember. Anyway, so, but Okay. But Point is pretty low income. And so the pastor, there great guy, was the first event we did, it was a Valentine's Day date night case. We like plated meals for people and there was a little testimony and a little dance, and they had babysitting for kids outside.

Next event was a bingo night, which I, I don't know if I'd recommend that for all Anglos, but I guess a lot of Spanish speaking people loved Bingo. That's what they told me. Sweet. Okay. Yeah. And so we did a little quick 15 minute exercise where couples could talk about communication at their tables. Mm-hmm. And you know, we got up there and said, Hey look, just so y'all know. We really wanna invest in marriages and families here, and healthy relationships. If any of you ever need anything, please directly come to me. I would love to help, yada, yada yada. Well, just after that second event, okay. We hadn't even started the deeper content, the retreats, the small groups, uh, six couples came up to father who had serious problems in their relationship.

Mm-hmm. And these are young couples with a lot of kids, different things like that. And, and father was able to get them all the right kind of help, right? And, and save all their marriages and get them to healthier places. And the reality is, look, father was the same guy there, right? Like they always could have come up in theory and, and asked him to help earlier. But there's just something really po powerful about providing the vision, right? Telling people this is what we're doing, allowing them to dip their toes into the relationship. And, um, and that provides a lot of momentum for you. You know, the first door you go through when there's a crisis is usually the first one you find.

And so, the easier we make these doors to open, the more the people are gonna open them up when they need it.

Jim Jansen 49:43

Right. Well, and it's a whole nother conversation, but the sad fact is like, there's a disconnect between the, the mind of the public of like, okay, who could help me, who could help me find happiness, who could help our relationship, who could, and like, uh, just, you know, he played the word association game, uh oh. The, uh, the, the local church down the street. My, my Catholic parish is just not high on the list. But the reality is we actually do have the life-saving medicine. And so being able to, you know, put some effort to help connect people to that, is it, I mean, it really yields a disproportionately, uh, fruitful result.

Because we've always had the medicine, but it's, we're, we're not, we're not deploying it and people aren't coming to us anymore recognizing that it's here.

Jared Smyth 50:36

Yeah. And you know, Jim, there's, there's just a lot of tricks of the trade that I, I was, look, I was pretty engaged in ministry for a long time, and when people had problems in their marriage, I'd be like, well, I guess you gotta go to counseling. That's kinda the answer. And the reality is actually right, 80% of marriages, uh, can be saved through through coaching. Right. Which a bit more, uh, looking forward, right? What are some skills, how do we talk to each other? But there's some that need counseling, but there's lots of different ways to be really effective.

Okay. With, um, with people who need that.

Jim Jansen 51:04

I just wanna make sure you're saying like, counseling is like the, okay. That's like the surgeon level medicine for a sick marriage and like Yeah. Coaching's like a step down. It's like, Hey, it's like an EMT. Like, let's, let's have a conversation here. There's not as much skill, it's not as hard to provide. And that's actually what most couples need.

Jared Smyth 51:27

Yeah. You can train coaches to be really effective. Right. With how they help people and that kind of need and, and that, and I'm not trying to rip on counseling. Some people absolutely need that. Oh yeah. But the reality is, is that a lot of people can get very healthy and don't need that level of expense. Right. Don't need that level of time spent even.

Jim Jansen 51:44

Yeah. Well, and the counselors that are listening are like, holy crap, like, please, I am overwhelmed. I can't possibly meet all the demand. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So if there could be a step in between nothing and my services, please provide it. Mm-hmm.

Jared Smyth 52:00

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Jim Jansen 52:01

Don't let 'em get to the point that they have to have counseling.

Jared Smyth 52:03

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. So, so that's an individual parish. And so they've, they've been, they've been doing great there and, and we have plenty of parishes who are doing well. A a couple things just to note, right. So in our, in our test in Jacksonville, right, the divorce rate went down a quarter in the county, but the average church growth. In terms of attendance and also growth in giving, uh, went up 23 and 28% respectively. Not, not that, that's the reason we're doing it. Okay. But No, but that's, that's

Jim Jansen 52:30

impressive. Yeah. What It shows the connection. Oh my gosh, that's great.

Jared Smyth 52:34

Yeah. Yeah. There's a real need and people show up when you outreach. The real need we just got done then as well, and this is sort of hot off the presses with a, a three year project in Kansas City, Kansas with Archbishop, uh, now emeritus. Uh, Nauman started meeting with him and, and the new archbishop out there. And, you know, the roll up numbers were, uh, on average the churches that at least generally followed the recipe, right? We're just consultants. So, you know, you can always mm-hmm. Suggest something, but that doesn't mean, uh, everyone always takes the advice, which is okay.

But on average, those feeling, those churches grew 23%. With mass attendance over three years on Sundays, the, the whole diocese grew 11%. Okay. So there was still a little bit of a, of, of a post COVID bump there, but I think we've also gotten significantly better at what we're doing mm-hmm. Than even when we started out there. Okay. It, it, that's the meta stuff. But even then, when it just comes to the content, and, and I wanna emphasize this so much to people who, like, know people who are having problems or maybe they're themselves are going, you know, relationships are seasonal. There's highs and lows. I've dealt with that. I'm sure you have, but everybody goes through it.

Right. In Kansas City, two thirds of people who self-identified a relationship, a need by the time they went through any of the content. Okay. And some of this content is much more effective than others. Okay. It could be the alpha marriage course, could be adventures in marriage, whatever it is. Two thirds of them self-identified saying they were fours and fives on a five point scale after the content.

I mean, basically they were doing great. Yeah. It was 71% of people who disagree with the statement, you know. I'm confident that we can resolve conflicts in a healthy way, then said they could resolve 'em in a healthy way. You know, this, this, we had a retreat in Virginia where 16 couples that a marriage in need afterwards, only one of the 32 people self-identified. And, and I, the reason I'm saying all this is because this stuff is really effective if we would just go through it and we could get people to go through it. And if there's priest listening, one thing I always like to say is, look, father, you know, you gotta go on a canonical retreat every year, a whole week, uh, to keep your primary relationship in check with most married couples.

Mm-hmm. It's, Hey, I talked to a deacon for five hours 20 years ago. You know, good luck for the rest of your life. And just, we can just do a little bit more to help, to help with all that.

Jim Jansen 54:43

Yeah.

Jared Smyth 54:43

And so,

Jim Jansen 54:44

well, and if anything, I mean, I'm, I'm more nerdy than, than most, and as I hear these, you know, some of these stats. They're all kinda like eye popping, but the theme over and over again is a little bit of formation, a little bit of connection, some basic invitations and connection. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Go a long, long way. And again, this is, you know, this is kind of my minor nerdy world, but to increase, you know, the, the mass attendance at a parish by 20 plus percent is huge.

Jared Smyth 55:21

It's quite a lag measure. Yeah. It takes a while.

Jim Jansen 55:23

Oh yeah. That is not, yeah, that's not, and there's a whole lot of things that have to happen, but that's, that is not an easy thing to pull off. It's really exciting. Jared, our, our time is like totally flying here. I just wanna give you a chance here. Yeah. There's so many places we could, we could go here, but I wanna give you a chance, because of your work with Kimo, you're around the country. You get to see a lot of kind of macro trends. What do you see happening in the larger church in the United States?

Jared Smyth 55:52

This one, the blessings of my job. The Catholic world's very small, and so I feel like every time I go to another state or meet with another diocese, there's an old friend that's there and uh, you know, and that's, uh, and that's a beautiful thing. I was thinking, my brother and I were talking about this a couple days ago. You know, there was, there was a time the recent churches passed where a movie called the Da Vinci Code actually needed people to write apologetic books to talk about why it wasn't real. It that, it seems ridiculous now. Right. But, but that was a real.

Jim Jansen 56:18

No, but I remember, yeah.

Jared Smyth 56:20

Mm-hmm. Like, when we were doing focus, people were like, wow, you know, Opus Day, like they're a secret society. Right. And, uh, or, or even, you know, in 2010, yeah, 2015, like the new atheists were a real cultural force, especially for young men. People laugh about them now. I mean, they were a total joke. They're an intellectual joke. Mm-hmm. You know, you look, you listen to guys like Sam Harris, and, and I'm embarrassed that, you know, people took somebody like him seriously. Right. He has fifth grade arguments for, you know, the current positions Mr. Hyper rational holds. Right now it's, and mm-hmm. I'm saying all that to say culturally there, there has been an obviously large shift with moving from, I am hyper skeptical.

Of anything that's not material or the church or family or some of these more traditionally Christian Catholic things to a severe openness or you know, you might say people have woken up to the idea that they've been lied to. Right. The promises are hollow and there's a significant openness now to people who are hungry for something that's steeper, something that's more substantial. And you know, the question is, C, can our churches respond to that? The great thing in the Catholic world mm-hmm Is even, you know, I use the example of how bad curriculum was when I was teaching confirmation. Look, there's so much good curriculum out there now. Okay. Focus Oh yeah. Is gonna have 50 to 70,000 people in bible studies this year is what they told me.

You know, we're working with Evangelical Catholic and CLI in Tulsa alongside them. They're doing great stuff. Amazing parish word on fire. I mean, we could, we could talk, you know, we could sit here for half an hour and talk about how many like, amazing dynamic apostolates there are in the church that just didn't exist 20 years ago. And this is a free of the new evangelization. And so I guess, you know, at, at the end of the day, that's saying two things. One is there's a great amount of resources and good in the church. There's a great amount of openness we need to respond to it. But especially for those of your listeners who are in different apostolates, I just think in the future, and this might be a little bit of a particular Jared thing, but, but I think however people had to build up these apostolates in, you know, out of eighties and nineties era Catholicism.

I, I think it took people with, with pretty strong wills, right? To build these things from nowhere. And yeah, I, I absolutely think in the future as these things are established. There's a way that like the friendships that some of us have for in ministry, look, I, um, you know, my friend Tim helps run amazing parish right now. He's a great guy. I don't wanna reinvent the wheel and create something on Parish health or Jason Simon. We're working with him, uh, because he's done a really nice job on how to do evangelization. I could think about how to do that, but you know what, he's dedicated his life to this kind of stuff. Let's ingrain that into what we're doing and for us, like, I wanna stay in our lane.

Like, I think prayer is important. I think discipleship's important and many times usually happens within the family, but we're not primarily a prayer group, right? And we wanna get really good at doing this marriage and healthy relationship evangelization thing. And so I I, I'm, I'm very optimistic in the conversations I'm having, right? With different, you know, buddies and friends and, you know, acquaintances across the country that as long as we keep building the kingdom at the front of our minds, we'll be able to kind of. Reach the opportunity, right. Uh, that, that God has put in front of us right now, and hopefully maybe even American Pope can help with that. Uh.

Jim Jansen 59:48

Mm-hmm.

Jared Smyth 59:49

So.

Jim Jansen 59:49

No, I, I appreciate that, Jared. I think, I mean, all of it is hopeful. Big picture, just what the Lord has done over the last 20 years, the openness of our mission field and the resources that are well positioned to, to meet that. And I, if I can label it, just there's a unity amongst those who are on mission now that it is, I mean, you know, we're all human, but it is surprisingly un territorial.

I, I, in a way that's really refreshing, I, I think is a mark of, of the Lord's work where there's just great respect and trust and openness between many of these apostolates who. At least from my limited view, would've, could've easily become competitors. And, uh, the in, in fact, the, the spirit of collegiality is really, as you can, you can feel it. It's very cool. Jared, how, how do people connect with, uh, communio if they wanna learn more about your work?

Jared Smyth 1:00:51

That's great. So I know, explain it fully, but we're a consultancy, so we'll work with any church for three years, right? We, we're not a, we don't wanna be a perpetual consultancy, but we'll help them build out this program and the system step by step through the whole process. Our website is. Communio, C-O-M-M-U-N-I o.org. There's the academic journal, communio, and, you know, I'm, I'm pretty smart, but maybe just a tad under Von Baltazar and, uh, uh, you know, Benedict 16. Yeah. It's so not that communio.

Jim Jansen 1:01:17

It's heady. Yeah, it's heady stuff. Yeah.

Jared Smyth 1:01:19

Yeah. I'm almost there. Yeah. And, um,

Jim Jansen 1:01:20

not the magazine, the marriage ministry.

Jared Smyth 1:01:22

And if you wanna reach out to me directly, um, my email is J-S-M-Y-T-H-J [email protected]. And look, we'd be so happy we working with, um, we got formal partnerships with about 19 diocese across the country. We've worked in a little over 30, you know, in, in Nebraska as well. We, we have some funding, um, for different churches that you kinda work with directly

Jim Jansen 1:01:44

mm-hmm.

Jared Smyth 1:01:45

To kinda significantly reduce the cost, which is awesome. And so. Any way that I can help talk to anybody, you know, that they're interested, please reach out and we'd love to chat.

Jim Jansen 1:01:53

Awesome, Jared. Thank you. Thanks for making the time. Thanks for what you're, what you're doing. Always a, always a fun conversation.

Jared Smyth 1:01:59

That's right. Alright, well God bless you, Jim.

Jim Jansen 1:02:01

Alright everybody, you know somebody who needs to hear this. So when you are at a safe place where you can share this out, you can let the Lord show you who now. But uh, share this out with somebody who needs to hear it. Thanks everybody. Thanks for listening to the Quip Cast. We hope this episode has inspired you to live your faith and equip you to be fruitful in your mission. Stay connected with us by going to equip.omaha.org. God bless and see you next time.