The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Creating a Movement Within Your Parish

Episode Date: March 1, 2018

Jeff shares his personal formula for creating a successful movement within your parish. You might be surprised when you hear his approach to ministry. He also shares the incredible story of Stephanie and how one sudden moment led her to forgiveness, love, and deepened faith.

You're listening to the Jeff Kaven Show, Episode 54, Creating a Movement Within Your Parish. Hey, I'm Jeff Kavins. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven Show. Hey, this is Jeff Kavins. Thanks for joining me once again as we're talking about.

all things discipleship. We're talking about following the Lord, imitating Christ in everyday life, and we're having a great time of it, and I sure appreciate your feedback. We're getting so much feedback from you, from literally all over the world, and it is exciting to see this momentum picking up. People are wanting to follow Christ. People are wanting to emulate his life, to imitate Christ in everyday life, and that's what we're all about. And we've got to some exciting stuff going on right now. So thank you for joining me. I know that you're on the way to work or you're coming home or you're sitting at home right now. Maybe you're even sick. You're in the hospital, whatever it might be. And it's always good to have some encouragement

and some assistance in your life. And I need it myself. And I'm happy to be here to provide every week some encouragement for you. Bottom line is we're part of the same family. We are part of the same movement. And we've got to work together in bringing Jesus Christ to this world. We really have a difficult situation facing us in the media, the universities, and Hollywood. And to get our message out, we do literally have to work together. And I know that you're willing to do that. Hey, we've got a great show today. I want to talk about a topic that is really important, and that is creating a movement within your parish. I'm going to give you kind of a formula today

on how to begin creating a movement within your parish that a lot of people don't think about and it might surprise you. And one way is simply the shotgun approach and that is to throw everything at the wall and hope that something happens in your parish. The other is more of a strategic move to kind of organize your people,

in your parish and really have a goal in mind. Hey, I've got some wonderful feedback. I've got a story today to tell you out of Australia that, to be honest with you, it changed my whole morning with my wife. My wife and I meet every morning. I make tea for her, as you know, and we talk for about an hour every single morning. Life would not be the same without an hour of tea and talking with my wife. and we got an email from a young lady by the name of Stephanie from Australia that kind of blew me away and I'm hoping to have her on the show at some point I'm going to talk to you about that in in just a moment I mean literally the teachings via social media and you know the electronic version of our teachings had a major major impact on her life and I was so blessed to be a part of it

I'm going to share that with you in just a moment. I got a letter from Mike, and I think Mike really does kind of speak for a lot of people today. He says, Jeff, great show. I had to stop working in 2015 due to a brain injury. The suffering during the last few months or the last few years, he actually says, of working was intense. My last day of work, I broke down and a coworker came into my office. to ask what was wrong. He closed the door and prayed over me, and I felt something.

To make a long story short, I unknowingly used many of the 15 ways to deal with suffering that you spoke about on your podcasts since then, and they do help. And that was one of the recent podcasts, 15 things to do in the midst of suffering. He goes on and says, since that day I used the time off to read the Bible cover to cover. Convert from being Jewish to Catholic last Easter and growing deeper in my faith with your help. Welcome home, my brother. He's a Jewish convert. While my injury, he says, will never improve, and I will, I pray it will never get worse. As quickly as feared, the suffering has a reason. These 15 things are more clear now, and it will really help me. Thank you.

Thanks, Mike. Mike, we love you and we pray for you. And I'm confident that a little contrary to what you said, I think you can get better. And there's always the hope and there's always that optimistic spirit that God can heal you and God can make a difference in your life. But I am so happy that you have found meaning in the midst of your suffering right now. You have found what many people do not find. It eludes them. And that is that your suffering joined to Christ has has salvific power and you can apply it to loved ones. And I would say to you, Mike, and I would say to those of the view that are listening, if you've got loved ones, you've got children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, you've got colleagues at work, the suffering that you go through, can be joined with Jesus and it has salvific power to actually change their lives. In other words, you've got the power to walk in the same love that Jesus loved the world. And that is an amazing thing. On to this another story which just knocked my wife and I over at breakfast. I got an email from a young lady in Australia by the name of Stephanie. And Stephanie writes me this letter and she said,

I can share it with you. So I'm going to share. I'm going to share it with you. But this is an outstanding story. And I'm going to put a picture of her and the car that she was driving that she speaks of in this story in the show notes just to give you kind of a full a full view of what this young lady is talking about okay she says my name is stephanie and i would like to tell you my story she said you unknowingly have an amazing role in it i was listening to your talk on the hidden power of forgiveness on sunday afternoon while driving to a retreat on the outskirts of Sydney, Australia. Forgiveness is something I have struggled with these last 18 months, particularly when the people I was struggling to forgive aren't sorry. We've kind of all been there,

haven't we? And don't even recognize what they have done. For many months, I have agonized over this burden. The retreat was about preparing for Lent and had a pro-life focus. She said, I put your talk on and at least I pretended to consider forgiveness if I was about to go on the retreat. She said, you spoke about Matthew chapter 18 and then the last words I heard were you praying for the grace to forgive, to forgive. Get this now. Get this. Seconds later, I was taken out by a drunk driver who was speeding at 130 kilometers. Man, that's about 80 miles an hour in a 60 mile an hour zone. She said, my car swerved across traffic, hit the concrete barrier on the far side of the road, flipped and landed on its roof. It is a miracle that none of the oncoming traffic

hit me. I was trapped inside the wreckage until the onlookers pulled me out. There was petrol and fluid leaking inside the car and glass everywhere. I walked away from the wreckage in shock with just a gay, a graze on my shoulder and some whiplash. The paramedics arrived expecting to pull a body from the wreckage and were amazed to see me standing there unhurt. The other driver was also unhurt. He was arrested on the scene and charged with high-range drunk driving, speeding, negligent driving, and a few other things. I saw the best of humanity that afternoon, Stephanie says. The people who pulled me from the wreckage hugged me like I was their child

and stayed with me until the accident was cleared, and my parents had come to pick me up. The police, paramedics, and firefighters, tow truck drivers, and civilians were just incredible. When I was released, I had a chance to properly realize what had happened. I knew there was a reason that God had saved me. And I also knew that it was not insignificant that your prayer, Jeff, was the last thing I heard. I got home and decided to call all the people I had refused to forgive. I told them what had happened and then released them from the burden. of my grudge. Stephanie, yay. She goes on and says, my body felt a bit ordinary. But my soul had never

felt lighter. Thank you for being there for me during the scariest moment of my life. God used you as a vessel for such, there's so much healing. Your talk I have taken. She said she framed it on the wall. I'd like to see that. She said, I put a post on Facebook and I was absolutely inundated with love and support. I spent the whole day answering my phone and having visitors who wanted to see me. I felt so loved and so safe. So is God. God is so great. Please feel free to share it any way you can. So, well, we did, we did, Stephanie. I love that story. You know, that there is power in CDs. There's power in electronic media. There's power. in podcasts, when people can listen to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And literally on this one, Stephanie, you're telling me that the last thing you heard was me praying for you to forgive and you were taken out by a drunk driver and realized God saved your life. And the first thing you did was you went and you forgave those who you had a grudge with. Stephanie, you're an amazing young lady. and I want to tell everybody your story. I want to put the picture of you and your car on the show notes for people to see. My friends, if you've got a story like this, I'd love to hear it.

You know, God is moving in incredible ways every single day, every single day. We're going to take a break right now. When we come back, I'm going to talk to you about a bit of a formula on how your church can create a movement and you can get more people participating in your Bible studies, your adult ed programs, and evangelization and discipleship. You're listening to the Jeff Kaven Show. The Great Adventure Catholic Bible Study Program is the most popular and acclaimed Catholic Bible study out there, and it has helped hundreds of thousands of people find new meaning in their lives.

If you want to encounter the power of God's Word and better understand how your life fits into the story of salvation, history, consider participating in a great adventure Bible study. To preview the first session of any TGA Bible study for free, create an online account at ascensionpress.com. Hey, thanks for coming back. We've got a great show today. We just, before the break, we're talking about Stephanie from Australia and her amazing story of God getting her attention and forgiving people that she had a grudge against. And Mike, who has found himself in a real period of suffering, but has discovered that there are 15 things to do in the midst of suffering that really do make a difference in his life. Hey, I'd like to talk to you about how you can create a movement within your parish. Before I do

that, let me just say this. If you got a question for me and you want me to talk about something in particular, I want to encourage you to email me, okay? And you can email me at, here's the address, the Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. That's the, it's the Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. And every week, we've got so many wonderful things to talk about. And you might have topics that other people need to know about. And if you tell them to me, I might think about them and say, man, I'd like to talk about that. too. Just had a great week this last week. Scott Hahn and Christophonic and I did a conference, a men's conference in Columbus, Ohio, and Chuck Wilson, yay, you are the best. You had a great

turnout, 3,200 men, and it was broadcast on Catholic radio in Columbus. We had a great time in Columbus. And it's always good for me to get together with my good friend, one of my best friend Scott Hahn. And he, you know, actually, he's the godfather of my middle daughter. And we're only 10 days apart in age. And he's older than me by 10 days. So I got to respect him. But I was good to get together with him and Christophonic, my good friend out in Denver, soon to be in Steubenville. He's moving to Stubinville. But I want to talk to you about creating a movement within your church. You know, there's all kinds of programs out there about what to do to create momentum in your church and to build Bible studies and adult ed programs and, you know, confirmation programs and so forth.

The truth of the matter is that programs and movements are facilitated by relationships. It isn't so much the program, to be honest with you. It's not the marketing and the advertising, but it is one-on-one relationships. As we speak right now, Billy Graham is lying in state in North Carolina. I think it's North Carolina. And then he'll go to the capital in Washington. And I'm a big fan of Billy Graham, to be honest with you. Some of you might write in and say, oh, you're going back to your Protestant days.

Well, get a life. No, Billy Graham is an amazing man of God. And he had such a simple message, you know. And he spoke to the people in such a simple way. And in fact, it's very similar to an earlier show I did on the cup of Curigma, the Carigma. A little play on words there with the Carigma coffee makers. But Billy Graham had a way of sharing the gospel with people that was effective. It spoke to their hearts.

They responded. And it was the basic message of Jesus Christ. And that is that Jesus loves you. you and has a plan for your life. Number one. Number two, sin has gotten in a way. Number three, Jesus died for you. He died for your sins. Number four, you need to repent and receive the gospel. That's number four. And number five is that you, you need to, after you repent and you receive the gospel, you need to begin to join with the church in his family that he created for you, in a marvelous family, and that you also need to be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit,

and you need to start making disciples yourself. Well, this basic formula of the curigma, the corigma is basically what Billy Graham preached and it was successful. And it's not successful because Billy Graham is so successful. It's the message of Jesus Christ that gets into hearts that we need to learn. If you didn't listen to that show, I would encourage you to go back and listen to the cup of curigma on how to share the gospel with your friends. Well, if we're going to grow as a parish, there's not going to be secret teachings and all kinds of clever formulas. it's going to start with the core of the church that is serious about Jesus Christ and about sharing the gospel.

And I ran across a few years ago what is called the Law of Diffusion of Innovation by Everett Rogers, Everett M. Rogers, that really does give us some basis to measure growth in any social group. And I'll explain this to you, okay? if you're interested in creating a movement within your church. Number one, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a pretty serious Catholic. There's not many people who are stumbling upon the show. There's a few, and we've had some testimonies in the past of people who have, you know,

did a Google search on a topic like anger or something, marriage, or whatever it might be, and they came across the show, and their eyes were somewhat open, and that's good. when it comes to, when it comes to you listening to the show, I'm going to treat you as you're pretty serious about the faith, okay? Now, the law of diffusion of innovation says this, and I'm going to use technology as the example, and then we'll make that translation into the church. Number one is that when it comes to sharing technology in the social media, and I'm going to take the iPhone as an example, Steve Jobs was the innovator with Jonathan Ives of the iPhone. The iPhone was new. Nobody had ever thought of this concept before. And everyone who was

using dial-up phones or the old Motorola phones in the Sony phones and those things. And so the law of diffusion of innovation says that there are 2.5% of the population that are innovators. Now, Steve Jobs is an innovator, Jeff Bezos, innovator with Amazon. Bill Gates with Microsoft and so forth, we can identify the innovators in our society. They're different, they're creative, they innovate, and they are kind of artists. 2.5% innovators. You might be an innovator. You might not be an innovator.

But after that, in your parish, in your parish, you're going to have 2.5% are going to say, I want to do something different here. I'm going to innovate a plan for our parish to be great and to be fruitful. And then after that, you have, according to Everett Rogers, you have 13.5% what he calls early adopters. Now, an early adopter is somebody who is in contact with the innovator and immediately receives the message and says, yes, I will do it. Okay?

So an example, Steve Jobs came up with the iPhone. I, when it came out, was number seven in line in Minnetonka, Minnesota, waiting at the Apple store to buy my iPhone. I'm an early adopter. My sisters and my friends were out doing their normal thing with their phones, but I wanted this. I was an early adopter. You didn't have to sell me. I'm in. I'm all in.

Okay? So 13.5% are early adopters. And then the 13.5% of the early adopters are the ones that influence the 34% of early majority. In your parish, there are early adopters. You know who they are. You have an adult study, Bible timeline, whatever it is. They're there. You didn't even have to sell them.

They're there. but it's the early majority that we want to reach and there's 34% there they come after the early adopters and then after the early majority you have 34% late majority they come a little bit later they like their dial-up phone they're not going to switch over to their smartphone you know yet and then at the end at the end you have about 6% laggards they're never going to get it I mean, they're never going to come in. Okay? Now, that's in technology.

And so when the iPhone came out, the idea was, well, you got the 2.5 innovators, 2.5% innovators. They're innovating the phone. Their goal is to influence the early adopters. That was me. And the early adopters are the ones that showed everybody else the iPhone or the iPad. And then they came on, 34% early majority, 34% late majority. Now, converting this over to the church real quickly. Jesus is the great innovator, isn't he?

He's the great innovator. The apostles were the early adopters. They got it. They bought in. They said, I'm all in. I'll die with you. I'll walk with you. I will live your life.

And today, you and I, listening to this podcast, I would say the 13.5% were early adopters. We are early adopters. We bought in. And we love it. We love it so much. We watch EWTN. We listen to Catholic radio. We listen to CDs. We listen to podcasts. We read books. We're at every study. We are there. But we have to influence the 34% early majority. And so those 34% early majority will have an influence on the 34% late majority. And your parish can be reached. And so what I'm saying with this law of diffusion of innovation is this. In your parish, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably part of the early adopters. I want to encourage you to get together with early adopters in your parish that get it and start strategizing on how you're going to reach the early majority in your parish.

And you're not going to be able to do it with meta language and church language that they don't understand. You're going to have to change your language. You're going to have to begin to appeal to the issues that are facing their life, the problems that they're facing, and any program that you bring into your church, whether it be a Bible study or a book club or whatever it is, you've got to attach that study in book club to the problems that they are facing. Your goal, my friend, is to reach the early majority in your parish. And from that point on, they're going to do the work of the kingdom. Now, I know this sounds like a simple little formula, and it is in some ways, but it's a plan.

And I have seen this work not only with the growth of the Great Adventure Bible Studies and leadership training around the country, but I've also seen this at the local level in various parishes, where the core of the parish is so dynamic, they are early adopters, and they take it upon themselves to influence the rest of the parish. of the church. Don't use the shotgun approach of blasting everything everywhere hoping something sticks. It doesn't work. You've got to have a plan and you've got to begin to focus on people who need Jesus Christ. And that is what I have to share with you this week. I know it's a simple plan, but if you begin to think about it and put it into practice in your parish, you're going to

see some fruitfulness. Hey, I want you to know that I am praying for you this week. I know that I am praying for you this week. And every place I speak around the world, I think about you because I mention you. And I tell people about the podcast and the wonderful followers that we have. And people come up to me at the table left and right and say, love the podcast. I listen to them on the way home from work. And I want you to know I'm very grateful and very, very thankful. And I also want you to know that it's not just me. We've got a wonderful team at Ascension Press that helps with the podcast and produces it. Marisa is doing a great job.

And we've got just an amazing team. And I'm blessed to be a part of it. Christina Stark has come on board. And she's been doing a great job as well. Again, if you have a question for me, write me at The Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. And I will address that.

I will read it, and I will listen to it. If you have any prayer requests, any stories to share, share them with me. And by the way, do me a favor. Go to iTunes, rank the show, make some comments. You say why? It actually has a lot to do with putting the show up there in the rankings for Catholic shows that are related to the Bible. And when people start searching for answers, this show might come up a little bit quicker than some of the shows. might not want to come up that aren't talking about the Lord so you can partner with me in that so

god bless you let me close in prayer and i'm going to pray for you right now that that that god would bless you in your work in your parish and that you as an early adopter will have an influence on your church in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit lord i thank you for my friend who's listening right now my brother my sister my my cohort in in this kingdom that you are are presenting to us. Lord, I pray that you will help them to be fruitful in their parish and that you will give them innovative ideas on how to reach the early majority in their parish and how to reach out with the gospel and the good news that will bring fruitfulness and joy to many. I ask you also, Lord, to bless all those who are listening right now in their family, their children, their mother and

their father and pray that you would give them wisdom to live life to the fullest and that all of their work would be fruitful and would last for eternity. I thank you for this in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you, my friend. I love you and I'm praying for you. Pray for me. See you next week. I'm going to be I'm going to be.