The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Is Your Parish Stuck in Traffic?

Episode Date: March 1, 2019

Parish life sometimes feels like being stuck in traffic. Things aren’t moving forward, resources are limited, tempers flare, and it feels like there’s nothing we can do to move things along. But Jeff heard an interesting take on this from Fr. Josh Johnson. He said, “You’re not stuck in traffic. You are traffic.” Without knowing it, we can contribute to parish gridlock. Jeff points out several areas where we aimlessly honk our horns instead of doing something to ease the tension. * Gawking: We find ourselves looking at the problems of others, instead of being part of the solution. * Taking a seperate car: We live in isolation instead of riding the same bus and cultivating a supportive community. * Always taking the same route: We take the same roads again and again, just because they’re familiar, when sometimes we need to find a new way to get things done. Jeff also digs into Scripture to help us avoid these tendencies and take up the call to get involved at a parish and get traffic moving again. Want the shownotes including resources and scripture verses? Email us at [e-mail]. You can also find them at ascensionpress.com/thejeffcavinsshow

You're listening to The Jeff Kaven Show, episode 104, Stuck in Traffic. 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. And welcome to the show this week, and perhaps you are stuck in traffic. A lot of people listen to the...

show while they're in the car, not only in America, but we're hearing around the world. People are listening oftentimes in the car, and that's why we provide the show notes for you, so you don't get into an accident. And I hope you're having a great week. Emily and I are down south this week. We're not up deep in the woods in Minnesota, where this month they have received over 39 inches of snow. It's February. And that's a record, all-time record for February for Minnesota, and it's the fourth month on record for the most snow in a month, the fourth. And so we have escaped that below zero stuff, and we are down south in the hunting camp in Baton Rouge, right outside of Baton Rouge, and we're having a great time down here.

In fact, we're kind of stationed down here for a few weeks, and we've been speaking in Metterie down by New Orleans. We'll be back down there. And Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Lafayette, Louisiana, of course, Baton Rouge with Father Josh Johnson. In fact, just had three nights with Father Josh, a mission, and we were talking about the activated disciple, and it was, it's just a great time to be down here. But the highlight has been so far the bushery with chef John Fulse. My good friend, Chef John Fulse, one of the best chefs in the entire. world. We took part in a bushery. That's a butchering of a pig and all these chefs came from around the country. It was really interesting and a new thing for me. But to top that off, I can top

that off tonight. Tonight, chef John Fals and I are going to finally have the gumbo cookoff. That's right, in Baton Rouge. He is an award-winning chef on PBS and around the world. He cooked for President Reagan and Gorbachev. He's cooked for the Pope. He's cooked for many presidents. And he has taken up the challenge with me to do a gumbo cookoff tonight. And I'm going to have to give you the results of that on the next show, because we're going to see how it goes tonight. Need your prayers on that. Hey, I've got some good, before we get to the topic of stuck in traffic, I've got some interesting emails, beautiful email, and I appreciate that, that you that you send me email, not only suggesting ideas for shows, but you know your comments on the

previous shows and how they have changed your life. And I do appreciate that. Matthew writes, he says, I'm a college senior in Wisconsin, an avid listener of your podcast, and I'm on my way to being confirmed this coming Easter. Congratulations, Matthew. He said, you've played a huge part in that last note. I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you for your willingness to share stories in your books and on your show. You have an incredible ability to communicate things related to faith, and you have really helped me begin to, quote-unquote, reconfigure my life. Speaking of which, I have a group of close friends here on campus that are reading the activated disciple, myself included, and I cannot begin to explain to you how much that book

is impacting my walk with the Lord and my walk towards confirmation. Thank you. Thank you, Matthew. And if anybody wants to get a hold of the activated disciple book, you can go to ascensionpress.com. Eileen writes in and says, can you give an update on your friend, Sandy, who is waiting for a lung? I am still praying for him. Eileen writes the beautiful letter, Eileen, and you're not going to believe this, but I just received a text today from Sandy's wife, Donnie, and he had the lung transplant. He got the call on Sunday, and this previous Sunday, and he had the lung transplant. I have not spoken to him yet. He's doing well.

Thank you for your prayers, everybody. Seriously, thank you. And I know that Sandy and Donnie thank you with all of their heart. And she sent me a text just about an hour and a half ago and said that he's doing good. He's recovering. It's going to take a while. But he has that lung. So, Eileen, thank you for asking.

And all of you, all my friends, thank you for praying for my friends. thank you for praying for my next door neighbor deep in the woods of Minnesota. That is Sandy. And then finally in the mailbag this week, Daniel writes and says, please and thank you. Great podcast. I've been going through them all on Spotify. Your podcast is the only Catholic podcast that I found that is actually leading me to prayer and a closer relationship with the Lord. Thanks for what you do. Well, I'm sure there's other ones to Daniel and you've got to look there, but I do appreciate your comments, and that means an awful lot, an awful lot to me. Well, turning to the subject this week, stuck in traffic, how many of you have ever been

stuck in traffic? I know I have, and it's got to be one of the more frustrating things in life to know that you've only got 13, 14 miles to go, and you are crawling along at 5 mile an hour wondering, you know, how long do I got to wait in this? And it gets frustrated. and other people get frustrated with you, you know, and you're looking for that exit off the highway so you can take some other route to get to your destination. Well, the idea for this show this week actually came from a priest in Baton Rouge, and he was talking during his homily this last week, and he was quoting a billboard at a very, very, very congested junction in America. And the billboard said something very, very profound. And I got to thinking about this as far as church,

your parish, your walk with the Lord. And the billboard said this. And maybe you can identify with this as you are stuck in traffic, right? The billboard said, you are not stuck in traffic. You are traffic. I love that. I love that quote. Let me say it again. You are not stuck in traffic. you are traffic. Isn't that something that's actually profound because so often when we get stuck in traffic and we don't feel like we're getting anywhere, I think we automatically think that we're the victim. I'm the victim here. I'm the one that's supposed to be at work. I pay my taxes. I should be able to drive on these roads. And I'm the only normal one. I'm just surrounded by all these idiots, you know, they don't know what they're doing. How come everybody's on the road? And that's really interesting

because they're probably thinking that about you and me, right? They're probably thinking that about us. The traffic problem is always everybody else's problem. It's not mine. I'm a victim of traffic. So remember, you're not stuck in traffic. You are traffic. Now, how do we take that and bring that into our everyday life

and our spiritual growth and our life in the parish? Well, I think sometimes we have to realize that if we're in a parish and we feel like we're stuck in traffic, that we may be the traffic. I've run into so many people over the years who ask me basically the same question. Can you give me some advice, Jeff, at my parish, we don't have a youth program. We don't have a good RCIA program. We don't have a good Bible study in our church. We don't have this. We don't have that. And our church isn't. And our church is that. And they're sitting there stuck in traffic. And what they don't realize is they are traffic. They are part of the problem that they're not doing anything. They're just stuck. And everybody's kind of looking at each other and kind of get upset with each other in the parish or maybe this committee or that committee. Or you might be even upset with your pastor. When the truth of the matter is we don't have to be the traffic, we can come up with some solutions and perhaps some exit ramps from the traffic

and start to get things moving in our local parish. I want to make just a few observations about being stuck in traffic. And then I want to turn our attention after the break to Josea to talk about breaking up the fallow ground and doing something different in our parish. And I'm saying this on the heels of spending three days with Father Josh Johnson. Check him out. He's on Ascension Press. He has a podcast called Ask Father. Ask Father Josh, I think it's called, and he does a great job. But his parish, there's no gridlock. They're not stuck in traffic. They've got so many people that are moving at 65, 70 miles an hour in that parish from Lucy, who's their RCI director, Wendy. Father Josh has an amazing.

cafe. And he has an outreach to the poor, food, diaper outreach, babies, pregnant mothers. You can go there and get a haircut. And it's really an amazing place. It's moving. And I walk around and talk to different people in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I say, hey, I was down at Holy Rosary with Father Josh Johnson. And every one of them will say, oh, man, he's just really getting things stirred up there. He's doing a great job. Yeah. he's not stuck in traffic. And a lot of his people aren't stuck in traffic. They're moving along and everybody's doing something. And I know that you want to be a part of a church like that. And so I'm going to suggest that you're not stuck in traffic. You are traffic. Let's move it.

Let's do something a little bit different. One of the things that causes us to be stuck in traffic in our church and in our spiritual life, my wife was telling me this morning, Emily was saying, was gawking. How many times do you ride along at 60 miles an hour and all of a sudden you realize, oh, traffic stopping up ahead, red lights, red lights, and you suddenly go down to a crawl and you're wondering, what's the problem? And after about 20 minutes of crawling along at two, three miles an hour, you realized there was an accident up there and everybody wanted to look. Everybody was gawking. Gawking at what? Looking at what? Everybody else's trouble. everybody else's accident, everybody else's pain and suffering.

And it's kind of like watching cable news, isn't it? It's like sitting all day and watching Fox or CNN or MSNBC or one of those stations. And what are you doing? We're gawking, you know? Let's see the problems in the world. Let's watch that. And while you sit there watching that, you're part of the traffic. We're not moving anywhere as a church.

And so one of the things I want to do is encourage you to not be a gawker in your parish, not just staring at the problems around you, but be part of the solution to those problems. You'll notice that when a parish is stuck in traffic, a parish is not a witnessing parish, or a parish that has adoration and vocations are really promoted. Nobody's witnessing to everybody else, and this is one of the things that I've been speaking about around the country, as I've been speaking from parish to parish, and particularly in New Orleans and Baton Rouge in the last couple of weeks, is that if you want to see a parish that's moving and not stuck in traffic, you're going to see a parish that's learning to win souls, witnessing,

sharing Christ with other people. And I have previous shows on this. You know, I talk about giving people a free cup of curigma. And those are the seven points of how we share Christ with people. Number one, God loves you and has an amazing plan for your life. Number two, sin has messed up our lives. Number three, good news. Jesus has come to die for our sins and give us a new life. Number four, we need to respond to this good news with reorienting our lives to Christ. That's called repentance, right? And then, we need to, number five, we need to be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit. Number six, join his marvelous family. It struggles at times. That's the church. And then number seven, we need to make

disciples ourselves. So one of the things you can do to break up the traffic in your church is start teaching people how to win people to Christ. And I do highly suggest that you read my new book, The Activated Disciple, followed by the 40-day Challenge. And the 40-day challenge is just that. It's a challenge to act like a disciple for 40 days. And we'll give you a journal. If you sign up, you can do all that, and we'll pass that on to you so you can go to ascensionpress.com. And Christina, my marvelous producer, will put those notes in the show notes for you. Another thing about isolated or about being stuck in traffic in your parish is that everyone is isolated, one to a car, right? And you're driving, you're seeing only one person in each car. In the meantime, the buses with 40 people,

what do they do? They all move right around you. They're all going in the same direction. Something about a bus, and going in the same direction means that they can move faster. And if our parishes will be on the same page with one another and go forward, I think you're going to move faster rather than everybody living their own isolated, single life. It's just me and nobody else. And when you're all alone and you're all alone, car. What are we doing? Typically, well, we're kind of just entertaining ourselves, listening to music or listening to talk radio or news or something like that, and yet we're frustrated. We're entertained, yet frustrated. These buses fly right by. Well, there's a lot of analogies that we can talk about

when we talk about being stuck in traffic in our parish, but my challenge to you this week is don't be the one that's part of the traffic, break away and start doing something different in your parish to win souls and to educate people and form people in Christ and pray and adoration, you know what, we need more RCAIA directors than ever before because that's the entryway into the parish and you get things moving that way. And I hear more complaints from people of, we don't have a good RCIA program. Well, why don't you exit off of the traffic jam and start doing something. Maybe God is calling you to do something about it. We don't have a 24-hour adoration chapel. Well, exit out of the traffic and start one in your parish. Nobody's teaching the youth.

Exit off of the traffic and the highway and begin to be that person of change. We're going to take a break when I come back. I want to take a look real quick here at the prophet Josea and a principle in the Bible that a principle about breaking up fallow ground and preparing for change. And it's going to be a quick teaching, but I think it's an important teaching, particularly if you're stuck in traffic. Remember, just remember that. You are not stuck in traffic. You might be the traffic.

You're listening to the Jeff Kaven show. Every one of us is made in the image of God. We are unique, worthy of love, and called to greatness. In this world, though, we can be distracted from that truth and begin to doubt God's love is real. You see, we live in a world that tells us we are not smart, attractive, thin, or rich enough. It is easy to focus on the ways we fall short of worldly perfection and forget that we are already made perfect. We are already enough. I'm Danielle Bean, author of You Are Enough, what women of the Bible teach you about your

mission and worth. You Are Enough dives into the stories of women in the Bible so that you can fully see God's plan for your life. To order, visit ascensionpress.com or Amazon. Welcome back to the Jeff Kaven Show. I am coming to you from the camp, the hunting camp, deep, deep down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana this week, spending some time with my good friend, chef John Fulce, and sister Dulcy over at Cypress Springs, one of the Mercedarian sisters. Wow, what a great group of ladies there, and I was able to do a Saturday seminar there a couple weeks ago. Hey, we're talking about being stuck in traffic, and you're not stuck in traffic, you are the

traffic, and in our parishes, we don't want to be the traffic. we don't want to be part of that. We want to break away and get things moving, unclog the highway, so to speak. You know, the prophet Hosea lived in the final days of the northern kingdom, where one king would murder another, and Israel was involved in Canaanite religions at the time, and Hosea saw the failure of Israel to acknowledge God. They were in their own traffic jam on the highway from the northern countries of Mesopotamia, all the way to the south, Egypt, and Africa. The Levant, this land called Israel was certainly in a jam at that point. And Israel wasn't going anywhere, and they're involved in Canaanite religion.

Josea saw the failure of Israel to acknowledge God, and Israel had turned to bail worship and sacrificed at the pagan high places, which included associating with the sacred prostitutes at the sanctuaries and worshiping the calf image at Samaria. They also indulged in gross materialism. Aren't you glad we're not part of that kind of a culture? Josea's message was one of calling Israel to repentance, to reorient their life, to God, and God wanted to move in their lives, just like he wants to move in your parish's life, and he wants to move in your life. But they had to do something before God would move in their life. They had to repent. If he had to repent, if he He was going to bless them. In other words, if the highway was going to break up, if the traffic jammed,

your parish is going to break up, there's got to be repentance, right? There's got to be repentance, even in your own life. In Hosea chapter 10 and verse 12, I'll put it in the show notes for you, it says, so for yourself's righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until he comes and showers righteousness on you. It's a great scripture. I mean, it's great for a traffic jam, right? You know, in our lives so often, there's nothing growing. It's not fruitful. It's like we are not going anywhere like a traffic jam. And Josea has the perfect solution to that when he says, So for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love and break up your

unplowed ground for it's time to seek the Lord until he comes and showers righteousness on you. You know, the problem with fallow ground or unplowed ground is that you can throw a seed on top of the unplowed ground, but there's like a crust there on the surface that will not allow the seed to enter into the good soil. And it can rain, but the seed is not in the soil. And that rain just kind of, it kind of goes off that seed like water off a duck's back. and it never grows. It never takes root and bears fruit. And it could be like us in our traffic jam parishes. And that is we hear the word of God every week, and we receive the Lord. But we have not repented. We have not changed our ways, and we have not given God any good soil in which his word can

germinate and grow, bear fruit in our lives. And so one of the lessons that we learn from Josea and Israel, who are experiencing a traffic jam in the land of Canaan, is that when God moves in the lives of his people, he expects us to do our part. We must respond to his call. And if God is moving you right now to begin an RCAIA program, then begin to break up the unplough ground in your life so that God can grow. something in your life. If you notice the traffic jam in your parish and you want to do something about it, start with your own heart and ask God, how can I be part of the solution? I don't want to be traffic. I want to be a part of the solution. Now, if you notice the relationship of the words and

you look at Hosea 10 in verse 12, notice the relationship between the words. So for yourself's righteousness reap the fruit of unfailing love, right? So you've got sow and reap. Break up your unplowed ground for its time to seek the Lord. So you've got the relationship there. How do we break up the follow ground, the unplowed ground in our life? We seek the Lord in prayer. Are you an activated disciple? Are you seeking the Lord in your life? Are you breaking up the unplowed ground so that his seed can grow? So we've got this relationship between sow and reap, break up and seek, and then we've got So righteousness, he rains, showers, and righteousness on you. Do you hear that in the background? I'm not kidding you. We got a rainstorm just started here in Baton Rouge.

That was thunder and lightning out here in the hunting camp. So we'll hurry this up a little bit. Now, God will rain righteousness down upon you. You'll shower righteousness. on you if you sow righteousness. What are you sowing in that traffic jam of a parish? What are you, what are you sewing yourself? Isn't that beautiful? Galatians in the New Testament sort of echoes what Jose is saying. And Galatians, Paul says, a man reaps what he sews. God wants us to reap, but we must sow. What happens in our lives so often is that the soil of our daily lives is undisturbed. It's another traffic jam. It's another 25 minutes to work. I'm going to find something else to do. Maybe I'll entertain myself with radio or XM radio or, you know, and some

of you, unfortunately, and my wife always warns me, don't do it, and sitting there watching YouTube videos, you know, on the way to work, quite dangerous. But this is what we have to do. We have to take care of that unplowed ground in our lives, and we carry on undisturbed, quiet to the point where the soil of our heart develops a crust that does not permit the seed to grow and bear fruit. Day after day after day, we just sit in traffic. And there are areas of your life that used to be tilled, perhaps, and you would sew toward righteousness. For example, maybe you used to witness to other people. Maybe you used to study the word of God more. Maybe you had more of a devotion to a particular saint, or you went to adoration or daily mass, but now that portion of your

life, well, it lays dormant. You're back in the jam. You're back in the traffic jam, unproductive and filled with noxious weeds in frustration. Well, maybe this show today is for you. Maybe this is a turning point for you. Sick of the traffic jam? Hmm. I've been there before. I get sick of it. Hosea also said back in the Old Testament in chapter 8 and verse 7, they sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. So the significance of what Hosea is saying becomes more vivid when you understand the nature of Israel's and they were involved with Bail cult worship. Now, Bail worship is directly tied to fertility issues. Israel was involved in bale worship for the purpose of, what, increased crops.

And they were sowing to Bail with hopes of rain. But Hosea said, Now, don't sow to Bail with hopes of rain. So righteousness. Seek the Lord, and he will rain righteousness on you. You see, Hosea uses the agricultural metaphor to speak to Israel. Maybe you have been sowing to the wind, and you are reaping the whirlwind. Break up the unplowed ground, my friend.

Break it up this week. So to righteousness. What does it mean to sow? Righteousness? It means that you begin to do what lines up with God's will in any given area. Is there unplowed or unseated ground in your marriage? your work, your finances, your personal time, your thought life? Have you been sewing to the wind in various areas of your life? Even more to the point, are you guilty of what Israel was guilty of, serving

Mammon or the gods of this world, hoping for a return that only God can give you? Wow. So there's so many examples in the Bible where God, he called on his people to reorient their lives when they were were in a jam. You know, I think about the man in 2nd Kings 4. Ooh, do you hear that? Hear that thunder? God wants to rain on you. Wow, that's pretty heavy out there. God wants to rain righteousness on you. No oil until the vessels were gathered. Second King's 5. No healing until the leper had dipped seven times. Joel 2. No reconciliation without repentance. I could go on and on. There's so many amazing examples in the Bible. Well, let's draw this to a close this week because I know that I know you want to get busy and break up the follow ground. Once again, are you stuck in traffic? I'll say it again.

As I said at the top of the show, you're not stuck in traffic. You are traffic. And your church might not be stuck in traffic. Maybe they're traffic, right? And you want to break up the follow ground and get things moving. In order to do that, you've got to break up that follow ground of your heart. Start with your own heart. Start with the shape of your day and begin to seek the Lord in the morning. And I highly recommend that you get my new book, The Activated Disciple, along with the new great adventure Bible at Ascension Press. You can just go to ascensionpress.com for both and start a new life. You know, start a new road, a new adventure, and begin to seek the Lord and break up that traffic in your church and start to do something that will give a freshness and life and vitality

and a dynamism to the people surrounding you. Well, that's my word for you this week. And I hope it's a challenge. And I hope you'll take me up on that challenge, remembering that you're not stuck in traffic. You are the traffic. And we want to break out of that. I want to close in prayer. I want to pray for you. And I want you to know, I love you. And I really look forward to hearing from you. Hey, by the way, I'm using Instagram now, and I've always used Twitter and Facebook and things like that. But I'm now using Instagram to communicate for these shows. And if you'd like to get in touch with me, you can do that at Instagram.

My name's just Jeff Kaven's. And or you can email me at The Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. I look forward to, in a couple weeks from now, I did a show with Father Josh Johnson, and he did a show with me for his show, Ask Fox. Father Josh, and we're going to give those to you. It's part of a new segment of my show called Meet My Friends, and we're going to do that like once a month in addition to this show. Shall we pray? In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. Lord, we thank you today for life. We thank you for the power of the Holy Spirit and the mission

that you have introduced us to. Lord, we repent of being the traffic, and we ask you to help us break free and to be leaders and to be instigators in a good way in our parishes and to get things moving. As the great Hillel said one time, if not me, who, and if not now, when, Lord, may we take that challenge and come to you and see what you can do in our lives. We thank you for doing amazing things in Jesus' name. Amen. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. I love you. And you have a fantastic week.