Innovative Evangelization

As the Church entered a celebration of the Jubilee of Teenagers this week, Twelve Wicker Baskets takes time with Mark Hart, the Chief Innovation Officer at Life Teen International, a Catholic youth ministry active in nearly 2,000 parishes worldwide. Mark shares his personal journey from a "typical" Catholic upbringing to a life-changing encounter with Christ during high school, thanks to the Life Teen movement. That experience sparked his lifelong passion for walking with teens, helping them discover the joy of faith through real relationships, vibrant community and Scripture that speaks to their lives today.

Throughout the conversation, Mark emphasizes that reaching today's teens takes more than just good intentions—it takes authenticity, creativity, and a deep trust in God's work. He points out that many teens today are overwhelmed by loneliness and anxiety, and what they really need is connection, not just another class or program. "We need to waste time with teenagers," he says. "Sit with them, enter into their world, and when the time is right, that’s when the real conversations about faith can happen." Mark challenges parishes to rethink what success looks like, lead with joy, and above all, prioritize the salvation of souls over simply maintaining the status quo.

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Transcript

Christopher Beaudet: I'm Christopher Beaudet with the Steier Group. In the Gospel, Jesus fed 5,000 with only five loaves and two fish. After the crowd was satisfied, there were 12 wicker baskets left over. It seems that whenever you and I set to work and do our part, God provides the abundance.

In each episode of this podcast, I'll explore with pastoral leaders and development professionals from across the United States and Canada all the many ways God meets the spiritual and temporal needs of our parish communities, our Catholic schools and the diocesan church and not only meets those needs, but provides in abundance. You're listening to Twelve Wicker Baskets.

Thank you so much for joining us today on Twelve Wicker Baskets. Today my guest is Mark Hart, who serves as the Chief Innovation Officer of Life Teen International, a Catholic youth ministry movement currently implemented in nearly 2,000 parishes and 24 countries worldwide. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a 28 year veteran of youth ministry, Mark is a best selling author of over 30 books, a former radio host and now frequent guest on Sirius XM, an award winning producer and one of the most sought after speakers serving in the Catholic Church today.

Mark's humor and his passion for Scripture, as experienced in his DVD Bible study series Venture and Encounter, as well as his DVD Mass study series Alteration, are helping millions of Catholics young and old begin to read and study the Bible in engaging and relevant ways.

His video work and resources on the Sunday readings are seen, heard and read in parishes and dioceses all over the world. In addition to sitting on multiple diocesan and ministry boards, Mark is a teacher, mentor and research fellow for the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. Mark and his wife Melanie have three daughters, Hope, Trinity and Faith, and one son, Josiah. They live in Phoenix, Arizona. Mark, thank you so much for being our guest today on Twelve Wicker Baskets. It's great to have you.

Mark Hart: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Christopher Beaudet: Absolutely. So you know Mark, I like to start off our conversations just for listeners to get a little flavor, a little better, better sense of who you are and your background.

And you know we're going to be talking about inner innovative ways to evangelize, innovative ways of bringing the joy of knowing Christ and the Gospel to people. Because sometimes the old tried and true ways aren't working all as well. And so and you've got a keen insight to this. You're Chief Innovation Officer at Life Teen. You know, you've spent nearly three decades, I believe, of your life to youth ministry. Can you share a bit about your own spiritual journey and background and you know, what led you to have A heart for youth. Youth in this innovative ministry that you have. And. And maybe where in your own life or ministry have you most clearly seen, you know, God working to bring you where you are?

Mark Hart: Absolutely. Well, you know, I. I grew up in a cradle Catholic home, so I was the fifth of six kids, the fourth of five boys. We. My mom is gonna go straight to heaven, I tell you. Five boys. We. I was an altar server, went to parochial school. It was like, you know, the whole mind, you know, it was.

It was a typical Catholic existence. We had a rosary, but only my mom prayed it. We had a Bible. We never read it. I mean, it was. It was very important, though. It held up all the other books on the shelf, Right? Right.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah, it's a big one.

Mark Hart: And it only come off the shelf the one time a year that monsignor would come over to the family, you know, the house for dinner.

But, yeah, you know, it was kind of like the typical kind of thing. We were always. We were always, you know, always went to mass, always said grace, never prayed together, never really talked about God outside of church.

In fact, I probably heard my dad say God's name more in the car on the way to church than I ever heard God saying adult in church, you know, and then even went off even to a Catholic college, you know, And.

And. But it was. It was really. It was really during my middle school and high school years that I began to ask kind of like those critical life questions and do I really believe in God?

Do I really believe in this Catholicism thing? And when I got into high school, especially the first couple years, I started to feel like I'm really only going to church because I'm told to.

I wasn't really. I didn't really want to be cast. I guess I'm very outdated, very antiquated. I can never get answers to my questions. I was just kind of told that's the way it is, you know, And I was being forced to go to CCD, whatever it was. And then the craziest thing happened. This thing called Life Teen had started at this parish about 20 miles away. And.

Christopher Beaudet: And you. You grew up in Arizona?

Mark Hart: I grew up in Arizona, yes.

Christopher Beaudet: Okay.

Mark Hart: So our pastor had seen that, that they're having really good results with this new approach to youth ministry called Life Teen. So he hired a youth minister and implemented a whole thing to got rid of CCD, got rid of the classroom model. All of a sudden we had this youth minister who was, who was young and vibrant, and I'll just say relatable, you know, just, just really cool, just the kind of guy you want to hang out with, you know, be around. And, and also we had these adult volunteers and, and they changed the format. We weren't, we weren't memorizing stuff. They're having conversations and they were talking about topics we cared about. And, and, and I just didn't even realize at the time they were forging these, like, healthy relationships with like, mentors and we call them core members. And they started walking with me and I had. I'm not gonna call it a conversion because I never really left the church, but I have a real conversion of heart. And I began to. I began to learn how to pray and I began to read the Bible and eucharistic adoration just completely changed my life just forever, you know, and began developing a relationship with, with the Blessed Virgin Mary and my rosary and this community formed and it was really life changing. But then all of a sudden, I get into my dream school, you know, your dream school. You get into Notre Dame, you know, 2,500 miles away, and I didn't have that community. And so all of a sudden, now I was. The good news is I was on, On a campus where you could ask questions, you know, rehearsals and, you know, it's pretty.

But also, but it was also a place where there's free thinkers, you know, I mean, so it was. Every time I'd get one person telling me one thing, I have someone else debating the opposite.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah.

Mark Hart: So it really had to. It was funny. I kept going to math every Sunday while I was gone. But then all of a sudden I started going. I was, I was checking out other churches and other denominations and I was just kind of going on this quest for truth. I was reading. I mean, I read the Quran, I was reading Eastern philosophies, I was reading about Judaism, I was reading about evangelicalism. And it was really funny. I did this whole loop where I didn't really leave the church, but my mind was kind of on this quest. And I ended up after all this reading, study and right back where I started the most sense. It was crazy. So, long story short, so basically senior year, I had a job all lined up. It's going to actually pay me. I'm all excited. And I get this phone call, and it's my former pastor who was really instrumental in my conversion. And he says, hey, Mark, there's something I want you to pray about. And that's not fair.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah, it's like, come on, Father.

Mark Hart: Right, Right.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah, I did, Father and the answer is no. Yeah, right.

Mark Hart: Exactly. Just praying about it. I want you to come back to the parish and I want you to be my youth minister. So we're having a change in the guard. And I said, you know, Father, I already have. I already have a job. I'm lined up. I'm sorry. Thanks. Humble thanks.

Christopher Beaudet: What can I ask? What was that job? Where was it?

Mark Hart: I was actually. Well, I studied. I studied film and video. So I was going to actually work in production. I was going to do stuff on camera. I was gonna get to produce. And I was very excited to work at a production company. But. But I just. I said, oh, I thought I had my trump cards. I didn't major in theology. And I said about it, I'm not a theologian. Nice. Said this thing. He did this, like, Yoda thing that really burned my heart. And he said, Mark, I can teach someone who cares about teens theology, but I can't teach a theologian to love teenagers. And it was one of those, oh, man. I said, okay, I'll pray about it. I went down to the grotto. Like, I was like, right out of Rudy, you know, like, I'm like, sitting there.

Christopher Beaudet: Cue the violins.

Mark Hart: Yeah, exactly. I knew I was supposed to do it, so I made a deal with God. You know, how many times you done that? Right? You know, like, get me through this final, I'll move to Calcutta and feed the poor. And I just said, okay, I'll give you one year. God, I'm gonna give you one year. And that was 30 years ago. I've been to youth ministry ever since. It's like, kind of like. Like the Mafia. Like, once you're in, you can't get out.

Christopher Beaudet: Right? Right.

Mark Hart: I'll tell you, it's. I wouldn't. I thought I was giving everything up that I wanted to do. And this is how cool the Lord is that God is never outdone a generosity. And not only have I gotten to work with amazing and holy. Incredibly talented people, now I've gotten to travel the world. I've gotten to. I've gotten to write, and I've gotten to produce video series, and I've gotten to do everything I actually wanted to do.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah.

Mark Hart: The Lord because. Because I said yes. I just kind of, you know, threw caution away. He's put all these different opportunities in front of me. And I look back now and I'm like, wow.

I was so prideful and so, so, so myopic. So spiritually myopic back in the day, you know? Thank you, Lord. Yeah. I wake up, I Wake up blessed. I wake up excited. Even after 30 years, I'm excited to go to work.

Christopher Beaudet: That's fantastic. How did your pastor know that you had a heart for, for teens as a senior at Notre Dame? Had you kept in touch with him?

Mark Hart: Yeah. Yeah. Every summer I'd come home.

They would have. They have, you know, weekly meetings or activities or Bible study for the teens. And I knew several of them, so a couple years behind me.

Christopher Beaudet: Sure.

Mark Hart: But we would come home and the youth minister would encourage, you know, alumni who were in college, if you went through all the misconduct stuff, to come around, you know, to come around, be part of it. Be, you know, kind of junior corps members and mentors. You get to walk with them. So I did. And. But I was always kind of like. I was like the fun guy, you know, I was kind of like the. I'll be the fun, comedic. I'll be your buddy, you know?

Christopher Beaudet: Right, right.

Mark Hart: I wasn't like the leader, you know what I mean? But. But I was very natural. I had a. I just had a connection with them. Yep. And I would always kind of seek out. I felt. I felt a burden to kind of seek out the snarky kid and the kid who's too cool for church, because that was always me before my reversion. So I kind of. I kind of knew how to speak their language and like. Like the ones that. The ones that nobody else wanted in her small group because they were always talking and always goof around. That was like. That was my kid. And. And I was. I wanted to make sure that they had a shot, had known the Lord the same way I had.

Christopher Beaudet: I have not done ministry with youth or teenagers nearly as extensively as you have. But in my experience, ministry and evangelization and talking about the faith with teens is all about relationship and.

Mark Hart: Absolutely. 1,000%.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah. And they don't wear their thoughts on their sleeves per se, but they. They could appear completely disinterested, but are riveted and. And. Or. Or they're hurting and they. And they wouldn't. And they're. They're kind of compensating or whatever. So relationship can kind of melt some of those facades that might be up and. Right. And I think then there's that. That opportunity to get real and to get real about the Lord.

Mark Hart: Yeah, that's. That's what drew me to Life Teen as a teenager, and that's what drew me to sustainability. We actually. We're a nonprofit, 501C3. We exist to equip and to train and to, and to walk alongside into resource parishes. We do the heavy listing of all the outlines and the teachings and the talks and the videos and everything else. They need to free up the people on a parish level so they can actually not spend all the time working on curriculum. They can actually spend time with teenagers, walking with them, entering into their lives, you know, going in the football games and going to the band concerts and going to the dancer settles and helping parents, you know, helping parents navigate these really tumultuous waters of the adolescent years, you know, and, and to your point, yeah. If the relationship is so essential and I think where we go, where we go skew is oftentimes catechists, even parents, well intentioned catechists and parents who really want to pass on the faith, they make the mistake of thinking that all their conversations have to somehow have an underpinning about Christ. They all have to be couched within Catholic theology or teaching. They feel as though if I don't bring this up, that I'm not doing my due diligence. But they haven't.

A lot of them I'll talk to and I'll meet and I'll hear from the teens. They haven't found that balance between. Well, I'll say is just waste time with your teenager if you have. I say waste in quotes but sit down on the couch and watch a show you don't want to watch, don't.

Christopher Beaudet: Have an agenda you don't want to.

Mark Hart: You know, just, just enter into the world. Because if you spend time talking about the non tricky stuff, you know, then, then the, the walls come down around their minds, their, their hearts.

And then when, like when it's time and the Lord ordains the time, the Spirit provides an opportunity. That's when the seed is really going to find soil. You know what like on God's time.

Christopher Beaudet: Right.

Mark Hart: We just can't try to force. It's like we go and like throwing seed at like, you know. Right. A scorched earth that we haven't even, we haven't yet, you know.

Christopher Beaudet: Right, right. You know, and from. In that regard the teens aren't really all that different from any of the rest of us. I mean you think about, you know, St. John Paul the notion of evangelization was also humanization like. Or you think of the Jesuits going to foreign countries that they didn't necessarily start with Jesus, but they, they began, you know, a relationship and could perceive need and, and the humanity of the other and meet them there and then, and lead from that Point, absolutely.

Mark Hart: That, you know, that's why I love, that's why I love teenagers. In my opinion, teenagers are the last bastion of truly honest people. They will tell you what they think, they will tell you if they think you're full of it. They tell you they think you're fake. I mean, at least adults have the decency to wait till someone turns their back and you say, I'm a bad guy. You're gonna get, you're gonna get that eye roll.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah.

Mark Hart: You know, you're, they're gonna put you in your place. Right, right.

Christopher Beaudet: You know, so Life Teen started, you know, at, at the, at the parish there that you're talking about. Pretty, pretty small movement, a mustard seed, I guess, like all, all great things on behalf of the faith. And it's now present in thousands of parishes worldwide. First of all, how big has it grown and what do you think is behind this multiplication? This whole podcast is called Twelve Wicker Baskets. Right. You start with something which you've got and then it grows. So how big is it now and what's the cause?

Mark Hart: We are currently in over 1600 different parishes and I think, I think last counted, 24 countries. Wow. So we, so we've, we are obviously across the domestic U.S. and Canada, but we've really recently, God, we just bloated in Spain. I mean, just a massive growth. Spain, Australia, South Africa, Colombia. Now we just launched in Colombia, which had been really exciting and they needed a lot of help down there with youth culture and with the gangs. But it's. Yeah, it's really fascinating. I think, I think there's a couple factors that contribute to it. One, you know, even though teenagers will always be teenagers, I think there's a danger with people of our generation, whether it's Boomers, Xers, even older millennials, when we, when we make the mistake of thinking, oh, you know, I was a teenager too, and it's just insisted. Teenage years. Right. It's actually, that's actually not true. What our teenagers are going through right now is unlike anything we went through as teenagers. The access they have to crippling self-destructive opportunities, behaviors basically to sin. I mean, we hand our kids not just phones, but computers that can make phone calls. They give them access to everything.

We have teenagers who can be in the safety of their own bedroom, in their own home, being bullied through their screen. We have a massive anxiety epidemic. We've got incredibly soaring depression rates. And then we always want to just vilify and oh, it's all the stream's fault. Well, no, it's not all the stream's fault. Our young people can interpolate knowledge and learn way faster than we could. But there's been an ace compression to a point where there's even pre middle school kids are going through what you and I had to figure out how to navigate as freshmen in college.

I mean, like, what they're being exposed to and what they're being asked of them. The academic rigors, the cultural rigors. This isn't even mentioned. Things like pandemics, you know, which I think back. ***********, you know, just massive video games. It's just all these things that kind of seek to compress their emotional maturity, especially the old boys. Teenage boys, three teens. So there's all these things against them. And I think what's happened is you have. You had a lot of pastors and parishes looking around saying the old way's not working. You know, like the classroom model, it's not working. And. And we're seeing these kids and they're coming through confirmation, but it's really just graduation, and we never see them again. And then they go off to the finest atheist professors money can buy, and they never come back, not even to get married or until it's time to get married,

about as a kid to make grandma happy. But we're not seeing these transformative experiences. So with Life Teen, we said, you know, it's really. It's about relationship. It's about true evangelization and true discipleship. What does it look like to be a modern disciple? So our job, my job specifically is how do we translate the beauty and the grandeur of the Catholic Church and the timelessness of Christ's teachings? How do we translate it in a way that's relevant and engaging and quite frankly, fun for a modern teenager? You know, where they don't just feel like it's just another box to check, another class to go to.

Christopher Beaudet: Right.

Mark Hart: And one thing that's really fascinating, we did this study with the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, with the officer vocations, and we surveyed seminarians in America. We came to find out that even though Life Team is In less than 10% of the parishes in the country,

44% of our seminarians currently have a touch point with Life Teen. Either they came to one of our youth conferences, came one of our summer camps, or had Light Teen in their parish, which is.

I mean, if you really do drill those numbers, 10% of the parishes and 44% of the vocations, that's astounding. And that wasn't even that Wasn't us. That was the USCCB who did it.

So I think we've had so many bishops and so many pastors come and say, what's the secret sauce? Like, what's going on? Because we're tracking these inordinately high numbers, and I think that that has sort of parlayed us into growth, because you have a young guy, he opens himself up.

You know, he goes off the seminary. Whether or not he gets the collar, you know, he's. He's on a different trajectory than he would have been otherwise.

Christopher Beaudet: Oh, yeah.

Mark Hart: If he does get the collar and he does get installed, he normally. Not always normally has a. Has a predisposition to want to spend time with the youth, because that was a major conversion part of his own life.

And he wants to pour in and he wants to create a model of true evangelization. You know, So I think there. There is. There is a tide turning in the church.

And even though there was a mass exodus, especially during COVID and people got really used to. Right. Pajamas, you know, and watch Father Schmitz online, you know, even though that was a great. You know, it was a necessary thing, I think a lot of diocese and a lot of parishes thought when we turn the lights back on, people should have flood back in.

And they didn't.

Christopher Beaudet: No, they didn't.

Mark Hart: I mean. And I know.

Christopher Beaudet: And they still haven't.

Mark Hart: You. You travel around and you see. I mean, I travel extensively. I mean, there are parishes. I mean, their plate still hasn't even hit 50 of what it was. Those pews are empty, and people are.

They're seriously bleeding.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially the parishes that still use plates. That's a challenge.

Mark Hart: They should know better. Right.

Christopher Beaudet: You. You and I were talking before we started this conversation about a report about the state of Catholic youth and kind of what they're.

Mark Hart: Yeah, we put it out last year.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah.

Mark Hart: Can.

Christopher Beaudet: Can you say a little bit about that and what your. Re. What your report. Reports on what your findings were.

Mark Hart: Absolutely. Yeah. I'll send. I'll send you. You know, when we're done, I'll send you a link or you can actually telling about. They can check out@life team.com. it's the state of Catholic Youth report.

We put it out a few months back, and we tracked all the data and all the numbers over the span of a couple of years.

Christopher Beaudet: And how do you define, quote, Catholic youth? For the purposes of this study, I would.

Mark Hart: I would say youth who were baptized Catholic or born into a Baptist or into a Catholic home. So we have like kind of the data, the measurables about how many are currently living out the faith, how many are continuing the faith.

Right now, especially with Gen Alpha and, and Gen Z, we're seeing that we're really living in the first and second generations of the truly post Christian country. Right. So there are more, more than ever we have more young people identifying themselves as “nones”, not N U N but N O N E s.

There's, there are more and more, more and more families that claim no religious affiliation.

And we're seeing is this great divide. Either families are getting really into their face or they're abandoning it completely. And, and it's sort of like the Red Sea just parting.

But we identified in the modern adolescents and modern teenagers, as we call the five cries of youth. And John Paul II actually spoke a little bit about this during his pontificate that the level of anxiety that our teenagers are currently dealing with, both diagnosed and undiagnosed, both medical and emotional, chemical emotional, is at an all time high. And that's for a variety of reasons that we dive into. But knowing how to, if you are on a parish level, if you are a parish volunteer, catechist, if you're a parent, knowing how to walk with teenagers to help them navigate anxiety. The levels of loneliness, it's so crazy. We're so interconnected. It's as crazy as it's like the more wireless we become, the more tied to our devices we've become. The amount of loneliness that our teenagers are currently feeling and not even mention how they act out on it.

But it was so funny. People always say, well it's the modern problem with teens that their parents are broken up and that sort of thing. I'll tell you, I honestly hear more from teenagers whose parents were together and they live with both of them who tell me I can't get my parents to spend,

to talk to me or to look at me because they're always on their screens because they're always working, they feel tethered to it. Right. So it ends up happening is a lot of parents talk after kids instead of to them.

So you can be lonely in your own house, even in a big family, right?

Christopher Beaudet: Sure.

Mark Hart: If you have anxiety, you've got loneliness, you have the need for purposeful connection. Teens need to understand not just their vocation for life but their role in society. And I think oftentimes on a parish level, the decisions get made by the people who write the checks. Right. So it's usually the older generation and our young people have to understand you're not the church of tomorrow.

You are the church of right now. And you have a place here, and you're welcome here. And I might not always understand you. I might understand all your tattoos, might understand, you know, your music, might understand your hair.

But you're a child of God and you belong here, and you're some daughter of God, and we're all one family. So they have to have a personal connection. And they need.

They have a need for family. And for a lot of kids, maybe their family is not emotionally present or maybe they are, but the family needs other people to reinforce what they say, right?

You know, so it's not just mom.

Christopher Beaudet: And dad, right?

Mark Hart: But there are kids that don't have family and they need a place to go. And isn't that what the church on its most root, primordial level? Isn't the church supposed to be a family?

Right? I mean, like, those are the. That's the context that Christ himself uses and the verbiage uses and the idioms he uses throughout the Gospels. So you have the need for family and for connection and for community and.

And what true community looks like. And I think, unfortunately, what we've done, a lot of us unintentionally, is we've reduced. Keep holy the Sabbath to get to mass Get the church on Sunday.

We check a box. And then Sunday becomes filled with everything else, right? We end all the necessary stuff of the soccer. The soccer tournaments and the dance recitals and the yard work and the laundry and the shopping, and we met all this stuff as necessary.

It's good. But when we really, really dive into the Word and you really see what God's intentionality was behind setting the Sabbath apart and his hope for that relationship, that intimacy between.

Between God and his children. And then, you know, for spouses and for families, you know, that. That. That does not exist in most teenage homes. So. So what we try to create is this community within a parish, this light teen community where.

Where a teenager knows. If I'm supported by my parents, great. They're going to reinforce what they're doing. If I have no support, I can show up on a Sunday, Someone's going to know my name.

Someone's going to offer me a kind word,

a hug. Someone's going to. Someone's going to. They're going to notice if I'm there, if I'm not there. And I mean, we've had. We've had so many kids. I came to town over the years, so many kids just in just, you know,

a Week or two at Easter, we've got a dozen kids coming into the church in our parish who ended up just kind of wandering into to a Life Teen night with some of their friends from school.

And they started by saying, I don't even know what you believe, but I know when I'm here I feel loved, you know. And then they began the OCIA and you know, they're going to be, they're going to be getting dunked to come to the church.

Christopher Beaudet: Right, right. Yeah. Again, there it is. It's that, it's that just natural connection, relationship and, and, and that creates the opening.

You mentioned at the beginning that, you know, your family had a Bible and it was a bookend,

you know, look very pretty and, and maybe was brought out when, when Father arrived.

And I think, I think there is a, how would I put this? I think there's a, a disconnect between a lot of Catholics and the Word of God. That is not, you know, just an issue with, with teenagers. I mean, families are not scripturally literal. And by that I don't necessarily mean that you can quote chapter and verse, like maybe you might hear an evangelical able to do, etc. Because the evangelicals and non-Catholic Christian church may have maybe a more familiarity or a reference to scripture,

but it isn't the full totality of the scripture, which of course is a product of the church. I mean, the church wrote the Bible, right? Not the Lord. So the Scripture is meant to be proclaimed. It is meant to be understood communally. What role has in your innovative evangelization work? What role has.

How have you brought teens to the Word, to Scripture as a guiding voice in their life? Does that make sense?

Mark Hart: Yeah, absolutely. You know, what really, really helped me was I had, yeah, I had a leader. When he would share about the Word of God he was passionate about, you could tell in the way that he spoke, you could tell that he was immersed in it.

Right. And I think what I learned from him early on was less is more. Oftentimes you'll see someone get up and especially the more educated they are and the more they know, the more they talk.

Right. And they don't really let the Word do the heavy lifting for them.

Or they go,

I say lovingly, like so far off the deep end that they try and do too much, they read too long a passage, they try to break out too many things and like, less is more, you know, like the teenage, the teenage heart and mind are going to retain, you know,

one thing at a time. But it really is, it's not about what I have to tell you. It's about when I sit and pray and I ask the Spirit, what do you want me to unearth specifically to this kid or for this group?

Like, where are they at? And I think what I had to do is I had to approach the Word of God in differently.

A lot of the time. A lot of speakers, I know evangelists, I know teachers, I know they sit down with their Bible and they go through something because they're preparing a talk or a sermon on outline for this group.

But they stop. A lot of them stop just getting into the Word of God just as a son of God or a daughter of God. So I got to this place where I said, when I wake up in the morning, I am just a son of God.

I'm not thinking about a talk, I'm not thinking about a study. I'm going to write nothing about an outline. I'm just, I'm just an Adam in the garden with a fruit juice on and down my face.

I don't deserve his mercy. I am, I am the blind man. I'm Zacchaeus up a tree. I'm, you know, I'm the, I'm the, the Samaritan woman. And I, and he knows my sin and I'm afraid he does, you know, so to me, let's see with the Lord every day in his Word,

you say, I am just your son. Reveal to me with that. And then later on after I've spent ample time just in my own prayer later on going back and saying, okay, now I'm going to pray specifically and ask the Spirit, I would put this, this hat on, this lens on now reveal to me where,

where, where the list, the listener of this massive, this hit, where they're at and what they're going through. And you can take, and you're a notice you can take the same passage that you read in the morning. And here I am as a 50 year old reading this is like a son of God. And I get to the afternoon and I'm reading this to the gathering teenager. You can get a completely different exegesis out of the exact same three or four verses, just completely different. And I think the key is to, to really say it's not about what I have to tell you, it's not what the Spirit had to tell you.

And then to try to find those ways to get out of the Holy Spirit's way.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah, right.

Mark Hart: And, and also this can't be overstated. 

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah.

Mark Hart: You know scriptures, it should be fun, right?

Christopher Beaudet: I mean, it's got to be joyful.

Mark Hart: And, and we gotta find ways, especially for teenagers, make this fun. They have so much stress in their life going from class to classic class. If they, if the minute you open up the Bible, it feels like you're opening a textbook, you failed.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah.

Mark Hart: You know, I mean, God is a God of joy. It says in Psalms 2, God laughs. The stuff that keeps me up at night. I want to know if Peter ever tried walking on water by himself again.

So no one was around, you know.

Christopher Beaudet: Right, exactly.

Mark Hart: No, I want to know if Jonah ever ate seafood again. You know, I mean, these are the questions.

And if you can get, you can get a kid laughing, then you get them thinking, you get them thinking, then the transformation begins, you know, but it's just, you know, that the, the trip from your head to your heart is the longest trip any Christian ever goes on, in my opinion.

And the word of God, that two edged sword, I mean, it just, it just, it does, it slices right between bone and marrow. It goes right from the head to heart.

Like if you have an open mind and an open heart, God can get a hold of you in a way through his word that outside of the sacraments, nothing else can.

Christopher Beaudet: I love that. Well, listen, I want to talk a little bit more about, you know, what innovation might look like, you know, in the context of Catholic evangelization and maybe some practical suggestions or tips that you might offer to listeners.

But before we do, we're just going to take a brief break right here and then we'll come back and resume this great conversation. Please don't go anywhere. I am talking to Mark Hart who is the Chief Innovation Officer at Life Teen.

We will be right back.

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Christopher Beaudet: Thanks for staying with us. I am talking with Mark Hart, the Chief Innovation Officer at Life Teen. And before the break, we were talking about the role of scripture in evangelization and maybe trying to set aside some of the presumptive ways we try to reach people.

Maybe pull out my Bible and just start reading it. Getting heavily theological right out of the, out of the gate, presuming that we already have what the other person needs. So I just start giving it to them rather than maybe they're, you know, they're, they're. A teen's need can put us in touch with our own need, which is exactly the same thing. That's salvation. It's the Lord. It's grace. Right. Redemption,

mercy and mercy. Right, Exactly. I should have started with. I should have started with that.

Chief Innovation Officer.Great title. Better than, you know, chief old hat officer or whatever.

What. What is, you know, when you're, when you're. Because I think innovation isn't always the first word people associate with church ministry. Right, Correct. Correct. But your title is that. So what does innovation look like in the context of Catholic evangelization?

Mark Hart: It's a great question. I go back to St. Paul. I always refer to St. Paul in these moments. He says, when I was among the Jews, I spoke like a Jew.

When I was among the Gentiles, I spoke like a Gentile. That's one of those who didn't know the law of Moses Sack, as though I did not know it, even though I never abandoned it nor fledged them.

Basically, what Paul understood from a marketing perspective and an evangelization perspective is you'd have to be all things to all people.

And really, for, for a modern Christian, I, I would say, and I would argue with anybody, that the modern atheists have not done one fraction of the damage to the church that joyless Christians do.

Joy should be our calling card. Joy should be on our lips because we know the final score.

Polton Sheen is only absolute heroes said, the only reason to take this life too seriously is if it's your only one. Right. So I think that we have to lead with joy.

I mean, if you, if in most parishes, and this is not, I'm not trying to judge, but sure, I don't think if you ask to take a straw pole, most Catholics exiting Mass on Sunday, that they would say their parish is just a place of joy.

Right. You know, it's, it's not the first adjective they come up with. Right.

And most, most Fallen away Catholics, they wouldn't say that that were a faith of joy. Look at the crucifix. Look at this. But we. We are joyful because we know the final sore, you know, if any.

It's. It's. I don't know how anyone, if they believe in the true presence of the Lord in the Eucharist, could not have joy on their hearts, you know, And I listen to a lot of my evangelical friends who do a great job with, like, evangelization, but it was so funny.

I'll talk to him on a Sunday and I'll say, how was. How was your service this morning? They'll say, I didn't get anything out of it.

Christopher Beaudet: The sermon was terrible.

Mark Hart: My music was terrible. That's what I love about being Catholic. Even if the homily is terrible, even if the music is horrible, that I still receive Jesus in the Word, in the Eucharist and the priesthood and in the community.

I love it, you know, so how does. How does modern evangelism look like? I think first it just takes us being really honest about where we're not. We know, we think because we were 1 billion strong around the world that we're crushing.

We're not crushing.

Christopher Beaudet: No.

Mark Hart: And we're just not, you know, if we were crushing, we would have to be building our churches bigger. We have to. We wouldn't be consolidating the. Build it. If evangelization was really on our hearts and minds, it was about harps and converting hearts and not just getting, you know, people through the door,

through the pews, or getting people, you know, confirmed or stamped, then it would look different. So I think what we have to do is we have to. We have to look at.

We first have to take a really hard inventory about how we're doing. The best pastors I know, it doesn't matter. This is. Regardless of age, regardless of culture, regardless of, you know, where they are, the best pastors I know are constantly retooling.

They're constantly looking at their staff and saying, do we have the right people in place? They cast a vision. You know, it's. It says. It says in Habakkuk, it says, you know, when you have a vision, write it down clearly upon a tablet so all who see it can see it and run with it.

Most parishes lack vision. And that's because, honestly, in some diocese, the diocese lacks vision. Right.

The pastors who have vision, and I'm just being building plans, things like that. But this is what I want, not just my ministries to look like or my, you know, how do I want my staff to act?

This is the entire approach and has to start with me, you know, it has to start with my accessibility. We need to free up our pastors to preach, teach and sanctify.

That's what they were ordained for. We have to quit turning them just into fundraisers and building managers and dragging them at every meeting, about every pothole in every parking lot.

You know, let them just be priests. Yeah, we have to get people who really know how to lead in leadership positions in the parish, whether paid or on parish council, but people who have different skill set.

We need to bring in like we. So for so long, it was almost like on a parish level, we feared the professional sector. When there are people in those pews who are devoted Catholics who have a real wrong understanding of whether it's finance, it's building, it's management.

We need to call people and call them to service, and we can't just wait for them to come and volunteer. The people who you need are not the ones who have time to volunteer.

You have to go ask them, go recruit them and go empower them. If we do that, also our parishes, we have a different. We take on a strategy. We're not just thankful for whoever shows up.

You realize, I'll look at youth ministers. I'll say, you understand me, this is really important.

Is not just about ministering to the kids who happen to be in registered families of your parents. You are called by God and charged by God to reach out and offer Christ to every single teenager, Catholic and not Catholic, within your parish boundaries.

The kid who's busting your table, the kid who's bagging your groceries, the kid who's tearing your movie ticket. You have the opportunity to look them in the eyes and be Christ to them and invite them into a relationship with Christ in his church.

And I think the more we can look at how we leverage social media, the good news is now there's so many things. This podcast, right? There's podcasts, right. There's YouTube, there's.

I mean, I mean, look like it's very telling you, Father Mike Schmidt's dear friend, this face is plastered on billboard in Times Square for Bible in a Year. When did we ever think that was going to happen?

Like the last thing, last time that happened, that was Fulton Sheen taking on Milton Berle back in the 50s. Right. You know that we had a Catholic priest who was like just crushing, you know,

but it's not just. It's. The thing is, it's not just One magic pill or one magic bullet. We have to stop being a shirt where we want the seven minute abs, you know what I mean?

Like, how do we get the most people in with the least amount of work? No, it's going to be, it's going to be a grind you have to wake up with, like, with a desire.

You can wake up and say, lord, give me work until my life is over. Until life, until my work is done, you know, and, and people are saying, well, I don't know how to keep my kid Castle, like, and my grandkid.

How do I, how do I raise a saint? And my answer is become a saint. You know, become a saint.

Christopher Beaudet: So the innovation be able to tell.

Mark Hart: From our faces and our genuflections of our bows that we, that we love the Lord.

Christopher Beaudet: Right, right. And, and so the innovation is in some ways, if this is fair to say,

is kind of being as authentic as possible,

ourselves and that. And you'd think, well, that's not innovative. That's, you know, that's what's tried and true. But the problem is, I'm thinking of GK Chesterton, you know, he said the problem with Christianity is not that it's been tried and found wanting, it's that it hasn't been tried.

And so that's the innovation there. It's like, well, actually the Lord is going to do all the work. We just need to, you know, open ourselves and then see, see the fruitfulness of that.

Mark Hart: Yes. And you know, what we do too often is we say, we don't say what does God want? We say, what can we afford on a parish level? What does God desire versus well, this is what I can afford to do.

So I'm just going to do this.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah. And that was going to be another question of mine, obviously. Stag group. We're in the business of, you know, capital campaigns and helping parishes dream big and fund it, invite sacrificial giving and the joy of giving to support that.

How do you encourage parishes and ministry leaders to trust God's provision, God's generosity when resources, financial or volunteer or even energy, you know, feel scarce. The scarcity mindset, how do we move towards that abundance mindset?

Mark Hart: I really believe it starts with teaching people how to pray.

I think we have a very deep, cavernous lack of the theology of prayer and the theology of worship and the, and the necessity of prayer. We don't teach unless you're lucky, if you're born into a family that does this.

We don't teach rhythm of prayer to our young people, our own kids, most, most of, most of us adults don't. You know, we're not necessarily taught to have a rhythm of prayer.

You know, prayer is a very private devotion. Prayer is not a private devotion. If you actually read scripture, you know, you actually, the Gospels, you know, I mean, prayer is happening constantly.

And yes, your prayer can be perfunctory, absolutely. But your prayer also has to have a rhythm to it. You know, like there's a reason our church in her wisdom gives us things like the literacy of the hours and the daily examiner and the Angelus.

I mean, it was baked into your workday, you know, so. Right. I mean, I was saying, like, do you start with your morning offering? Do you end with your daily examine?

Do you do, do you pray the handles? Do you pray the divine mercy? We have all these structured prayers. And then also do we have like that spontaneous prayer that just falls off our lips when we're driving in the car?

You know, I think what happens is we get so busy with so many of those things that prayer just becomes this reactionary piece. Well, we're never going to, we're never going to go get to the fundraising component, the tithing component, if we do not first start with prayer.

Because what need do I have of God? Right, right. What trust do I have in God? And if, and people, people are saying, well, you know, prayer helps your relationship with God.

I think that's too short sighted. Prayer is your relationship with God. But I think it starts there. And because you get people praying, you get people trusting, you get people trusting, then they start to think, like with a God mindset, not a human mindset, we start thinking ethereally and not earthly.

And then, and only then when the heart's open will the wallet open, you know, and people say God pays for what he orders. Now, we might not get there this year, but, but every single parish should have a five year plan, a three year plan, a one year plan.

Every single parish should have built in evaluation. I think, I think a lot of parishes are afraid to ask the people in the pews if they're effective. I guess there's staff members who are afraid that they're gonna look bad, they're gonna lose their job.

We need to be willing to take a hard look and ask hard questions and say, are we doing everything God's called us to do?

Christopher Beaudet: Right.

Mark Hart: Have we left every stone unturned or no stones unturned? And is this about my comfort level and what I prefer, or is this about what people need? You know, and you know, as a parent,

the minute God sends you children, they're saint making machines. It's not about your comfort anymore. It's about getting them to heaven and doing what they need. And if you're going to be living as a Catholic, you better get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Christopher Beaudet: Right.

Mark Hart: Because that's why we have a crucifix. Yeah. So it's okay. I. There's I doing youth ministry. I don't care about so much of what most most modern teens want to talk to me about.

I just don't care. But I care about them. And to show I care about them, I have to care about what they're talking about.

Christopher Beaudet: Right.

Mark Hart: If it makes no sense to me.

Christopher Beaudet: Right, right, right.

Mark Hart: Same with the people in the pews. We have to care about what their needs are and love them in their needs more than their want.

Christopher Beaudet: I wanted to ask you too, about liturgy, because you just mentioned prayer. We have to learn how to pray and, you know, eucharistic adoration, which is not liturgy, it's devotion. But it routes us back to the Eucharist, the celebration of the source and summit of the Christian faith.

Eventually,

when somebody is going to be a devout, faithful Catholic disciple of the Lord,

there has to be a eucharistic center to that faith,

to the source. And summit is part of the innova. What role does how the liturgy is celebrated effective for bringing teens and for bringing youth to discover the mysteries of the faith?

And I'm asking this because there's a lot of, quote, teen Masses out there. So there's a lot of, you know, varying perspectives on whether they those Masses work. They might be attractive at maybe an emotional level or because their friends are there.

What are your thoughts on that, on how the liturgy is celebrated and how that affects teens?

Mark Hart: Great question.

I've heard, I've heard, you know, people say, well, there's, there's no reverence, that there's guitars. It has to be organ. I've heard people say there's no reverence, that there's. There's a drum kit, you know, and honestly, what I think bolster into a lot of times is what, what people's personal preferences,

whether that's a pastor, a liturgist, or the other people in the pews who are non ls. What I would say is this,

you can have a contemporary liturgy that it teeth and in mythicism, teeth And Reverend, I watch it happen every single Sunday.

I'm blessed to have a pastor who is a dynamic and passionate priest.

And we have a worship leader we have our musicians, our music group, they are so reverent and how they do it. And he'll open with an antiphon and he'll have chants in different parts of the Mass and we're going to laugh in different parts of that.

But we also have contemporary worship songs and we have age old worship songs, you know, so it's not odd to hear a Matt Mar song in the same liturgy you're going to hear Eagle's Wings, you know, so he's found this great way to converge, you know, ever, ever, ever age and ever new.

Right. What I think, what I think goes wrong is people have seen maybe a teen mask done poorly and they just naturally assume, well, that's how all of them are.

And what I would say, and I'd push back on it and say I've, I have literally the dirtiest, I mean I have watched, I've been on, I've been on stages that are still youth conferences, that are late teen conference.

I've watched rooms. I mean, last summer alone, I was, I was at our, I was our Superville Lone Star. 4,500 teenagers fall to their knees when the Lord entered in that monstrance and you couldn't hear a pin drop.

And you find me any place, any bastion society where 4,500 teenagers, you can't hear a pin drop. And don't talk to me about reverence, you know what I mean? Like you come to our mass on a Sunday and yeah, you know, before Mass is going, we have, we'll have like a session of teens,

you know, and there's, there's 150, 200 teenagers all coming to mass and they go to all these different high schools, right? And people like, well, they should go to mass with your parents.

Well,

there's tons of parents there too. But you know, I might say something like, I've had all my kids go through life when my 16-year-old looks at me and says, daddy, do you mind if I go sit with my friends?

I think to myself, I didn't have to beg you to go to church. Oh, right, I don't have to beg you. I mean, she, she goes, she, her friends go and make their own weekly holy hour every Wednesday.

They just spontaneously, no one's organizing it. They spontaneously meet. If you create an encounter, and I think that's, that's the point of, like we said, like a team master. Do you create an encounter moment where a team can escape the stresses of the world, come into a church, be welcomed. Hospitality is huge. And then if you if you have someone who's looking in the eyes and saying, it's good to see you. Right. If we can get a dual mentality where, I mean, honestly, it was funny to move about a teen mass.

90% of the people in that church are old, like me, like older. They go to this mass because they want, it's like even like the blue hairs, they want the vibrancy.

They, it's like you want to stay young, hang out with young people. They love it and they're so cool. You get to this place where a little, the cute little lady who I see every morning at daily mass and she makes it a point to walk over to the teens after Mass and say,

it is so good to see you here. Yeah, it is so good you're here. I mean, you can see that they just, they light up these smiles on their faces.

And this is, this is what the truly cross generational kind of ministry is supposed to look like. It doesn't mean shove Lois the 90-year-old and Tiffany the 15-year-old in the room and make them get in a smaller day.

That's my comment. It means acknowledging the validity, worth, dignity, and presence of the other. And honestly, I watch teenagers. Yeah, they might walk in, they might not know yet to wear nicer pants now.

They might walk in and their hair is disheveled and you might have to tell them, take off a hat or something. I'd rather do that and have them in God's house than to give them that, that stink guy and make them feel like they're not worthy, you know, they're not worthy to be there.

Yeah, and it's, it's, it's just, it's about creating an environment and a vision even within the liturgy, how we will be reverence and how we can hold people and, and catechize them, teach them, hold them accountable, you raise them up.

But to be patient with them and to walk with them and say they were not raised, maybe the way you were raised. And what they find engaging, you don't find engaging.

And what's really funny is the worship is supposed to set up the silence, right? So you might go to a youth conference and there might be a band just blaring worship.

What ends up happening if you actually pull back and want. We start up here and then we ramp it down and ramp it down. I said, you notice all of a sudden now the, the drums are coming out, the guitars are coming out, so people coming off the mic and before you know it,

it's just one voice into A mic, single cellular ostia. And it's in the complete silence and the worship and the big parts and the lights and it sets up the silence.

And I watch this happen in convention centers and summer camps on every continent. I mean, with the kids, like, what they're. The death that a teenager is capable of is mind blowing to people who just kind of assume they're all one entity.

Christopher Beaudet: Right? Yeah, exactly. That's. That's a temptation to write them all off or presume that one approach is always going to work for one demographic.

Well, I guess to close in the last couple of minutes that we've got here, Mark, if you could challenge, you know, a parish or diocesan leader listening to this podcast to take one risk for the sake of the Gospel this year, what would it be?

Mark Hart: I would say have the courage and the humility to offer a survey on a diocesan level to parish leaders. Let it be anonymous. A survey about how you're doing diocesan level.

And make it hard. Like, make there be several questions that you might not want to see the answer to. I would say to a pastor or a parish student or a parish council or, you know, liturgy team, whatever,

offer a survey. Again, I'm not being honest. Let people tell you how you're really doing. Let people tell you where they're being fed and not fed, where there is multiplication, where there's wicker baskets are moving around, and where, you know, where they're not being fed and what they'd like to see.

And I think you'll be surprised. And then pray. The letting humility, as you read it, pray it early, pray it often, pray it daily. But truthfully, like, if the goal why do we pray?

Why do we go to church? Why read the Bible? St. Peter tells us in 1st Peter 1:9, the goal of our faith is salvation, yours and everyone's. He makes it plural.

That's really important. It's a goal of salvation. Get over yourself. Ask the hard questions. Have humility to say, we can do better, and then get people together, pray your butt off and cast a vision.

If you don't have that humility and you're not willing to ask the hard question, what you just told me is your goal isn't salvation. Your goal is comfort. You know, Your goal is not even sanctification, you know, and then you then if that's your goal, you should not be in leadership in the church.

You should not be given a position of leadership because your goal is not God's goal. And they're incongruent. And you should have the humility to step aside and let someone who has that goal go do that job.

Christopher Beaudet: Well, your own enthusiasm is, comes through loud and clear. And you know, for all of the, the hearts that you've touched and,

you know, all of the breakthroughs maybe that God has done through you because of your willingness to be an instrument of his, of his grace and his love in the lives of so many youth.

We really want to thank you for that and for your ongoing work with with Life Teen. Blessings on the many more countries and communities and parishes that will embrace the vision and your good work and for being a guest today and, and speaking with me.

Thank you very much.

Mark Hart: Oh, anytime. Thanks for having me. Anything I could do to help out the good work you're doing. You just need only say the word. I'm right here.

Christopher Beaudet: Thanks, Mark.

My thanks to Mark Hart for sharing his passion for serving youth, for being innovative in reaching people where they are in their journey, speaking to them of the Lord in a way that invites inquiry and ultimately discipleship, and helping us all discover or maybe rediscover the richness of Scripture.

If you'd like to learn more about Life Teen International, check them out at www.lifeteen.com.

please subscribe to our podcast if you have haven't already, and be sure to invite friends and colleagues to do the same. We've got many more wonderful guests lined up for you to enjoy.

That's it for this episode. All of us at the Steier Group hope you're having a joyful and blessed Easter season. We'll see you again at the end of next month here on Twelve Wicker Baskets.