What It’s Really Like to Be a Catholic Speaker

The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast

Ascension

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.9 • 7.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2020

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many people ask Fr. Mike, “How do you become a Catholic speaker?”

The quick answer is “Get baptized and start talking.” Of course this implies that you live out the promises of your baptism. When you do that, people will start asking you to give talks about the Faith.

At least that’s how it worked out for Fr. Mke. The caveat is that being a Catholic speaker is not all that it seems to be. The Faith is not going to spread throughout the world through someone on a stage with a microphone in hand. Christ will redeem the world through relationships, especially family and friendships.

The danger is in thinking that giving talks equals ministry. The Catholic teacher, director of religious education, and volunteer are in the messy relationships that make disciples of Christ one person at a time. We don’t want to become someone who is willing to travel a thousand miles to tell a thousand people about Christ, but isn’t willing to cross one street to tell one person about him.

Jesus first reached out to his twelve disciples and built strong relationships with them. Then people started coming to him. When you live an authentic Christian life founded upon a strong relationship with Christ and with others in Christ, people start noticing. You won’t have to aspire to be a Catholic speaker because those who are looking for a leader in the Faith will ask you to be one.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	In kind of like going back and forth of whether I would make a video about this topic, I thought,
0:03.8	does this topic have universal appeal? Or is it just the people who email me all the time and ask
0:08.6	me about this question? Because I get asked this question a ton and the question is this,
0:12.7	Father Mike, how does one, how do I become a speaker? I mean, you've been saying Catholic speaker,
0:17.1	whatever, how do I become a speaker?
0:20.0	Hi, my name is Father Mike Spitz and this is The Essential Presents. Sometimes I go to places and
0:31.7	I give a talk and they say, oh, you're a speaker, how do you do that? The very short answer to that
0:37.2	question is someone asked and I said, yes, that's it. If you want to ask the question of how do you
0:43.8	come like Catholic speaker, the two steps get baptized, start talking. That's the heart of the
0:48.9	whole thing, which is, again, I have to say someone asked, I said, sure, hey, would you come and talk
0:55.0	to our youth group? Sure, great, no problem. Hey, would you come and speak at our group of like
1:00.2	council of Catholic women? Sure, no problem, whatever. There's five people here that I'd like you to
1:04.8	talk to them. Great, no problem. That's how it is. For me personally, how it happened was I was
1:10.5	ordained a priest and so you preached as a priest. I just did as much as I could to get as best as
1:16.0	I could, good as good as a good. Anyways, to improve. At one point, I was at a conference and someone
1:21.7	said, hey, we don't have a priest for Mass tomorrow. Would you mind preaching the homily? Sure, great,
1:25.6	no problem. I had done that and then they said, hey, would you come back next summer for another
1:29.6	conference? Officially, not just last minute. Sure, no problem. Meanwhile, doing the ministry I had to
1:36.1	do in the first place, which was to serve the people in that at that point of Hibbing, Minnesota,
1:41.0	in a small parish up there. That's kind of how just went from that to that to that because
1:47.1	someone asked and I simply said, yes, there's a little bit of an issue though that I have whenever
1:51.3	anyone asks, how do you become a speaker? They're looking at it. Here's what I think. I think
	...

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