Welcome back to the Word on Fire show. I'm Matthew Petrusik, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire show. Thank you for joining us. In 2025, the Word on Fire ministry celebrated its 25th anniversary. And in October of that same year, Bishop Barron and Word on Fire CEO, Father Steve Grunow, gave a presentation at the Good News Conference in Orlando in which the

two men took a deep dive into Word on Fire's origins. How did it begin? What were its animating

principles? What were some of its earliest strategies? What did the name Word on Fire even come from?

Why in short did Word on Fire develop the way that did? Here to discuss these

roots with Father Steve Grunow in the first half of an hour-long conversation is Bishop Robert Barron.

From the very beginning, Word on Fire was open to trying new things, to experimenting, to, you know, trying to be bold in what they did, trying to do something, trying to take a chance.

And that, that in many ways, is the theme of our 25th anniversary,

which refers to the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 5, in which Jesus exhorts his disciples to go out into the deep, to be bold, to go out into the deep, which is rendered in Latin as Duke in Altum,

and that that's kind of the theme of our 25th anniversary.

It also meshes nicely with the theme of this year's Good News Conference, hope,

because at the very beginning of Word on Fire, it wasn't much more than hope,

and that hope was obviously well placed. With that, I think you all know

Bishop Barron in some way. There's so many different ways that people have come to Word on Fire,

but you've gotten to know him over the years. Perhaps less well known as Father Steve Grunow,

who was there from the beginning and serves as the CEO and executive producer of Word on Fire.

Father Steve is a priest to the Archdiocese of Chicago who is on what seems to be permanent assignment to Word on Fire.

We're fortunate that the Cardinal Archbishops of Chicago have allowed him to be attached to Word on Fire. We're fortunate that the Cardinal Archbishops of Chicago have allowed him to

be attached to Word on Fire and serve as our CEO. So with that, I thought we would obviously

try to go back to the very beginnings of Word on Fire. And I know there's a million different

stories on how Word on Fire came together, know there's a million different stories

on how Word on Fire came together,

how it started, how it began to gain some traction.

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