Transcript of CS#78: Curtis Martin Made for More

Transcript of Interview with Curtis Martin about Saints at the Dinner Table. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Made for More is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004803/Made-More/

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CHRIS: This is the Catholic Spotlight, the Pod cast where we talk about what’s new, cool and exciting in the Catholic market place. I’m your host Chris Cash, Director of E-Commerce from catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs. And today in the spotlight, we have Curtis Martin, the president and founder of Focus. It’s one of the fastest growing and most dynamic programs in the Catholic Church and also the author of Made for More which is an excellent evangelization tool. Curtis, welcome to the show.

CURTIS MARTIN: Chris, it’s great to be with you and your listeners.

CHRIS: Well, thank you very much. We are very happy to have you. Tell us a little bit more about Focus and what Focus does?

CURTIS MARTIN: Sure, I’d be happy to. Focus is a ten year old program which trains recent college graduates and places them on college campuses to evangelize their peers. Our young people today are drifting away; in fact, they are almost running away from the Catholic faith unfortunately on the college campus. About 8 out of 10, Catholics who go away to college stop practicing their faith and Focus is an attempt not only to change that but to change it in the right direction completely, that young people would actually find Christ in a new way and want to live their Christian faith within the church that Christ founded the Catholic church in a dynamic way for the rest of their lives and so we’re meeting young people, at the pivotal point of their life and inviting them to choose Christ as adults.

CHRIS: Now, how are you accomplishing that?

CURTIS MARTIN: Well a huge part of that Chris is that we’re, it is a relationship. The Christianity is essentially all about relationships. It is first of all God extending us relationships through his son Jesus Christ bringing us back into a relationship that was broken through our own sin. It’s God’s free initiative and then the response of a Christian who has been welcomed in the relationship back in the relationship with Christ, whether it was infant baptism or they had a conversion later in life is to do the same, to go out and extend relationship to others, loving them first because God loves them, offering them the gift of forgiveness. So our young staffs go out, they themselves have had their lives changed by God. We’ve got staff, hundreds of staff around the country on college campuses who have experienced a life changing and transforming relationship with Christ.

They’re going out and they’re hanging out with college students. They’re playing ultimate Frisbee they’re, passing out hot chocolate on cold days, and burgers on warm days, whatever it might be and in the midst of those friendships and relationships, they share what’s most important to them and that most important aspect is their relationship with Jesus Christ and in the midst of that, young people are saying, “well, how can I have that relationship?”, we show them how to do that, how to give their lives to God, how to surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and how to live that Christian faith within the Catholic Church.

CHRIS: Now if somebody is interested in becoming part of this program, do you have resources to provide them with more information? Are there minimum requirements that you have for people who want to become involved?

CURTIS MARTIN: Chris, that’s one of the reasons we’re talking today. Always eager to try to find more young people a typical profile for our staff and let’s be clear, we’re talking about full time stuff who are working with us full time ask for a two year commitment and a typical profile is a recent college graduate, we have people who don’t fit that but the majority do and if there are, young listeners out there today who are saying, “I think that I could give more back to our Lord who has given so much to me, or I think that there’s so much to be done in the world and I’d love to commit some time and energy”. I think, when young people commit to a couple of years of time to Focus, two things are going to happen. First and foremost, they themselves are going to have a life transforming experience.

What, I love is to see if we’ve got young people who are saying, “I’m going to postponed law school and med school and I’m going to invest a couple years of my life because grad school or other and business will help me get rich and help me increase my career path but spending some time with Focus is actually going affect, “who I am, the type of person I am and not just what I do”. The second thing is not only your time with Focus going to have an impact in your life, but you’re going to get involved with one of the most exciting and dynamic mission fields in the world today. Young people today, stand at a crossroads. They are either going to be swept up by a culture that doesn’t believe in God, doesn’t believe in life, doesn’t believe in authentic freedom, it has very little or even no joy, or they’re going to choose Christ and they’re going to find that there’s a life of mercy and grace, a life of meaning and purpose and they’re going to be able to see that they could experience maximum joy in this life and everlasting joy in the life to come.

CHRIS: Now, I guess my interest in this is a little more on the practical side of operations because around the time you are starting this, I was doing road ministry with Reach youth ministry which is kind of a similar idea except traveling around doing retreats for teenagers and often even elementary school kids.

CURTIS MARTIN: Absolutely.

CHRIS: When someone signs up for your program, what are, what does the program provide? Do you have some kind of fund raising requirements to go along with this and where do you get the remainder or the funds that are needed to keep this operation going and how can somebody contribute to your organization financially?

CURTIS MARTIN: Need a better answer. Need a better answer

CHRIS: Well you know, I always had it, right?

CURTIS MARTIN: In this day and age as we go to financial turmoil, I think a lot of people are trying to sit back, what are we going to do, and I think what we’re seeing is, people are saying, you know, I need to do a priority check am I placing my resources, where it matters most, and so it’s exciting, we’re certainly looking for people to partner with us. Let’s go back to the first question which is, how does a young person get involved, what does that look like, again I said you know, typical persons going to come in, is going to be a recent college graduate. We’re going to come in and we’re going to train them and we’re going to take you. The first step is we’re going to take you to what we call new staff training, that’s five weeks of intensive training prayer classes in the faith some of the best teachers Peter Cray, Scott Horn, Tim Grey, Jeff Gavin’s…

CHRIS: Is this a set time every year?

CURTIS MARTIN: Set time in the summer is just after graduation and after that training we’re going to place you on a team with staff who have some more seniority. So we will continue to train you throughout the year. One of the biggest problems in the church today is we don’t feed the feeders; we don’t care for the caregivers, and there’s a tremendous burnout rate in people that had been called in to work. And so our primary role at Focus is to make sure that our missionary staff members are cared for week in and week out, day in and day out and that they are able if they’re well cared for, we know that God is going to do great things in their life. So they are going to be sent out on a team to serve on campus. Part of that training is goes right up which you asked about Chris.

How do these people eat and were going to, there going to contact friends and family member we’re going to give them other tools on how to connect with people and say would you be willing to sponsor my work on campus, by the grace of God we have thousands of donors who are giving $25 to $50 dollars a month and saying, “Hey, I’ll sponsor Britney or Sam and they’re sending their money to Focus, they get a tax write off for their gift and that money passes through us and goes out to support the apostolic ministry of our staff on the field and there it covers not only what they do but also what they eat and where they live and so we’re very excited about, that its been a very effective program but we’re always in need of more friends. The field is literally ripe for harvest. We are serving on 40 campuses right now with hundreds of staff serving thousands of students but there are more than 40 college campuses in America, in fact, there’s more than two thousand college campuses in America and we are just starting, we believe that if we were to send staff to a hundred campuses, two hundred campuses, we would see a transformation in young lives and God willing a transformation in our culture.

CHRIS: How many staff do you typically have on an individual campus?

CURTIS MARTIN: A basic team would be four staff, two men and two women. As we said, we send our first year staff out with veteran staffs so a typical team would be a veteran man and veteran woman and then a first year staff and a first year woman and they would be out on campus and there’s, there going to be investing in college students. The young people today are looking for friends who will help them. We live in a culture where there we have friends but our friends don’t necessarily know what’s best for us, that’s the beauty of Christianity, it takes goodness and generosity and harnesses it with truth and meaning and purpose in life and all of a sudden you have a friend saying, “hey, how can I help you become who you were supposed to be when God willed you into existence.

He had a dream for you, He had a plan for you and the world in sin and confusion creep in and take us of course that we miss that plan and when we loose sight of the reason we were created, we will loose our meaning and purpose in life and we become frustrated, we become anxious, we loose our hope. When we are reintroduced to Jesus Christ and then He introduces that plan for our lives, our life all of a sudden is filled again with meaning and purpose. We find ourselves waking up in the morning eager to get on with our life to invest our lives in others and all of the sudden; the joy we were made for comes alive in us again. So that’s the role that’s going on college campus. We’re seeing now literarily as I said Chris thousands of young college students who are making radical decisions to follow Christ in a Godless society. In our society in whole has turned its back on its back on God, in a lot of ways. The society on college campus, sometimes even some Catholic college campuses have turned their back on God on lived experiential way in which many young college student experience it.

CHRIS: Now, do you get a lot of partnership with the campus Newman centers and other campus ministries?

CURTIS MARTIN: Yeah, we go and work with the existing campus ministry programs. A lot of times that’s a great and vibrant, vital relationship. Let’s face it, sometimes that’s a challenging relationship, not all Newman centers have been sources of radical faithfulness to Christ and his church and we have to move incrementally to try to build faithfulness in some of those situations but what our commitment is to renew the church from within the church. , You know, there were two movements that took place in fifteen hundreds, one was called the Protestant Reformation the other one was called the Catholic Counter reformation. Both of them served to reform the church but one left the church. We believe that that’s the broken model. While, there might be many sincere people that are trying to do that. Christ said that He found the one church and He was going to be with it until the end, so we believe that real authentic renewal is going to take place by renewing the Catholic Church, the church that Christ founded.

CHRIS: Well, that is an awesome program. I really wish you the best and everyone out there listening do check it out where they can find the information on that again?

CURTIS MARTIN: www.focusonline.org, and the easy is www.focusonline.org or just Google Focus Catholic and we will come right up and love to have you engage us. Well maybe to make a comment Chris about what you were mentioning about the traveling program that you were involved in, that’s another very important way to serve. We have to do both in. We need to go out and just spread the message far and wide but we also need to go deep whenever possible and so there’s a great compliment there. I kind a view that those that travel around as kind of fire starters and those who stay around and go deep are the ones who take care of the fire once its burning. It’s so important for us to do everything we can.

Some of us are going to be called in one direction or another, there’s the you know, there are better and less good ways to go, the key thing is, what does, Christ want you to do. For each of us to sit quietly and not a lot of times our prayer life is, “Hey God, this is what I like you to do for me, I like this, this and this and this and this, and this and this and thanks by the way I’ll see you later”, and we need to also recognize, yes, God wants to care for our needs but do we take just a few moments a day and say, “God, what do you want from me? What do you want for me? Speak into my life Lord. I know you made me for a purpose, help me to know what that purpose is”, when we do that God is going to really become active in our lives so we begin to hear His voice.

CHRIS: And you know that was always one of the drawbacks that we saw in the traveling ministry program was that we’d be in a location for a couple of days, maybe a week and we’d see all these fires get started and we knew what kind of a struggle it was going to be once we left for those people to keep that fire going. So programs like Focus are really awesome in that that they can help to keep that fire going for the long term because you’ve always got a Focus person there and available.

CURTIS MARTIN: That is, so important we have to recognize that you know, again I would say both are necessary, absolutely. The power of these traveling programs is they’re going to bring something new and get people to rethink about their lives.

CHRIS: Well, and it’s easy with a traveling program to really bring in an exciting program that’s going to really put some wow into life that is different from what somebody who is there on the campus, continuously is going to be able to put forth as well.

CURTIS MARTIN: We have got to do that because, let’s face it the central prayer for Catholics is the mass and yet most young Catholics experiences boredom when they go to mass and the problem is not with the mass, the problem is we have not brought people to a dynamic vibrant relationship with Christ. I know that in my own life, yeah I was raised Catholic, I drifted away and I gave my life to Christ in my sophomore year in college but the first Christians I met were evangelical Protestants and they helped me in many ways but one of the negative effects was they led me away from the Catholic church and from the sacraments and I was away for several years but I was studying and I was praying and I was thinking and when I finally for the first time in many years went back to mass, I was awe struck by the amount of scripture, by the amount of prayer, by the richness of the symbolism.

All of which had come to me through my prayer and reading of scripture and so we have to recognize that we’ve got to help young people engage the mass where it is. Mass is where heaven and earth meet but if you don’t know what going on, it may seem irrelevant and that’s the power of these fire starter ministries that travel around and engage people at a new level and so I want to encourage people that, that ministries and others do fantastic work and other groups and at the same time I do agree, once those sparks are ignited we got to do all we can to help people burn with love for Christ for a lifetime, because Christianity is a Marathon.

CHRIS: All right, well we’re going to take a short break here to hear from our sponsor. When we come back, we will start talking about Made for more, this awesome new evangelization resource book. This is the Catholic Spotlight.

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CHRIS: And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Curtis Martin talking about Made for more, an awesome evangelization resource. Now, this book is it geared mostly at teenagers or does it really have a wider audience in that?

CURTIS MARTIN: You know Chris; the beautiful thing about working with college students is that you really have to speak to them as adults because that’s what they are. They are the young adults but you’ve got to speak to them as adults. They are now ready to be serious about the way they think, so when you engage college students which in some ways is our primary audience with the book, you’re really speaking to a very broad group because it needs to be a dynamic presentation or they’ll just put it down. So it actually will address and speak to high school students as well. What I would argue is that there’s really no age group that this wouldn’t work sort of after adolescent so I think you got you’re certainly talking about somebody who’s hit adolescence but we want it to be a youthful presentation. We are looking at here in the United states, we’ve got 60 million Catholics; most of them are attending mass most Sundays and many of the holy days of obligations if I know they’re there but they don’t necessarily wake up in the morning and think about, what does it mean to be Catholic,

What does it mean to have Jesus Christ the center of my life? And the Catholic Church works and they’re going to they’ll work their way through life, they’ll marry. They’ll stay faithful, they’ll continue to go to the sacraments but the goal here is not to simply stay Catholic or it’s not even simply to get to heaven. It’s to go to heaven and bring as many people with you as you can and so what we’re trying to do with the book is wake people up. We also recognize that in almost every family, there are family members who have left the church and I’ve heard now for 15 years, moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas saying, “What do I give my son or daughter? What book, what tape, what CD, what can I give my son or daughter to consider, reconsider the Catholic faith? And the goal of Made for More is to be a short presentation, it’s not a very thick book to engage people where they are and to bring them into a new look of the Catholic faith.

The church has the answers for their questions but we as lifelong Catholics need to re-look. Sometimes we think, we know Catholicism but you know what our view of Catholicism is sometimes a second grade version and we need an adult version and for those who’ve never been Catholic to understand what the Catholic Church is, and what it teaches, that’s the purpose of Made for More is a tool to be able to handsomely say here’s a short read that would let you know why Jesus Christ, why the Catholic Church.

CHRIS: One of the things I really like about the way the book is set up, you’ve got lots of kind of mini power point presentations here in the book that goes through the logical arguments for Christianity, I mean this is not simply an argument for Catholicism it’s also an argument for the validity of the scriptures, for the validity of the resurrection and you’ve got lots of, I mean they’re not sophisticated graphics but they are nice graphics, they go through the logical arguments so that people can grasp it in a very visual way.

CURTIS MARTIN: And we’d got to do that cause we live world where some funny things have happened, we’re relativism is the philosophy that holds the day which is basically says, what are talking about the way you behave or what you believe, whatever works for you is fine, whatever works for me, there’s no real truth that conforms this and sometimes we as Catholics even fall in this trap and say well we as Catholics believe in Jesus as God, well it’s true but it actually not a very healthy way to speak of that. Mathematicians never say that, “we as mathematicians believe that 2+2 is 4, no 2+2 is 4, mathematicians get that right and we need to be able to see that Christianity, Catholicism is based on truth. Jesus is God.

He did live, He did die and He did rise from the dead, we as Catholics happen to believe that, we’re right about that and if we leave Christianity at the level of preference, then how do you really stake your life on it, I mean I like mint chip ice cream but if you prefer chocolate, we’re not going to argue about that. There’s really no point in it, you can like chocolate, I can like mint chip, but if you, but if we’re talking about whether or not Jesus Christ is God, that’s worthy of a vigorous discussion because if he really did rise from the dead, if you really did say, “hey Chris, hey Curtis, I’m the way, the truth and the life”, then people should know that, that’s a radical claim and He backed it up from rising from the dead.

Jesus Christ is the most unique person in all of human history without question, without competition and we need to get peoples eyes on Him because it’s in Christ that the Catholic church makes sense and so what we want to do is make sure that people realize that is completely rational to be a Christian, in fact it’s irrational not to be and so that’s the huge part of the discussion. Can you trust the scriptures? Is the claim of the resurrection a reliable claim? And then the second part is what do you do with that? How that does affect your life? Because Jesus didn’t just do something in history, He did something for each one of us in history to have an impact in our personal lives.

CHRIS: Now, what kind of response are you getting from people who are using the book as far as its effectiveness?

CURTIS MARTIN: Yeah, that’s been a tremendous exciting reality, we you know, to get the book out is a challenge, and a Catholic book when I was involved with Catholic for a Reason still am involved obviously, we got that book out 10 years ago. In Catholic Church you know, to get 25000 books out is a tremendous thing, an achievement and Catholic for Reason was able to achieve that over a period of time. Made for more has more that 30000 copies out on the first three months and we’re getting…

CHRIS: And it helps that you’re using this as a giveaway book.

CURTIS MARTIN: Well absolutely because the tool is we’ve got to recognize in evangelization is kind a like sales. You can’t sell somebody something they don’t know there want. The very nature evangelization is we were all made by God and we’re all made for God but if you haven’t been evangelized, you don’t know that, so that you can’t sell that to somebody. You need to find somebody who already is alive in Christ who could hand that to somebody else. So they’re giveaways in some senses but somebody is paying for them. We’ve got donors who have said look I’ll sponsor the gift of a thousand books to this campus or we could make the offer today, that if you’d like to pick up a book, it’s available online, you can email us at made for more, or have info even better, info@focusonline.org, if you want a book its $10 but if you want 3 books, $25, if you want 10 books then we’ll drop that down to $75. We’ll drop the cost down, to 25% off. We want to make it easy for people to have a book in their bag whether you’re on an airplane or you’re in as meeting with a friend and somebody says hey I’m just going through a tough time in my life to be able to say, “here is something that doesn’t cause me much to give you but it could have a huge impact in your life, that’s a more effective tool than to say, Gosh, I hope people are all of a sudden going to start running to catholic bookstores and buying books about the faith when they don’t know that that’s what they want. We got to realize that…

CHRIS: We at the Catholic Company are certainly hoping that they are going to run to the Catholic bookstore and pick up a bunch of books on their faith.

CURTIS MARTIN: And they need. That’s exactly what they’ve got to do but we got to recognize that to get to the next level, we need just as you went around and traveled around the country and spoke the word of Christ. We need people to read that because once they come alive in their faith, they’re going to need Catholic bookstores to fuel that fire. I was with somebody recently, a friend of mine, who said I don’t know a Catholic who’s having an impact on people’s lives who are not reading good Catholic books. We’ve got to recognize that. The question is what’s that first entry level tool to draw more people in?

CHRIS: Absolutely and on the note of Catholic bookstores, please, please do and pray for and patronize all your local Catholic bookstores as well because every one of them is doing this as a ministry I don’t know anybody in the Catholic book industry who is getting rich by any means doing what they’re doing. It’s an outreach for every single one of us out there trying to evangelize with every bit of love and effort that we’ve got so….

CURTIS MARTIN: And I really want to highlight that Chris, recognize that I know Catholic books changed my life. I was a community Evangelical Christian; and came across some good Catholic books which opened the door back into the Catholic faith. If there weren’t people doing the ministry of running Catholic bookstores, I wouldn’t have gotten those books. I would not have maybe God would have chosen another path but the path he chose was to lead me through good Catholic books and over and over again as I speak to people who are either are converts to Catholicism or who were asleep in their faith as Catholics and woke up. I very seldom have ever met anybody where Catholic books didn’t play that role and as you said if Catholic bookstores are not open and active and making those books available, then people are just going to go without and so it’s very important to support that. You know, Christmas time is coming, great gifts can you find some great catholic books.

CHRIS: Keep Christ in Christmas, keep Christ in Christmas. Remember your faith roots, when you’re thinking about what you should be giving as gifts at Christmas and very much support the local Catholic bookstores if they’re there because we’re hearing stories all the time especially with the economy, and the way it is right now, of Catholic bookstores at least the local ones going out of business because they can no longer, that they already weren’t making very much and when it goes to negative income, it becomes very difficult especially if you are a practicing faithful Catholic with a large family, trying to support them.

CURTIS MARTIN: Well, it’s a huge challenge, and I love to tell even my evangelical friends, we agree that we should put Christ in Christmas, keep Christ in Christmas but as Catholic Christians, we believe that you need to put the Christ and the mass into Christmas. It is Christ mass, that we, it is a Catholic reality to celebrate Christmas and to recognize that it’s really our job as Catholics to recognize it. This time as we are turning our attention as a culture towards Christmas, this has become very secularized to realize that it’s important to put Christ and mass in to Christmas.

CHRIS: Absolutely. So back to the book what are some of the specific things that you’re seeing in terms of fruits coming out of the book so far?

CURTIS MARTIN: We’re hearing grace stories of people who have gained a renewed confidence because we need to recognize that at this point in time there’s a battle going on whether we choose to get involved or not the battle is already involved. Those who are opposed to the church are fighting 24/7. They’re working very effectively. There has been a rise now in what called the New atheism books, best selling books are now out questioning what’s so great about God, the God delusion, these books are finding their way in to the popular culture and they are destroying the faith of modern Catholics, those Catholics who are, you know, that they go to church but they don’t, they’re don’t necessarily spend a great deal of time reading Catholic material. They don’t spend a great deal of time talking to God in their personal lives. And all of a sudden the basic trust of confidence in the person or Jesus Christ has been undermined. And that, and then they stop going to church.

They’ll read the book or have a conversation with somebody and that Sunday they don’t go to church and they’re gone. And we’ve got to recognize trying to track them down once they’re gone is a very, very challenging process. We’ve got to do all we can to win them before they leave. And that’s one of the steps we’ve seen is that a lot of Catholics are saying you know I’m so grateful because I know I believe these things but now I realize I have a great confidence of what I believe. The other thing is that we are seeing people who have been away, who had been away for years, who are waking up whether they were catholic or had drifted or whether they were non Catholics who are saying “I never really realized how relevant Christianity was to my life. And for those of us who are committed Christians we recognize of course that’s the case but there’s a fundamental principle to paraphrase to St Augustine, we were made by God and we were made for God. That being said there’s nothing else in life that’s more important.

I mean if you think about it this way Chris. If we were to have a life were we had all the friends and all the honor and all the accolades and all the money and all the possessions that we could possibly imagine, success in every way that the world defines but we did not have God and we died and we’re separated from him forever we would be an absolute failure a million years now, an absolute failure. Whereas if we went through life and didn’t have all the money and all the friends and the all the glory and all the accolades and all the earthly success but we died in the real, in relationship with God and we went to heaven with him, our lives would be a great success. So while all these other things are goods, they’re only goods if we Christ in our life first. In fact Jesus said that seek first His kingdom and righteousness and all this things will be added unto you. At the same time he said what does it profit a man to gain the entire world and lose his sole and we’ve got to recognize that this is the most fundamental decision every man woman and child on the face of the earth will ever make. Jesus Christ stands before them today the risen Christ stands before today saying who do you say that I am? The answer to that question in our own personal lives is the most important question and answer we’re going to have in our entire lives.

CHIRS CASH: And also one other thing I wanted to mention with respect to books like this and getting them into people’s hands certainly we want to have copies of these typed materials available to handout to people who we meet and who are open to hearing what we have to say. But it does not profit us a lot to just buy a thousand of them and hand them out on the street to people walking along. You gotta have that relationship with the person in some way in order to earn the right to be heard from them. My best example is you know your walking through the mall somebody’s handing out flyers for this or that, they put a flyer on my hand the first trash can that I see it’s gone. You know, so we want to use these materials in an effective way and part of that is that we really have to be developing relationships with these people that we want to evangelize so that we earned the right to be heard from them.

CURTIS MARTIN: I would want to pile on completely. In beginning with what you said I mean to go out and pass out books or pamphlets to people you don’t know is a very low impact. Let’s say you pass out a hundred books, 50 of them might be thrown away.

CHIRS CASH: *** (0:32:34).

RESPONDEDNT: 47 of them, yeah, let’s say 80 or 90 are thrown away. 10 are taken home and 5 are read and two people’s lives are changed. Well two people’s lives changed are still powerful. We know that even passing out without relationship must work because people continue to do it. But what if we could do it better, why would we not. And that’s exactly where I would go. Yes there’s some impact you can have even by passing things out to people you don’t know. But you could magnify that affect, five fold, ten fold, a 100 fold by entering into relationship with people, taking the time to talk to them. Look how Jesus reached us. God reached us not by dropping the bible out of heaven and say read this. No, He came and lived with us for 33 years, in a certain way but thought us for three years and then died for us and launched the church from his wounded side to reach the world through the same mechanism, through relationship and so I absolutely want to agree. Conversations are the key. I was in a conversation yesterday with a gentleman. We were on an airplane and you know you can do a five to ten minute conversation. He say well so you’re a Catholic why are you catholic? Well in that 10 minute relationship would it be better if I have a 3 months or a 6 months relationship? Yes, but I was in an airplane. And so I handed him a copy of the book and said look read the book, here’s my contact information. If you got any questions…

CHIRS CASH: Well ten minute relationship is…

CURTIS MARTIN: It could even be greater in fact.

CHIRS CASH: is a relationship though, I mean you have given yourself…

CURTIS MARTIN: Absolutely, it could even be greater impact if I got a friend who I’ve been a friend with three or four years. And I sent the book. Obviously the more we could do the better, but let’s agree lets do all that we can do and I think that’s what we want to do is encourage all Catholics. A lot of Catholics want to do what they can. They’re not quite sure what to say and I say that the invitational model of evangelization is something anybody can do. Is there a Catholic speaker coming to town? Or is there some catholic material, a CD or a book that you’ve been able to get a hold of and in your friendship can you say look I’d like to invite you to listen to this to read this or to come to this talk, those are invitations any catholic can make and then its always better if you could follow up in fact I’d like to take you to the talk or I’ve listen to the CD, its great, let’s, why don’t you listen to it, lets talk about it, I’ve read this book why don’t you read it and lets talk about it. Those are powerful tools of engagement.

CHIRS CASH: Well, thank you Curtis, is there anything else you want to share with our listeners before we end the show today?

CURTIS MARTIN: Yeah, Chris I just want to invite you if you’d like to get a copy of Made for More. I love to share that with you. If you want to get a hold of Focus and see if there’s a campus near by, maybe you got sons of daughters or grandsons or granddaughters get away, getting ready to go to college or maybe you’re young person today saying, “I think God is asking something more of me, I’d love for you to contact Focus at www.focusonline.org. Take a taste of who we are and be in touch with us to see if maybe God calling you to serve in a radical and exciting way.

CHRIS: Well, thank you Curtis. We appreciate you being here and for all of you out there listening, it is coming up, yes it is probably the start of the month again with this episodes so head over to Podcast alley and vote for us. Make sure that you do that so that we can get in front of more people and get the show out to the wider audience. Also lead us a review over on iTunes, it helps every bit and come join us over on Facebook as well. We have a Facebook group where you can find out more upcoming interviews and maybe you can have a chance to post some questions to our authors. So Curtis, thank you very much and God bless.

CURTIS MARTIN: Thank you so much for all you are doing and the Catholic Company is doing a great work so grateful to be with you all day.

CHRIS: Alright, God bless.

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Transcript of Interview with Curtis Martin about Saints at the Dinner Table. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Made for More is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004803/Made-More/