INTERVIEW: Chris Stefanick on The Life You Were Made For

For this CV Connect Webinar, we were joined by speaker and author Chris Stefanick (founder of Real Life Catholic). Chris is an internationally acclaimed speaker who goes around the world inviting people into a dynamic, life changing encounter with God through Jesus in His Catholic Church. In this CV Connect we talk to Chris about how becoming aware of the way we speak to ourselves and replacing the negative self-talk with uplifting and powerful words that come from God can remind us of our Christian identity and the life we have been made for.

Catholic Voices (CV): How is isolating where you are in Denver? How is the family? What challenges and opportunities are being brought up by this pandemic? 

Chris Stefanick: Every trail has the loving hand of God behind it. Even in the final trial of our deaths you might say, “oh God’s in this, but what if I find myself dying in the hospital?” Well, He’s there too. His only motive is love. So, to know that the hands of love are behind these times of pain, you know that we are all on the same ocean, but not the same boat. Certainly, there’s a lot of people struggling profoundly right now with job loss or with the loss of a loved one. My particular trials in this have been benign next to what a lot of people are facing, but I’m carrying them with me in prayer. There are certain ways I’ve grown personally, for example I’ve been thinking a lot about St. Paul. St. Paul was a kind of guy, like me, that was constantly moving. If you look at his journeys, they zig zag everywhere, and all of a sudden, he himself was in lockdown when he spent the last two years of his life in prison, under house arrest. It’s then that he does his most prolific and profound writing about having the right state of mind, so this has led me on a trail of thought, and I wonder if St. Paul experienced some of the same stuff as me, a guy who is constantly on the go and stopped. This kind of reflection forces you on a deeper level to look what’s going on inside your head, and what’s going on inside your heart. Examination of conscience; what priorities do I need to realign to be more in-line with the Gospel I’m preaching all the time. 

So, there’s been huge blessing in mist of a trail for me personally. I have spent more time just hanging out with my family than I have in 10 years, and been blessed by little things, like taking a walk with my kids. Under quarantine you can’t do a whole lot of different things, but it’s taken the frantic out of life. We’re still busy, it’s a busy time, but it’s not as frantic, and we’re now being more intentional about these precious little simple moments together that, frankly, I’m now realising I am repenting of usually taking for granted. I had a priest come over my house and hear our confessions at a safe 10-foot distance and I gave it to the Lord, saying, “I’m sorry I haven’t done some of those very simple things before that have now been incredible meaningful”. I say this because you step on the train that is life and then, vroom, you’re a grandpa. My oldest daughter is having a kid, and I now realise it is so easy to lose focus of the simple things that matter a lot. So, this has been good for me in that way. Good for my soul, good realigning time, and a blessing for our ministry too, as the digital component of our ministry has exploded since this virus… because it’s had to. Our whole staff has realigned our efforts, with 7 people working full time on the different components of the ministry, and it’s been awesome in that regard. It’s been good to be able to walk with people and to be in their lives during this time. Jesus, He walked through locked doors after His resurrection from the dead, and you know that’s what you’re doing right now Brenden with your ministry, which is springing up from the necessities to reach people digitally. The Lord is taking you through locked doors so that you are there with people in a different, but no less real, way. 

CV: I like the analogy with St. Paul, my life too has become quite monastic. There is a great degree of predictability and that’s quite difficult when you’re faced with yourself in quiet and silence when all the distractions have left. How do you manage that space? What lessons have you learned both as an evangelist, but also in this time to manage that existential space where it’s you and your Creator?

Chris Stefanick: I’ve been thinking a lot about this good friend of mine who is a hermit, a Franciscan hermit. He has monastic experience that’s pretty intense because he’s been alone for a long time. He’s been quarantining since before it was ‘cool’ and he’s done a lot of examination of conscience, and I asked him what his prayer life is like, and it was surprising me to me how much of it has to do with examining himself and his motives before God. When you are alone, you have all the comforts and distractions ripped away from you; it really does force you in a profound way to step back and think deeper. He said, “you know when I am praying, I am naked before my naked God; you can’t hide so well when you’re not clothed in the busyness of life, or rather the franticness of life”. There’s been an incredible gut level examination of conscience going on in my life. I’ll tell you I want to encourage everybody who’s reading this right now, that this is going to pass. Take a deep breath and you’re going to be on the other side of it before you know it. It would be a shame if we went through this and we didn’t get what the Lord wanted us to get out of this time of learning to rest in His love for us. This might be the only time in life, and probably the only time in human history in 100 years, where the train that is moving so dang fast is taken off the tracks, and you can examine your life somewhat from the outside and say “Am I living it like I want to? Are there things that I need to realign and reprioritise?” So, take advantage of that time by giving time to examine your conscience. 

It’s also been really important for me, in the midst of the radical shift, where I am now busy in new ways at home with my family, to claim the time for prayer. I’ve been getting up early to have a personal holy hour, or holy half hour at least, with the Lord where I am diving into scripture. I’m trying to sandwich the day with reading the word of God. I’m devoting myself to gratitude and to praise. Praise is the stuff that St. Paul talked about that got him through his prison experience, through his quarantine, his lockdown; he spent a lot of time in worship. The stuff in Philippians, such as “rejoice in the Lord always, I say it again rejoice”, he wrote that in chains, while waiting to get his head chopped off.  We can obsess on the negative news; but if we wake up and start scrolling the bad headlines and then wonder why our mood is off or why we are being jerks to our families, well, it’s because we become what we eat, and we’re consuming incessant negative news. In the midst of that, it’s important to remember that the good news of the Gospel isn’t just something that happens in our life when things are going well, this is the stuff St. Paul wrote about in prison. 

I think of Easter, when we celebrated Easter Sunday, I thought “what a shame I’ve never had an Easter like this before”. Throughout history Christians have celebrated Easter; first Easter they were scared for their lives, behind closed doors. But, at the same time, it’s the Good News of the Gospel that breaks into those moments; the best news in history didn’t come at a party when everything was going well, it came in the horrible moments. So, it’s in these moments when we have to set aside time to pray and to make sure we focus on the Good News of the Gospel, right here, right now. Even if we’re struggling, even if we’re going through trials, though job loss or someone who is sick; this is the time we have to do what St. Paul did in prison and “rejoice in the Lord always, I say again rejoice”. My mum always used to tell me, “it’s a choice, Christopher, it’s not just something that comes about in your mood, you have to fight for that”. It’s a survival thing; our brains didn’t develop to make us happy, it evolved to keep us alive. It’s our natural tendency to incessantly look at the horrible things around us, to look for signs of danger, because it’s our cave man brain; it’s there to protect us. We have to do the work of rejoicing always, and as it continues in Philippians, “In everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, make the request known to God”.  In everything, pray, petition and do it all with thanks, even if you can’t think of things off the top of your head to be thankful of. This is what I have been doing in my morning prayer time, just counting my gratefuls. Thanking the Lord for every little thing that comes to mind, every seemingly insignificant thing; it all matters, it all raises my spirit up. 

CV: Some people may not know you, could you tell us a little bit about the overall mission of Real Life Catholics? The mission, the vision, what’s in your heart for a Real Life Catholic? 

Chris Stefanick: It’s to just proclaim the truth, beauty and goodness of the gospel, to show how that makes your life better every day and to help people live that life. The life that they were made for that comes from that Gospel message of Jesus Christ. You know, when most people think of that word Catholicism they don’t think the Gospel, they don’t think those are the people that come at me with the best news in history and who know exactly how to make my life better and yet that is what Jesus came to do. He said, “I came so that they might have life and have it to the full” and He also said, “I told you these things so my joy may be in you”. In other words, ‘the whole body of My teaching I have given you so that God himself would be in you and your joy would be complete forever.’ This is the end game of Catholicism. Do people typically think that when they think Catholic? No, they typically think that the bad headline of the past 10 years or some scandal or difficulty of church history. Frankly, I’m not brushing that aside but when you have a billion members of a 2000-year-old history you can find plenty of bad things throughout history, they think of a controversial teaching they might be struggling with. First and foremost, we devout Catholics need to make sure because of how we carry ourselves and the measures we bring that people think ‘That’s the church that brings me the best news human ears have ever heard, that’s the church that teaches me how to live without’. That’s what Real Life Catholics is about, that’s what we’re doing. 

CV: It almost seems to me like a back to basics approach, rather than a niche topic. I love that! Why such a simple message? Why a more back to basics approach?

Chris Stefanick: It’s the basics that changes lives. The same formula works today just as effectively as it had in 33AD. It’s not lost any of its potency, any of its power. The simple formula is that people get intentional about personally inviting friends back to church, and that when they’re there, they hear the core message of the Gospel; that above all, Jesus Christ is giving Himself to us and inviting us to give ourselves back to Him. That’s what this is all about. So, we take that 2000-year-old formula and we bring it back to parishes today, or to apostolates, and to events today. We work with parishes 6 months before I get there with outreach teams who invite their whole community back to church; typically, even in small towns, in rural Nebraska or wherever I am, we might get 1000 people. Lives change and people come back into the Church when we lead with the message of the Gospel and reframe how they think of Catholicism. They are very often surprised by what they’re hearing; unfortunately, it’s a surprise for a lot of people. I have someone who I had known my whole life through Catholic school, kindergarten, and throughout university, and he said, “I’ve never before though of my Catholic faith as having to do with my relationship with God until tonight”. Not that he hadn’t heard it before, but for whatever reason, it hadn’t penetrated. I think when we lean in as a Church and say, “you know what, we’re going to keep the main thing, we’re going to lean into what this all about”. Why the heck do we have all these moral teaching, the smells, the bells, the incense, the rich tradition, the history, where does it all come from? It comes from the core main thing; The Gospel, The Kerygma. It’s like marriage, why the heck am I doing all this? Well, it’s because I fell in love with this woman and we gave our lives to each other. After all this time it comes back to being faithful to what happened on day 1, when we exchanged vows, that’s what this is about. It’s about getting back to basics. When you do that in marriage it renews things, when you do that with your faith it renews the world, it renews the Church. 

CV: One of the other really back to basics or very simple approach reminders is welcoming is sometimes as simple as saying “welcome”. In a way it’s breathtakingly simple, sometimes you think it has to be really complicated. 

Chris Stefanick: We think sometimes simple is simplistic, or not worth our time, but simple is powerful. It’s very difficult to arrive at the simple though, which is why so few of us do it in our lives. Take as an example, getting fit; you go through life, becoming an Olympian at certain times, and then after a little bit, you realise “oh wait, I have to get in shape again”. As we go through that very frequently, we’re looking into diet plans and we learn everything there is to know about every other diet under the sun, and soon we could have our PHD in dieting. Yet, what it all comes down to is consume less calories and work out a little more, but we don’t want to do that because that’s difficult. We over complicate it probably looking for loopholes and really, I think that it boils down to that with Christianity too, with invitation. When we’re working with parishes and outreach teams that are getting very creative, they want to do everything there is to do on social media, and they got an ad on local catholic radio, and put a billboard up in their city somewhere, that’s all wonderful, it’s marketing so to speak. But you can do a lot of that and not do the basics, which is invite people (say welcome, make friends), so, no one’s going to come. If all they do is the basics, the same stuff they did 2000 years ago, simply saying “hey come and see”, and inviting that person face to face to come to church, to come back with you after they rejected church, if that’s all their focusing on, it’s going to get hit out the park. 

CV: What advice, either you’ve learned from successes or failures during this time of quarantine, do you have for those who have children about managing with the family? What tips or advice would you have for cultivating the domestic church?

Chris Stefanick: I’ve heard it said a lot “kids don’t need quantity time; they need quality time”, and that’s usually said by people who are overly busy. It’s not true. Kids need quantity time, even if it’s not quality. The quantity communicates ‘hey you’re worth me wasting time on’, which is the set up for the Gospel. How can they believe they are worth the Father’s heart and the life of the Son, when they weren’t worth you just sitting down with them to watch a stupid show? Some of the best times I’ve had with my kids has not been something deep and profound, but it’s when I sit down with my arm around my 7year old watching SpongeBob. What does that communicate? It says that dad wants to waste time just hanging out next to you. 

If there’s anything that I could say I learned, it’s from my mistakes. There are times in my life where I haven’t done that quite enough or thought I’m too busy. On one hand I’m building a ministry, on the other hand it’s a business. I have 7 employees and I’m keeping things running, there’s a million moving parts, and I’m travelling around the world, and it can be like anybody who’s running an any business for God or for money. My motive is for the Lord, but it doesn’t matter in the eyes of my kids; I’m busy doing stuff, but they need me to waste time with them. That’s a piece of advice I’d give; don’t miss the gift of time that you can give, and compartmentalise, and segment. 

There is something called tension residue; you think it’s harmless when you check that email, but it takes your brain about 20 minutes to get your brain on the track it was on before you got distracted. So, when I am writing for instance, if I just let myself check the twitter feed or the news or some other little distraction, my brain won’t be as focused on my writing for at least 20 minutes as it had been before I let that distraction in my life. But that same thing which is often talked about in business terms applies to relationships; you’re hanging with your kid having a conversation and you check that text, you’re not fully there again right away. If you’re a businessman and you don’t know how to turn the phone off, you could waste your whole kid’s childhood. That’s what’s on the line here, not really focusing on being with that kid. Learn to slow your brain down. 

CV: To switch gears into the theme for this evening, ‘The Life You Were Made For’, where has that phrase come from? What does it mean? 

 

Chris Stefanick: The theme comes from the heart of how we evangelise at Real Life Catholic and how you guys are doing to. If you look at secular business examples, when Mac got its market shares above that of PC (or at least edged out a sizable chuck for itself) I remember the computer, the commercials, because I am old enough to remember this. Brenden, you probably grew up in the Mac era where the cool kids all had their smart phones, but I did not. Mac was a new thing, it was breaking in when I was a kid, and the commercials were a guy with a PC, who had a bunch of equipment in his hands, describing all of it and how good it was. A PC was a great piece of equipment, the Mac guy had nothing in his hands, and he was looking at you, and it wasn’t about his equipment, it was about you. It was all about ‘let me help you express yourself’; it wasn’t about the computers, who cares about the computers, no one cares about the computers. That’s how I want to shake some people in ministry; no one cares about all your cool stuff unless they see how it makes their life better, and this is the approach we have to have in evangelisation. 

I mean, Jesus’ first words in his humanity in the Gospel of John are “what are you looking for? …I told you these things so my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete”. He makes it very clear that this is about you living the life you were made for. Once people realise that, and this is stage one, but our motive eventually has be to fall in love with the Lord. The saints talk about this, there are times in the spiritual walk where your motive is fear, fear of hell, which frankly I think is a good motive sometimes, that’s not altogether bad. In my teenage years, the only thing that helped me free myself from the slavery of certain sins was “dang I don’t want to end up in hell”, so that can be a good thing to think about sometimes. Then, you get purified to the point where the motive is the love of God. We want people to get from the place where they think “what’s in it for me?” to the place where they’re thinking “I’m just in love with the Lord, so I’m all in”. But we’re not going to get anyone to that place if we come at them describing our computers. Does that make sense? Not that we don’t want to get into apologetics, that’s all important, it really is, but unless were delivering these apologetics, moral teachings and explanations in the context of  framing its messaging in why they should care at all, which is because this makes your life pretty awesome. 

CV: Talking a little bit about Presentation vs Message, do you have any tips for breaking through our British reserve? How do you tailor the message to the people you’re speaking to?

Chris Stefanick: There’s so many intangibles here, it’s a really hard question. I’ve spoken in a lot of different countries, and frankly, a lot of different States; the cultures throughout the United States are very different. If I’m in northern Ohio it feels like German Catholics, and they will not smile, no matter how many jokes I make, and I can know that in their hearts they are smiling and laughing out loud, but I will see 1000 looking at me like this *pulls straight face* the whole time. In Los Angeles it’s like ‘ahhhhha’ and it’s like ‘wow, people are in church, keep it down a bit’. But England is somewhere in between these two. 

My personality, I am very much out there, but I love the British spirit; it’s hard to put my finger on why, but I was in heaven there. My family love it there. My introverted son loves it there; for him it’s like “wow there is no pressure to be smiling all the time if I don’t feel like it” and there’s something kind of liberating about that. Here in the US, if you look too stern faced, most places people say, “what’s wrong?”; nothing’s wrong, I just don’t feel like smiling today. I think honestly that spirit also lends itself a little more to contemplation, to deeper thinking, to humour that’s not quite as, not to be insulting to American culture, idiotic. I don’t mean this in an insulting way, idiotic can be hilarious, but things are a little more thought through. So, there is just a lot of things I love about British culture. 

So, how to break though the reserve? When I was there, I think I was recognising reserve as coldness. But you can be just as profoundly connected to someone with a meaningful handshake as you can with a hug. American culture you’re going to be quicker to hug someone, British culture you’re going to be quicker to shake a hand. That doesn’t mean less though. If the reserve is used to keep people at arm’s length and becomes rigidity, then that good part of British culture which is respectful, which is contemplative can be used almost to say, “I’m keeping people at bay, I’m going to keep real conversations at bay, I have my space and you have your space”. There are devices in American culture that does the same thing, you know, instead of using reserve we use more of an ‘in your face’ “hey you have your truth and I have mine”. You’ll hear that phrase in England too, but they’ll be quicker to go right there in America culture, a little more brash. Whatever it is that’s distancing us from other people is not from God, I mean God want us to have real connections with others. So, whether it’s the American more ‘in your face’ or the British reserve, I think their response to the people of God really just has to be to lean through it. We just have to go there and not in a way that makes someone culturally uncomfortable, but in a way that, just keep going there, guys. If someone is going to use the excuse that British culture doesn’t allow for small group ministry, where people are really sharing their life, I’m telling you, there is people in American culture who will use the same excuse. But we’re going there anyway, we’re the Church that goes there. Get through those comfort zones, and do it in a way that is sincere, and real, and model it. I am an open book, I don’t have a filter; that’s part of the charism of Real Life Catholic, I suppose. So, when I’m sharing my faith, it’s very much from a lived experience point of view; I’m not afraid to share the things I’m struggling with, my thoughts, my failures. In fact, in this interview you’ve heard me tell you things that I should go to confession for, right? If you have that kind of rawness, I think, it gives people that permission in a very lonely culture to open up. 

CV: The last question to do with message VS expression; can this get confused with prosperity theology? With all of the kind of courses you’ve done, the kind of positive outlook I imagine you’ve received, and the kind of criticism you also receive which says that it’s like the self-help stuff people do… when people say that, what is your response?   

Chris Stefanick: Two things, there is the prosperity Gospel, which is an erroneous thing, and there’s also like, I’ve never heard this phrase used before, the damnation Gospel, which is just as erroneous, if not more so. This is where people walk around thinking that we have a God who generally doesn’t like us, and doesn’t want us to be happy, and we feel almost this weird guilt if we’re too happy or enjoying life too much. God’s first miracle was turning water into wine, and I think that says something to us about ‘I want you to enjoy life a little bit, relax.’ You know, eat the cookie, it’s okay. But this is set aside profoundly from self-help, in that self-help, it’s rubbish, it doesn’t work, it doesn’t do it. We have never told a generation of young people more frequently than we do now to “love yourself, to believe in yourself”. This is statistically factual; we have never had more young people hate themselves than we do now. They hate themselves, and why? Because when you tell people those hollow, empty, words “you should like yourself”, but the world view you’re delivering these words within is atheistic and purely secular, you’re telling people, “love yourself, but by the way, you are a cosmic accident, you’re a pile of molecules that has achieved self-awareness, and your destiny is to become nothing; but love yourself”. Or, as Bertrand Russell would have said, that “all the accomplishments of mankind will be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins”. That’s the atheistic world view, at the end of the day. I don’t care how you want to slice it or dice it, that is what they would say happens. That’s it! Oh, but you can accomplish anything that you set your heart on. Who cares? I’m self -aware molecules about to become nothing, and all the stars in the sky are going to go out some day…it doesn’t work. 

We have something profoundly different. We tell people, “love themselves, believe in themselves, that they can accomplish great things”, and we tell them why. Totally different from self-help; it’s God’s help, that’s the difference. The other thing that sets it apart from the prosperity Gospel is this crazy idea in the prosperity Gospel that being materially blessed is a sign that God is loving you. It can be, I don’t want to confuse this too much, you should thank God for his blessings and thank Him in part by enjoying those blessings, but, when we shouldn’t confuse things like health and wealth with God. Come on, we all get sick, we all deal with joblessness at some time or another or financial difficulties, we all have to die. But is that a sign that God has abandoned us? No. Not at all. The full vision of the faith, and I have this in front of me while I’m talking right now, (*holds up crucifix*) is it includes the Cross. He’s the essential image of what Christianity is; to say to us that when you’re in pain, I’m with you. He didn’t suffer so we wouldn’t have to, but so we know how to. So (*kisses crucifix*) thank you Jesus for that. He redeems everything and makes even difficult times mystically sweet. 

CV: That leads us nicely into talking about a new course you have put out called, ‘I Am’. Would you just talk a little bit about the thinking behind it, the origin, and what you hope people will benefit from doing this course?

 

Chris Stefanick: I am so sick and tired of seeing the people of God walking through life sick and tired. It looks like, when you look at them, they have been beat up all day, and the reality is, when you get inside their heads, they have been beat up all day because they’re doing it to themselves. We all have lies we live out of, lies that come from bad experiences, tragedies, and lies that come from people not building us up as they were supposed to. So, we often go through life thinking things like, “I’m cursed, or I’m dirty because I had been abused at some point in my life”, or “I’m incapable because my dad didn’t build me up enough”, or “I have to do things to earn love”. We all have little lies that we act out of, and those lies are fundamental to how we live our lives. The words we speak to ourselves shape how we see ourselves, which shapes how we feel and act, which shapes how we live our whole lives. So, here’s the thing, we usually aren’t even aware of the negative self-talk we think without thinking about what we’re thinking. What St. Paul tells us is ‘we take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ’ so, the ‘I Am’ programme is about jumping into head game. 

Look, if there’s a battle between heaven and hell, the front line is between your ears. It’s about jumping into the head game, choosing sides in that cosmic battle, and saying, “I’m going to take the pen out of the Devils hand, he’s a great script writer, and give it back to almighty God”. If you don’t see your own value and dignity, or if you’re looking for your self-worth from a boyfriend, spouse or accomplishments, if you don’t agree with God about your worth, man, you’re the one that’s wrong. It’s your job to jump into the head game and start preaching Truths to yourself. We often rely on people preaching to tell us the Truth. God gave us His words so we can start teaching ourselves the Truth. So, the ‘I Am’ programme is a 30-day video program with a short, very manageable, meditation each day, and by the end of those 30 days you’re going to be walking through life feeling 50 pounds lighter in your spirit. And, you’ll be speaking Truth to yourself like, “I’m beautiful, I’m blessed, I’m chosen, and I can do all things through Christ who has strengthened me, I’m destined for eternal glory” and you’ll be living out of/ acting out of those Truths. 

CV: What do you think people need to be reminded of during this crisis? Are there any final messages to leave people with?

 

Christ Stefanik: Yes, one of the ‘I Am’ meditations is about ‘I am blessed’. It’s very easy when you’re struggling to fall into the mind set of ‘I’m cursed’, and again, we don’t usually say this out loud or verbalise it, but we start forming these opinions about ourselves or our state of life. The reality is that the God who hung for us on the cross shows us that when you’re suffering, that’s when He’s closest to you. Another reminder is that, shortly after this experience, we have the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We don’t make peace with these things simply by accepting them, we make peace with every suffering in life, even death, by looking it in the eye and saying, “we win”. And after that death is eternal glory. ETERNAL GLORY; eternal blessedness, in case you didn’t think God wants you to be happy. Every struggle you go through feels like it’s here forever, and it’s ruining your life. No, no, every struggle and trial, every single one, will come to pass. Eternal blessedness comes to stay, and I want you to say that to yourself today. Think about the glory waiting for you, think about the finite nature of this moment of suffering, try to learn from it, and learn from it by knowing you’re going to move past it to blessed life on the other side; ultimately blessed for all eternity.