Curtis Martin is the founder of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) and an author of several books, including “Made for More.” FOCUS held its national new staff training in Lincoln for the past month, bringing about 1,000 new missionaries and staff to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. While in Lincoln to speak to the group, Martin sat down with Dennis Kellogg, director of communications for the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln, to talk about the 25th anniversary of FOCUS, the organization’s future plans and the mission of the Catholic Church. What follows is an edited transcript of that interview.
Dennis Kelllogg, Southern Nebraska Register: Twenty-five years. Take me back to when you were thinking about FOCUS. What was the vision? What was the drive that made you say, ‘we need this’?
Curtis Martin, founder of FOCUS: Both my wife, Michaelann, and I had experienced coming to Christ on a college campus. But the only people that were really there to care for us that we could find, or that found us, were evangelical Christians. The Catholic Church was on my campus, but I didn’t go to it, and her experience was the same. What we realized is that the Catholic Church didn’t really have an outreach, certainly not a national outreach. And over time, we met, started talking and thinking and planning. We had no idea of how to launch a program within the Catholic Church. And so over time, we continued to think and pray about that.
SNR: What do you think is the difference that FOCUS has made in the last 25 years?
Curtis Martin: Our mission statement is to know Christ Jesus, and to fulfill the Great Commission. And so we are trying to introduce people to the person of Jesus. To know Christ does not mean to know things about Jesus, that’s important, but to actually be in relationship with him. So the first step is to help people and by the grace of God, we’ve helped tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people come into relationship, and then to fulfill the Great Commission. The reality … is that at no time in human history have even half the people on earth known Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. But we’ve been given a Great Commission that’s valid in every generation. And so we’re trying to fulfill to the best of our ability the Great Commission that we make disciples of all nations.
SNR: You have talked about crisis after crisis – fewer people attending Mass, fewer people participating in the sacraments. What do we need to do as a Church to turn it around?
Curtis Martin: The little booklet “From Christendom to Apostolic Mission” is I think, in some ways, our blueprint, and we work with and serve Msgr. (James) Shea, the primary author of that book. It’s a team of people that worked on it, but these people are all friends of ours. This model of evangelization we really believe is the key. You can do all kinds of things. Jesus had a very big day job, he was the savior of the world. But his day-in and day-out job was to walk with 12 men and equip them and then send them. And we really believe this model is the key. And so we’re trying to encourage people to live like missionary disciples to go out and recognize ‘I can have an impact in a few and impart both faithfulness, but also fruitfulness.’ And when that happens, and it starts to cycle through the generations. We can watch global change.
SNR: Has the mission of FOCUS changed at all in 25 years?
Curtis Martin: The mission of FOCUS hasn’t changed and, God willing, won’t. It’s to know Christ Jesus, and to fulfill the Great Commission. So Jesus is quoted, it’s actually the first sentence in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, John 17:3, Jesus says, “This is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” So he defines eternal life. It’s the only definition of eternal life in the Scriptures. And it’s not a place or a behavior. It’s a relationship. And so the first step in our mission statement is to share eternal life with people, which is coming to know Jesus Christ, and then to fulfill his Great Commission. The last thing he ever said, and I would argue the most authoritative statement he ever made, only once in all of the Scriptures does he say, “All authority in heaven and earth have been given to me. Go therefore, and make disciples.” That’s a commandment, not a suggestion.
And so to fulfill the Great Commission, those two realities of, first of all, coming to know Jesus ourself, and then letting other people know and then to fulfill the Great Commission. That’s a pretty big mission statement. And so there’s no need to change that.
SNR: A number of years ago, you left the Catholic Church and became an evangelical Protestant; anti-Catholic. When you were gone before you came back to the Church, what did you learn that has now influenced your work in the Catholic Church?
Curtis Martin: What I learned from the evangelicals was the primacy of the relationship. I remember talking to a buddy of mine and he said, “So where are you with God?” And I said, “You know, I’m trying to get my life straightened out so that I can start to follow God.” He said, “No, no, no, Curtis, that’s not the way it works. Give your life to God and let Him straighten it out.” I was like, “Oh, I’ve got everything backwards.”
That was a paradigm shift for me, and really, so, so important. But they gave me a love for the Scriptures. They gave me a love for prayer.
They gave me a hunger for souls. All of those things are also profoundly Catholic. And it was actually the very things that they trained me in that eventually led me, several years later, on a journey back to the Catholic Church.... Our testimony is that while the Catholic Church loses most of our battles, we lose by forfeit. When we actually show up, we win all the time.... We as Catholics know, that truth and goodness and beauty actually have a name and a face. It’s Jesus. And so when he shows up, he wins.
SNR: What do you think FOCUS looks like when you’re celebrating your 50th anniversary?
Curtis Martin: Evangelization is a little bit like farming. A great farmer can have a bad year – hailstorm, whatever, there are things that are out of your control. But good farmers consistently out-produce bad farmers. And so we could sit back and say it’s reasonable to think that we could double the size of our apostolate in five to six years, and then double it again in five to six years, and then double it again in five to six years, just by the very nature of what we’re trying to do, which means that we could be approaching becoming similar to the evangelical organizations. The four or five largest evangelical organizations on earth right now have more than 30,000 staff members. We have not even a thousand. They’re investing $2 billion a year into evangelization. And all of the Catholic Church’s efforts that I’m aware of, if you rolled it all together, would be maybe $100 million. So it’s a fraction.
Could we learn from them? In fact, invite them home? ... The Protestant Reformation was launched for some valid reasons. It wasn’t a great response, but they were valid reasons. That response has been proven a failure. It’s time just to come home, God wants us to be one. So we want to welcome Catholics who have drifted away or run away. We want to welcome Christians who’ve never been Catholic. We want to welcome people who’ve never been Christian, and draw them to it. It’s our hope that FOCUS, if God wills it, would be the tip of the spear of trying to reach men, women and children in every nation on earth within the next few decades. And that’s what we’re hoping for.
You can watch this interview with Curtis Martin in its entirety on the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln YouTube channel. It includes additional questions and answers on the characteristics of a good FOCUS missionary and the impact of the New Evangelization in the Catholic Church.
