Surviving Catholic Ministry

A Contemporary 'Soul of the Apostolate' for the Lay Minister

My new book is out. It’s title: Surviving Catholic Ministry: A Contemporary ‘Soul of the Apostolate’ for the Lay Minister. Ironically, the earliest manuscript of this work emerged during a season of life when it seemed I didn’t survive ministry. I thought I’d share a bit of the backstory, here, for those interested in knowing about the book’s gestation.

The manuscript’s first title was: The Jaded Catholic Minister. I drafted it, furiously, three years ago. At that time, it was a collection of disparate and disconnected thoughts — my own pensées — after almost fourteen years of full-time ministry. I’m not a quitter, my dad never allowed that growing up, but I had just pulled the plug on Church work. It was taking too great a toll on my family, and I was beyond burnt out. I was jaded. I was hurt. I had “made it” by reaching diocesan employment. There, I tried to take on the bureaucracy. What’s the line? Try to change the institution but the institution changes you. Something like that. It’s true. The red tape and politicking were too much for me. I was too young, too green, and too idealistic to deal with it well. So, I returned more familiar and friendly waters back in parish work. It felt like a demotion, like I had failed, but at least I could breathe again. Well, sort of. I returned during COVID and leaders often found themselves in one rock-or-hard-place situation after another. Some shifts on staff came the next year and suddenly I found myself in a situation where one of my projects after another was sabotaged. Triangulation. Gaslighting. Mockery. I was working three nights a week, plus Sundays, with six kids at home. My oldest three were at the parish school (yes, the parish where I was serving as director of evangelization), and I felt like I was trapped in a web. There was no escaping the parish. All my flailing just got me more tangled and hurt. My anxiety level was through the roof. (Actually, I ended up with shingles. I’m not sure if there’s a real correlation with stress and shingles, but I’ve heard that before.) So, I did what my dad told me not to do, but I did what I had to for the sake of my own sanity and for the good of my family: I quit. It was a “burn the ships” moment. I had no intention of returning.

I tried my hand at digital marketing — learning all about websites, SEO, SEM, UX/UI design, Google, and the inner workings of those haunting display ads of those shoes you looked at last week that now appear on every other webpage you open. But, I couldn’t escape the specter of ministry. Just a few months into my new career selling marketing strategies and tools, I was already trying to salvage something of the years I spent in ministry through a cathartic writing experience that filled my now free nights and weekends. I was grieving, I think. I was groping for some golden nuggets in what seemed to be a heaping pile of failure. Fourteen years of experience and study (I had slogged through graduate studies during that time) out the window. Was it all a waste?

I eventually strung together the seemingly random pensées into broad categories and tried publishing it. At the time, I don’t know why I tried to do this. I think I was motivated because my first book had just been published — the rewrite of the rewrite of my dissertation. Yes. It came out a few months after I quit. Talk about awkward. Years of work (seven, I think) published, and I tell just a few people. My inner circle. In any case, my pensées manuscript got shot down hard. I think I went 0 for 5. Without a name, a spot on the national speaking circuit, and a social media presence it’s hard to get a book published these days. Having exhausted my Catholic publishing connections, I thought about scrapping the manuscript altogether.

But I didn’t.

During the string of publishing rejections, I decided to return to ministry. I could never shake the feeling that I had left a lowercase “v” vocation just as I was kind of coming “of age.” With a clearer focus and a better set of expectations to preserve my family life, I was back. The year and experience away from ministry gave me a chance to put first things first again, and the manuscript aided in this process. Oddly enough, stepping away from ministry for a short time was a key part of my own survival in it (though, admittedly, it was a more radical step than is ideal).

Returning to ministry breathed life into my rather dead writing project. Revisiting some of the rejection emails from publishers in my inbox to glean anything I could from the meager feedback, I returned to my piece of writing with renewed vigor and determination. I felt I did have something to say, it just needed to be more organized. Riffing on Dom Chautard’s classic, The Soul of the Apostolate, a book that had gotten me through so much over the years, I ran with an idea Lawain McNeil (over at The Call to Holiness) gave me — to write a kind of updated, more contemporary and accessible version of Chautard’s classic. So, I checked in with Jim Beckman, founder of the ImpactCenter, to see if I could take the “inside-out” schema he once taught me — also based on Chautard’s thought — as a basic structure for the book. He agreed, and I set to work completely rewriting the manuscript about a year after I wrote it the first time.

With the rewrite came a new title (Surviving Catholic Ministry), a new subtitle (A Contemporary ‘Soul of the Apostolate’ for the Lay Minister) and renewed desire to get it published. In all honesty, the first manuscript was too ranty, too sarcastic. Probably a bit too much wounded pride oozing on the pages. The new manuscript was a genuine attempt to help people in ministry survive many of the challenges and pitfalls I’d experienced over the years — ones that ultimately led me to quit Church work for good (well, I thought it was for good). A few more tries with Catholic publishers produced nothing, so I went back to Wipf & Stock with my work. (As noted above, Wipf & Stock had published my dissertation under their Pickwick imprint in the Spring of 2022.) In the summer of 2024, Robin Parry received the manuscript with enthusiasm and said he would vouch for it before the editorial board. Within a few weeks, Wipf & Stock accepted the manuscript and let me know it would be published as a Cascade book.

After another year of work on the text, I’m happy to announce the book is available for purchase. As with any book, there are plenty of limitations — more to be said, things that could have been said differently, etc. — but I do think the book offers something of a roadmap for ministry-minded people. Above all, it offers a framework by which one can build a foundation in life and ministry that can weather the storms that inevitably come. It’s a simple framework, too, illustrated by personal stories and insights — and I try to justify it with some solid theological principles and by aligning with the Catholic spiritual tradition. I think I did a fair job with that, though reviewers will have their own opinion.

That said, I didn’t write it for reviewers. I wrote it for people who are tired of trying to do things on their own and who seem to be getting nowhere (see Jn 15:5). I wrote it for people who want to be more faithful and fruitful in their discipleship. I wrote it to say something to the real experience of many Church ministers — to provide some sort of light in what is often shrouded in hushed darkness. In all, the book aims to prevent ministry burnout, to help someone move from surviving to thriving. I think it can also serve as a pathway of healing for someone who is too far gone for prevention.

More specifically, I’d say I went through the pain of writing and publishing for four types of people. First, I wrote it for my fellow lay ministers (whether volunteer or paid “professionals”). Lay ministry in the Catholic Church is a strange and interesting thing (maybe I’ll write about that more specifically in the future). I wanted to offer some frank thoughts on it and throw a line of support out there for those who feel like they’re floundering. Second, I wrote it for priests. Now, I know the subtitle doesn’t indicate as much, but I’ve shared ministry with enough priests over the years to know some of their struggles with burnout and jadedness, and I know the framework I present in the book can help them, too. And we desperately need our priests to survive and thrive in their ministry. Third, I wrote it for anyone seeking to do the Lord’s will and pursue holiness. That might sound too broad, but really, the inside-out framework can be applied far beyond ministry. Sure, my examples are rooted in my ministry experience. But the smart and intuitive reader will easily be able to take them as a springboard for considering his or her own life and calling. Finally, I wrote it for myself. As indicated, it was a kind of therapy session for me, part of my own healing from the grind of years of ministry trench work. Time will tell, but it may even end up being part of my own survival story.