We all know friends or family members who have left the Catholic Faith. We have also encountered the many challenges of living faithfully in today’s world—a secular culture hostile to the Gospel, the busyness of life, and even challenges within the Church Herself. Many of us eagerly desire to bring our loved ones back and make an impact on the world and the Church. But what can we do? Over the years, we involved in the apostolate of FOCUS have watched God work powerfully in the lives of others. There is reason for hope! St. Paul tells us that God desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (cf. 1 Tim 2:4)—and we have seen profound conversions take place. We would like to share three simple habits for bringing others back to the Faith and raising up missionary disciples: Divine Intimacy, Authentic Friendship, and Clarity and Conviction about Spiritual Multiplication. Let’s look at these three habits to discover how you can be a missionary disciple who leads others to Christ today.
The first habit, the habit upon which everything else rests, is Divine Intimacy. God is calling us to know Him so intimately that we might participate in His divine life and become adopted members of His perfect family: the Blessed Trinity. Divine Intimacy is ignited by an encounter with Jesus and nourished by a life of the sacraments and prayer. Without Divine Intimacy, all our efforts will fall short. Divine Intimacy is a gift, but it must be nurtured once it is received. In FOCUS, we have found that there are certain practices that cultivate and nurture Divine Intimacy: daily mental prayer; frequent participation in the sacraments; the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet; spiritual reading; service to the poor and a willingness to step beyond your comfort zone so that God can repeatedly prove His faithfulness to you.
Authentic Friendship is the second habit we have come to see as essential if we want to bear fruit. To live Authentic Friendship, first, our lives need to be grounded in Divine Intimacy. I will always fall short in loving my friends, but if my friends and I are living from Divine Intimacy, we will still be growing in our ability to be better friends. Second, Authentic Friendship takes time, and we have very little time, so this means we can only have a few of these types of friendships. Jesus was God, and He had this type of relationship with only twelve men. He impacted many more people too, but the number of people who can be deeply invested in is relatively small. Third, we must be committed to deep, personal investment. St. Paul summarized this habit well when he wrote, “So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thess 2:8). Jesus didn’t only go around preaching to large audiences and giving talks. He invested himself in people’s lives and invited them not only to listen to His message, but also to imitate His way of living—and we are called to do the same.
Divine Intimacy and Authentic Friendship are the most central and provide the foundation for the third habit of highly fruitful disciples: Clarity and Conviction about Spiritual Multiplication. Spiritual Multiplication is the habit of living Divine Intimacy and Authentic Friendship in such a way that we invest deeply in a few and impart to them both faithfulness and fruitfulness, walking with them as they go on to do the same for others. Faithfulness is essential, and so is fruitfulness.
Consider the potential impact of this approach. Imagine one person pursuing a deep, personal relationship with Jesus and desiring for others to know him. She starts intentionally investing in three others. As they grow together, each of these missionary disciples begin investing in friends of their own—three, six, or even more—who eventually go on to do the same, forming more and more missionary disciples with each new cycle of growth.
The effects begin slowly: one missionary disciple who reaches three others makes a total of four. If each of those three new disciples reaches three others, the total becomes thirteen. It seems small. But imagine if these disciples continue to reach others in the same way—after just seven cycles, the total number could reach nearly 1,000, and after 13 cycles, more than 500,000. At this rate, the entire world could be reached in just 22 cycles—that’s within one lifetime of the original disciple!
While we believe this method can reach the entire world for Jesus Christ, this method is also fundamentally relational and cannot be reduced to a formula. We have seen that, when we solely examine the process and lose sight of Divine Intimacy and Authentic Friendship, fruitfulness is lost. At the same time, when we live the first two habits without the third, we also lose our ability to bear fruit. While human weakness and failure will always be present along the way, this model beautifully illustrates the potential effect one person can have in impacting the world!
Living this third habit has two key aspects: clarity and conviction. First, do we have clarity about the way Jesus evangelized? The method Jesus modeled for us was not one centered on a big way, with a big platform and a big audience. Jesus set out to bring the Gospel to the entire world by investing deeply in twelve men, forming them in the ways of His kingdom and training them to do the same for others. And it was that approach that transformed the world. Second, do we have conviction that Jesus’ example models for us the best way to evangelize? Do we have the conviction that if we imitate Jesus’ way of evangelization we can be most effective in our mission and help transform our own world today with the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Do we have the conviction to prioritize this mission in our lives, making time for this urgent task and pouring our lives out into it? Do we have the conviction that this mission is not a job or something extra we do but is at the heart of our identity as disciples of Jesus?
Finally, what can we do to begin living these three habits and transforming the world for Jesus Christ today? Where do we start? We only need to look at what Jesus himself did throughout His earthly life and follow His example. Jesus did not travel the world to preach the Gospel to everyone on earth himself. Rather, He invested deeply in a few whom He formed in the Gospel of the kingdom and trained them to go out and do the same for others. Though He preached to the masses, He spent most of His time investing in His small group of disciples. He spent three years living with them, teaching them and showing them how to preach, heal and lead as He did (Mt 4:19, 5:1ff). Then, He sent them out to preach the Gospel themselves and “make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19). We too are called to live this “Method Modeled by the Master.”
In FOCUS, we use a simple phrase to describe the basic principles for imitating Jesus in the work of evangelization and disciple-making. The phrase is “win, build, send”: win people into friendship both with yourself and with Christ, build them up in the knowledge and practice of the faith, and send them out to do the same with others. The three habits discussed above are woven throughout the method since they are the habits that give the method the power to work. By following this method and cultivating the three habits, we can respond to Christ’s urgent call. This generation is waiting for us to become what we were meant to be. Will you answer the call?
For those who would like to learn more, FOCUS has materials in written, audio, and video formats available at no cost. They are available to you here:
*Article composed from excerpts of Making Missionary Disciples and Foundations for Discipleship by Curtis Martin.
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FOCUS is a global Catholic outreach organization serving over 215 college campuses and over 50 parish communities. Through Bible Studies, mentorship, mission trips, conferences, and partnerships with priests, bishops, and parishes, FOCUS missionaries walk alongside students and parishioners in their journey of faith, inspiring and equipping them for a lifetime of Christ-centered evangelization and discipleship. Our annual national conference, SEEK, hosted over 24,000 people in 2024. Since FOCUS was founded in 1998, more than 1,200 people have entered the seminary or religious orders after connecting with a missionary on college campuses. More than 75,000 FOCUS alumni are now a part of parishes and communities worldwide to continue their lifelong mission of evangelization and leading others to pursue lives of virtue and excellence.
