The Adventure of Evangelization

April 1, 2024

An interview with FOCUS founder Curtis Martin about the indispensable role of fathers and our universal mission to bring others to Christ

By Columbia staff

April 1, 2024

Curtis Martin, pictured here in 2015, is CEO and founder of FOCUS and a member of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Council 7502 in Northglenn, Colo. (OSV News photo/Terry Wyatt, courtesy FOCUS)

Curtis Martin would like to demystify this whole thing we call evangelization. Yes, as founder of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, he has made evangelization his life’s work, and last year, Pope Francis appointed him as a consultor to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization. But, Martin insists, evangelization is not the work of specialists. It’s not the exclusive domain of priests, religious and people with advanced degrees in theology. It is the vocation of all Christians, by virtue of their baptism, to share the good news of Christ’s life, death and resurrection and tell others the story of how God is working in their lives. And it’s not rocket science.

“It’s the opposite of rocket science,” Martin said. “Teaching people how to tell these stories is a little bit like teaching fish how to swim. We were made for this. There are very few people who are rocket scientists; everybody’s called to be a saint. And part of that is living and then sharing the amazing adventure that Jesus Christ invites us to.”

Since its founding in 1998, FOCUS has helped thousands of young people do that. The organization now places missionaries, most of them recent college graduates, at more than 200 college campuses in the United States, Mexico and Europe. Their work is simply to share the Gospel with students through personal relationships. FOCUS also organizes short-term international mission trips for college students and hosts large national conferences that draw tens of thousands of people.

Martin, a longtime Knight and member of Archbishop Fulton Sheen Council 7502 in Northglenn, Colorado, believes that the Knights of Columbus is uniquely positioned to evangelize men, particularly fathers. He recently spoke with Jonathan Reyes, the Order’s senior vice president of strategic outreach, about how to do that and why it’s so necessary.

COLUMBIA: It seems to me the real secret of FOCUS’s success and potency comes from a vision for sharing the Gospel that anyone can do. What is the secret to making this big, scary word, “evangelization,” less intimidating?

CURTIS MARTIN: We practice a three-step process that can be broken down into simple words: win, build and send. We want to win people into friendship, both with ourselves, but also more importantly, with Christ. We want to build them up in their knowledge and practice of the faith, and then we’re going to send them out so they can win over other people.

But before you can win anybody else, you have to be won yourself. So the first step is, are we living in intimacy with Jesus Christ? Have we realized that living for him and with him is the most important thing in life? You can’t give what you don’t have. So it’s really important that we allow God to give to us first.

The Apostles changed the world because they entered into an adventure at the invitation of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is inviting people into that kind of life-changing experience. Be a world changer, or what the Church calls a saint.

COLUMBIA: What have you come to learn about the young men who have been formed by today’s culture?

CURTIS MARTIN: We have to recognize that the culture is grinding men to a powder. There are two massive false understandings about men. One is that you’re macho, and you’re going to blow stuff up and break stuff and you’re strong, but you have no control. And the other one is that you’re a wimp and that you’re easy to mock because you’re not very smart. Those are both lies from hell. The reality of the matter is that men are called to be great. And they need other men in their lives to do so. That’s the key.

Duke Bednarke, a Knight of Columbus and a FOCUS missionary at East Carolina University, reads Scripture with students on campus in Greenville, N.C. (Photo by Eric Jones)

I really do believe masculinity is not something you grow into. It’s something that’s imparted to you by the other men in your life: your father, your older brothers, your friends. That’s why the Knights of Columbus, as a fraternal organization, is so important.

As a young man, you learn, first of all, what it means to be a son. Then as you grow, you learn how to be a brother. Unfortunately, that step is gone for many in our society. If you do have brothers and sisters, they live in different rooms and have their own social media; you don’t share life.

Brotherhood is an important step. When you learn how to love as a brother or a sister, you learn how to love people in a nonsexual way. But we’ve removed brotherhood, and there is horrible confusion today about what it means to love.

The next step is to be a husband, which then leads to fatherhood.

COLUMBIA: We can say that the culmination of the male personality is to be father, whether a natural father or spiritual father. How can we respond to the crisis of fatherhood today?

CURTIS MARTIN: In some ways, all earthly fathers are designed to fail, because we’re only pointing toward the heavenly Father. We can try really hard and do a great job, but we’ll still fall short. The expectations on a father are amazing. I have a relationship with my mailman, but I don’t get devastated when he’s late with my mail. I had a great earthly father — may he rest in peace — but the little things he didn’t do well really got to me because my expectations were so high. God put that in us so that we could lead and at the same time point toward our heavenly Father.

We need a renewal of earthly fathers in a dramatic way, and the Knights of Columbus are positioned more than anybody else, I believe, to facilitate this.

So many young people that we serve today are living the reality of broken families and broken homes; they are wounded in a way that was not the case 25 years ago. As a result, a lot of young people don’t know who they are or how to love. They’re desperate for love and identity, and they don’t have the true north star of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. All of that can be restored by a dad who, even in the midst of his weakness, loves and gets involved in his children’s lives.

COLUMBIA: When someone comes up to you and says, “I did everything right. None of my kids or three of my kids are not practicing the faith,” what encouragement do you give to them?

CURTIS MARTIN: First of all, it’s never over. And we don’t know the journey. At a certain point in time, Mary Magdalene looked like she was a train wreck, but she is St. Mary Magdalene. Don’t give up.

In his Confessions, St. Augustine tells the story of his coming to faith in Christ, and the role of his mother, Monica. There are four things that Augustine describes: Monica cried. Monica prayed. Monica fasted. And Monica gave alms — and Augustine actually highlights that one.

We don’t want to be despairing. We need to weep and weep hard; we need to pray and pray hard; we need to fast and fast hard. And we need to give alms — we need to care for the poor. The Church’s teaching is that when you care for the poor — this flows right from Jesus’ words — you’re caring for him. The way that the saints talked about it is that, in some ways, God comes into debt to you when you care for his poor. Do you want him to answer your prayers? Care for the poor.

The other piece of it is, are you just going to Mass on Sunday, or is the faith something that is the center of your life and gives you joy? Because if you’re not a lot of fun to hang out with, I don’t want what you have. If the faith is not bringing the fruits of the Spirit — which St. Paul outlines in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness — if those things aren’t part of your life, you’re not attractive. You’ve got to put the best things in life on the hook if you want to bait the hook effectively. And that’s what the faith is all about.

True confessions: I’ve worked hopefully hard and hopefully well. But I have worked a lot trying to found and build FOCUS. And several of my older children have come to me in the last few months and said, “We’re grateful for what you did. We understand how big FOCUS is, but we would like the attention that you gave to FOCUS.”

And it’s been a time in my life to repent and step back in certain ways and make time for my children and my grandchildren. I want to use this time in my life to listen and make reparation for not being as available as I could have been. Maybe there are a lot of Knights out there who have been busy building their career and doing important things and good things. But there’s nothing more important than your children, your grandchildren.

COLUMBIA: People who are concerned about the Church or the culture sometimes have a mindset along the lines of “Let’s hope it gets better in the future.” But you emphasize the urgency of preaching the Gospel, that right now is the time to put one’s faith into action.

CURTIS MARTIN: We like to say that this generation of believers is responsible for this generation — and it’s based upon some simple truths.

First of all, we believe that heaven and hell are the only things that really matter. If you go to hell, nothing you did or acquired on earth matters at all to offset what a miserable wretch you will be for the rest of eternity. And by comparison, if you didn’t nail it here on earth with earthly treasures, but you die and go to heaven, you win.

The second piece is that we don’t believe in reincarnation. Every person has one life, and you get to find and love and serve Jesus Christ in this life. So, for those of us who already know him, we should take those two realities and say, “We must work with urgency.” Because in 150 years, every single man, woman and child on earth today will be gone and will have been replaced by other men, women, children.

This is where the Knights are uniquely positioned, maybe more than any other institution within the Church in the world. Two million members, men who are ready to serve and who are already serving powerfully. Incredible corporal works of mercy are being done, extraordinary caring for the poor, which is absolutely essential to being a follower of Christ.

But we’re a composition of body and soul. The spiritual works of mercy, sharing the Gospel, teaching the faith — those things are actually more important than the corporal works of mercy because the soul is more important than the body. And the only way your body lives forever is if your soul does. When you feed somebody, they get hungry the next day. When you evangelize them, they can live forever.

To watch someone who was dead in sin, living for themselves, all of a sudden realize that Jesus Christ loves them and wants to forgive them, and they turn their life around — that story is so extraordinary, and it shoots right into eternity. It goes to the heart of what FOCUS — and the Knights of Columbus — is all about.

Past State Deputy Michael Yeo (left) and Jamey Guerrero, state director of evangelization and faith formation, join other men in praying the rosary during a Cor event hosted by St. Joseph Council 9846 in Port Moody, British Columbia, on June 4. (Photo by Sandra Leung/Yaletown Photography)

The Adventure of Evangelization

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