EquipCast
Sharing your Catholic faith with family and friends can sometimes feel daunting. Where do I start? How do I make an impact? Welcome to EquipCast, a weekly podcast from the Archdiocese of Omaha. We want to support your faith journey and equip you with the tools to express your faith authentically in your everyday life. Each week, we’ll discuss practical advice and experiences from real people sharing their mission with the world. Each episode is filled with encouragement and inspiration so you can make an impact and make disciples in your own faith community. For more information and to stay connected with us, head to equip.archomaha.org/podcast/.
Episodes
September 19, 2023 • 42 mins
How life-giving is the volunteer work that you do for your parish? Is it draining or invigorating? Hopefully, some of you responded, “Invigorating!” But if you find yourself drained by the work of being missional, you are not alone. So many of us say yes to the work because it is good, or necessary, or because “Father asked me to”. Rarely are we asked to first discern our charisms and then to volunteer in a mission field that match...
Mark as Played
September 12, 2023 • 60 mins
The call to evangelize has been consistent and increasingly urgent from our Church leaders for the past fifty plus years. When you hear that call, have you ever felt like you aren’t enough? Like you don’t have the appropriate strengths or the right leadership qualities to offer?
Well, you’re not alone. Fr. Mallon, author of Catholic pop-culture phenomenon Divine Renovation, was the pastor at St. Benedict Parish in Hallifax, Nova Sc...
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September 5, 2023 • 44 mins
Raise your hand if you feel confident that you can help your children develop a personal relationship with Jesus. If I could see you all, I bet there would not be many hands in the air. We know how to teach rote prayers, but helping our children truly connect with Jesus feels a tad outside of a parent’s control.
The reality is that the Lord gives us everything that we need to model a real and personal relationship with Jesus. Today...
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August 29, 2023 • 9 mins
Why is sharing the source and summit of our faith rarely the first step to take when evangelizing? I want others to know and love Jesus. I know and love Jesus in the Eucharist, so why shouldn’t I jump straight to inviting non-believers to mass or adoration? While the Eucharist isn’t our opening act, we should by no means forget it entirely. The Eucharist is our headliner!
On today’s Coach’s Corner, I make the case that the Eucharis...
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August 22, 2023 • 44 mins
We are all called to evangelize, but have you ever felt limited, feeling like you don’t have much to give? Perhaps you only have 1-2 free hours a week. Or you are only around “hard cases”, people who seem unlikely to want to talk about faith. Perhaps, you feel like your only sphere of influence is your own parish. But those people don’t need evangelizing…do they?
This week, I talk to Greg Doring, a personal friend who used small gr...
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May 23, 2023 • 41 mins
July 1st is just around the corner, and with that comes a new experience of parish life for every person in the Archdiocese of Omaha. Many of us will experience a reduction in mass times at our parishes, new uses for our parish structures, and interruptions to the routines that many of us hold precious. This disruption can be difficult to process, so today, we welcome Fr. James Keiter, a pastor who has shepherded his people through...
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May 9, 2023 • 46 mins
Why is sharing our faith with the people closest to us sometimes the most difficult thing to do? We want the people we love to know the person we love: Jesus. However, conversations about faith are often taboo especially if our family or friends are fallen away Catholics. So how do we evangelize those who are closest to our hearts?
Andre Regnier, a missionary with Catholic Christian Outreach, Canada’s version of FOCUS, brings his y...
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May 2, 2023 • 49 mins
I don’t know about you, but I hate change. Change often marks the end of something, and so it brings with it the feeling of loss as well as uncertainty about the future. Living in a time of transition between the old and the new can be disorienting.
So how do we keep our sense of stability and direction when the world seems to be shifting under our feet?
Today’s guest, Tod Bolsinger, author of Tempered Resilience and Canoeing the M...
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April 25, 2023 • 11 mins
I’m going to depart from our usual content to talk to you about gardening tips for the Spring…
All dad jokes aside, in today’s Coach’s Corner, I do want to talk about the art of pruning when there is an abundance of good things to do in our lives or ministries. When an activity or program doesn’t seem to fit anymore or when the Lord is simply calling us to put time and energy elsewhere, how do we say no? Especially when what we are...
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April 18, 2023 • 43 mins
I know so many of you who are listening, like me, are trying to serve the kingdom. But how often do our own health concerns keep us from doing the promptings of the Holy Spirit?
Sometimes, I feel weak intellectually, spiritually, and even physically. And when I stop to ponder how my physical health affects my mental/spiritual health and vice versa, I’m not surprised. I mean, God made us integrated beings, body and soul.
So today, l...
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April 11, 2023 • 39 mins
This year has brought a lot of ups and downs for the Archdiocese of Omaha. But the thing I come back to most in prayer? The victory is ours!
In this Easter season, as we continue to face the decline of Christianity in our culture and in the number of people in our communities, let us remember: Jesus is risen!
With this hope on my mind, I sat down with Archbishop Lucas for our yearly Easter reflection and asked him:
• After so man...
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March 28, 2023 • 11 mins
Why wasn’t St. Thomas with the other apostles when Jesus appeared? I used to imagine that he was doing some mundane task like buying groceries. But, if we read the passage carefully, it’s likely he was absent because he didn’t want to be with the other apostles. Jesus could have appeared at any time; if Thomas was only “gone to the store”, he could have waited. Additionally, Thomas’s response to the news of the resurrection is stub...
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March 21, 2023 • 54 mins
Pope Francis is most known for telling us to love the poor and to share our faith. Many of you probably have a good handle on how to serve the poor, but what does sharing your faith look like? And can it feel natural to who each of us are as individuals?
Today, I talk with Kelly Peklo and Matt Keller, participants in the Archdiocese Mentorship Program. They share their journey to understand God’s call to evangelize and how they mad...
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March 14, 2023 • 43 mins
Today, I’ve got a story for you! It’s about Omaha’s own (God willing) future saint, Fr. Edward Flanagan.
If you’ve seen the 1938 biopic on his life, you might think you know all about him. However, Boys Town’s Historian, Thomas Lynch, shares a wealth of stories that are sure to inspire.
Fr. Flanagan was ahead of his time with the changes he introduced. He revolutionized the care for orphans and other wards of the state. He integrat...
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St. Frances Cabrini, one of our oldest and most historic parishes, was dying. And if its story followed the usual pattern, it would be closed. Instead, the parish is not only growing, but its people are thriving.
So how did this community reinvent itself in less than 7 years?
The parish leaders embraced a relationship with the Holy Spirit. They made it a priority to notice individuals, to notice their gifts, and to invite those gif...
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February 28, 2023 • 10 mins
We all have experience planning events. In the family setting, I’m talking weddings, vacations, and holiday gatherings. Many of you, I’m sure, also have experience planning an event for your parish. Oftentimes, the Lord puts something on your heart. Perhaps you noticed a need that wasn’t being met, and so to address the problem, you and a few others planned an event. At first, the work went well, but eventually, after a few months ...
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February 21, 2023 • 57 mins
Today I talk to Fr. Sean Kilcawley of the Diocese of Lincoln. Over the years, the Lord has called him into ministry with people who struggle with addiction and/or question their identity. He has made a career out of answering the question: What would it be like to make it safe for people to name the difficult things in their hearts? Specifically, we dig into the topic of gender identity. Fr. Kilcawley gives practical guidance on ho...
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February 14, 2023 • 52 mins
I hear so many people these days saying things like, “I feel the Lord calling me to share my faith with others.” But for so many of us, evangelization is new and daunting. So today, I invited Michael Hall, an expert in accompanying people through conversion, to share his insight. Michael authored the book, "Intentional Accompaniment", and he works for Catholic Christian Outreach, a ministry in Canada that is similar to FOCUS. He ha...
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February 7, 2023 • 8 mins
Did you know that in July of this year more than 20 parishes in our diocese will cease having Sunday Mass? Maybe one of these parishes is your own. The cessation of Sunday Mass will be one of the hardest events for faithful Catholics to process. It feels like the death of a loved one. However, this is not the first time God's people have had to deal with their worship in a particular place coming to an end. I’d like to offer lesson...
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January 31, 2023 • 59 mins
Did you know that since 1990 more than 400 new Catholic schools have opened in the United States? Unfortunately, during that same period there's been a net loss of more than 760 Catholic schools. We now have fewer total students in Catholic schools in the United States then we did in 1930 despite the fact that the Catholic population has tripled since then.
I got a chance to sit down with Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB. He serve...
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