FOCUS (the Fellowship Of Catholic University Students) is a 20 year old (I rounded up) American, Catholic ministry organization in America. They are now on 100+ campuses (including 2 in Austria), generally consisting of 4 missionaries per team (though the numbers range from 2-12), an online resource group for campuses that do not have FOCUS missionaries, and they are becoming one of the most renowned Catholic ministries in our time. I was personally introduced to FOCUS when I began life as a college student, going to the Catholic Campus Ministry building next to Missouri State University in Springfield. It has been seven, going on eight years, since that time (which is a strange realization of passing time for me). So I would like to examine my time with FOCUS, how I grew as a Catholic man because of FOCUS, and what the outside perception is for FOCUS at this time in order to dig through and find the golden fruit that stems from their ministry.
Random note, in my examination for this post, I discovered that FOCUS is no longer on Missouri State's campus (which is not the first time this sort of thing has happened) and a part of me wonders what the various reasons are when FOCUS has left college campuses in the past. Anyway, onward we go.
Entering College:
I was a fallen away cradle Catholic when I entered my freshman year in college. I was never a regular attendant at Sunday Mass, even as a child, and I largely received the Sacraments due to my attendance through Catholic school (up until 6th grade) and then PSR (or whatever your local Religious Education program is called). After I received the Sacrament of Confirmation and entered high school, I sadly went to Mass very little or rarely did any prayers. I was also very much caught up in relativism (the idea that truth to me is not true for everyone) which mainly reflected in my minimal personal objections to/ minimal support of subjects of abortion and same-sex unions. It was only during my senior year of high school, and the summer just before I went to college, that I was asked to become a godfather to my cousin's first child. He is one of the two main reasons why I reverted back to my Catholic faith. My interaction with FOCUS during college is the other main reason.
During College:
There is a lot to cover during this four year history, so I will try to give you the short version. FOCUS was brought to Springfield and Missouri State University the same year as I started college. During my first Sunday at CCM, I wrote down my contact info for CCM as well as FOCUS, which I did not realize at the time was a separate entity (FOCUS missionaries are a separate organizational body from a campus' Catholic organization but they cooperate for the same purposes). Anyway, one of the missionary men, Tom May, reached out to me early on just for some recreation and he gave me the Bible I used throughout and beyond my college career. Lee Brokaw, the other male missionary who I have talked about before, led Bible Study for my age during his tenure, and he was influential in my understanding of masculinity, truth, and what being a Catholic man is all about. Through them, I joined a small group of fellow MSU Catholic men, the first real group of solid fellowship I became a part of, and throughout my time at college this group would do recreational things like go bowling as well as spiritual things like gather together to pray the Rosary once a week.
It was because of FOCUS's influence that I actually started attending Mass not just every single Sunday, but during the week as well. It is also because of my involvement with the FOCUS men that I went to Confession for the first time in many years, and I can only be grateful that our God is merciful and forgiving of my selfishness and ignorance. Now, while I credit FOCUS with much of my spiritual growth, there are some things I independently chose to do. I voluntarily become a Lector and Eucharistic Minister for Masses, as well as that guy that handles the collection basket before the Liturgy of the Eucharist. I also went on to be a part of the Catholic Campus Ministry Student Council (StuCo) for my last two years at MSU. Again, since I became a godfather, I began to realize I had a personal responsibility for my faith life.
During this timeline, I also participated in my first legit spiritual retreats and went on 1 spring break volunteer trip. I was asked to become a FOCUS student leader junior year, which meant I was participating in FOCUS' evangelization efforts on MSU's campus and eventually I led a Bible Study senior year while also being on CCM's StuCo both years.
Here was where there was an interesting, contrasting union between the two organizations. We had both FOCUS and StuCo, which should've been attempting to do the same things. However, I saw that FOCUS was more of the spiritual leadership and influence during this time while CCM was the place to have the events. Some of my journal entries from that time reflect my frustration at all of the events StuCo was planning while also trying to get them to be more spiritually focused and more spiritually invested in our peers. FOCUS was the group leading Bible Studies, evangelizing to students on campus, and I think that many people would come to this or that event at CCM because of the FOCUS missionary or FOCUS student leader they encountered encouraging them to go instead of the event itself drawing them in.
I interviewed with FOCUS twice to become a missionary. During the second time, I had a moment of realization during the interview that I wouldn't be a missionary because I had not done everything in what I will call 'The FOCUS way' (there are multiple reasons why I did not become a missionary but this was one of them). During that interview, I felt like they were asking for lots of responsibility from a student leader, whose main focus was trying to graduate college. You know, I was attending classes full time, studying and doing the coursework outside of class, maintaining a certain GPA for my scholariship, involved in CCM StuCo, involved in FOCUS student leadership, leading a Bible Study my senior year, attempting to participate in theatre projects, do a part time desk job during my last two years, figure out what to do for the rest of my life, and still have a social life. Not saying I was constantly overwhelmed, but there were many things I was trying to juggle and focus on during college that I did not dedicate all of my time and energy into things the way I think FOCUS wanted me to. 'The FOCUS way', in the context of this interview, was wanting me to spend so much time with the men around me, doing more campus evangelization, and essentially meeting a quota increase on how many men I was bringing to Bible Study and mentoring, which I believe would have required me to put FOCUS as my top priority in college.
FOCUS Conferences:
Since SEEK 2017, the annual FOCUS conference, happened last week, I figure it would only be fitting to talk about my own experiences at their past conferences since they are the largest FOCUS event of the year. I attended 3 FOCUS conferences during college. When looking back on those experiences off hand, one of the things that comes to mind is I remember the venues and locations almost more than the talks each day. Which makes sense, that's like saying I remember college events and experiences more than the classes I took. For the talks I do remember, what makes them stand out is how they impacted my faith formation. Perhaps not immediately, but overtime I began to understand the truth of those talks more and my morality and faith was strengthened for the better because of those talks. The most memorable experiences I had were multiple times for Mass, Adoration, and Reconciliation at each, and I think these stand out just because thousands upon thousands of college students, religious, and missionaries were all together in a large crowd for spiritual activity and glorification of God. Some more subtle yet personal things I took away from these conferences involved learning to be less selfish, more patient, less angry, and less about my plans and more on God's.
One of the best things that can be said about FOCUS conferences is that they have so many religious orders and Catholic organizations to encounter and get to know. This is the one collective place where it's not odd to see various orders of monks and nuns in traditional habits roaming around. You can get so many good CDs, books, and other resources on subjects important in the Catholic Church from many booths. You can learn about organizations that are looking for staff or volunteers for future projects and endeavors. Of course, as I will explain below, you better come with extra cash in your pocket if you really really want to get so many of these good things to bring home.
Post College:
Instead of being a FOCUS missionary and instead of trying to get a career job immediately after undergrad, I volunteered for Reach Youth Ministry, which was a traveling Catholic ministry in the Pacific Northwest. This was the first time I remember being in a place where people knew of FOCUS but were not enthusiastic about them. One of my teammates from Benedictine College and I learned there used to be a FOCUS team in the Diocese of Helena (where I was living) in the past. What would anyone have against FOCUS, I wondered then? My guesses and examinations to follow in a bit. My main point in this is that even without the presence of FOCUS and without a shared enthusiasm for them, I continued to grow in my faith through my Reach experiences, especially Daily Mass and Daily Prayer that was part of ministry life. I was learning more, getting out of my comfort zone more, and becoming more proud and glad for my Catholicism. The challenge came from returning home after Reach and continuing my faith journey alone, or rather, doing it without some ministry organization guiding my daily life and faith practices. I had to build a routine of Daily Mass before work, Daily Scripture reading, and Daily Rosary (noticing a pattern?) in order to maintain faith life and continue to grow through obstacles, doubts, and struggles. My only real ties to FOCUS during this time, aside from the occasional Facebook read-through of acquaintances' posts, was that I donated to a friend who became a FOCUS missionary.
Others Complaints about FOCUS:
As I mentioned before, not everyone is a fan of FOCUS. Since they're not perfect, and there's always room for improvement, there are some areas that people critique FOCUS on and mayhaps rightfully so. Here is what I have compiled, in no particular order, as to what people criticize FOCUS on and why as an outsider now I can see why they think that.
-FOCUS is the cool kid's club:
I remember during one of my interview weekends, one of the men gave a speech about not worrying whether we were called to be FOCUS missionaries or not because "FOCUS is not the end all be all". While people who organize FOCUS may not claim it to be the end all be all, that does not stop other people from seeing it that way. There's a certain attitude around FOCUS that exudes from people involved, mainly because of how excited and how invested they are in the organization. Even during college, I could tell some people would feel like the people most involved with FOCUS formed a clique, and I could understand where they were coming from. Even sometimes on social media, the way that people talk about FOCUS (like with SEEK) makes it seems like some humble bragging about the greatest organization of all time. FOCUS is a great tool, with lots of time to improve since it's only 20 years old, but their mission is to reach out to everyone, to be the New Evangelization for everyone whether they grew up Catholic or not, so outsiders looking in need to see that FOCUS is not some posh country club that has a restrictive VIP list.
-FOCUS has a specific target audience, and it's not me:
As someone who has graduated from university and is now moving on into the truly adult stage of life, I am an outsider looking in on FOCUS. While FOCUS puts out a lot of great material, not as much of it really resonates with me as it used to. Because it's no longer speaking to me, at least, it's not aiming for me. FOCUS has a specific demographic that they gear their material towards: College students, specifically undergrads, who are either away from the Church or are at a very minimal level of their faith. Of course some of their stuff is going to sound rudimentary, generic, and beginner level. Of course some of their stuff is going to be infused with pop culture and hip, trendy lingo. They understand who their audience is and in order to reach out to them, they cannot make their material too complex and they have to use language that appeals to a wide-ranging demographic. I may personally be someone who is looking for material to go deeply orthodox, and I may personally be someone who distastes trendy words in an attempt to be cool, but that does not mean that someone else isn't getting something good spiritually from that.
-Money:
If there's one thing that FOCUS has truly developed a skill at, it's finding sponsors and donors. There's no way that all of these FOCUS teams could survive and thrive without the investment of thousands of people who donate financially either to specific missionaries and to the organization in general. Of course, FOCUS can also come with a price (pun intended). The conferences generally cost $700-$800 for four days of travel, to stay at a hotel, and to cover a single meal's cost per day. There's all the extra money one would need to bring for the rest of the meals and for purchasing items at all the vendor booths. FOCUS also has international mission trips, going to third world countries and areas of need, but this again requires a lot of money for travel, food, and shelter. They're asking college students, majority of whom cannot already afford college and/or are taking out student loans, to spend large amounts of dough while at the same time reminding everyone to serve and give to the poor. There are also all of the finances and resources that each diocese and campus ministry utilizes to bring and maintain FOCUS on their college campuses. Yes, everyone is aware from the beginning of the financial obligations and necessities that are required for FOCUS to stay a non-profit organization whose staff live entirely on donations, but that does not mean people on the outside will see all of the money being used for the best good.
-FOCUS acts like a business:
This goes back to the idea of meeting a quota and what I suspect is one of the reasons why FOCUS may come and go from different campuses. The importance of the mission of evangelization can sometimes lead to people pushing to increase the numbers and find fault with any Bible studies or groups that are not growing in number. Again, that was one of my faults when interviewing to be a missionary, I never kept mentored a fellow student leader within FOCUS for a long time and I had trouble growing my freshmen Bible Study group beyond 2-3 guys each week. I was not meeting the quota and in some ways may be part of the reason why FOCUS was not successful on campus with freshmen men during my time on campus. When you are an organization built upon donations, and having to strategize how to use all of your resources wisely, sometimes you have to play a numbers game, which is what businesses do in order to continue making profit (this is all spoken on a very generic surface level understanding of business operations and my own understanding of FOCUS).
-FOCUS is all charismatic and not too traditional:
Perhaps the most minor of other people's complaints, though still relevant to the discussion of why people may not like FOCUS. One of the things that I did not enjoy about my experiences at FOCUS Conferences was the music. What I mean is, a lot of the songs being played were done in a very modern way, like the kind of rock band one might find at certain Protestant services. In fact, the band would sometimes get on my nerves because they would play too long and too modern, like their music was one of the most important things you should be focusing on in the moment instead of say THE MASS or going over whatever you learned the past couple of days. I get that music is a form of prayer, and I'm sure the musicians were just trying to lead us in prayer, but I only really enjoyed praise and worship in other circumstances back on campus or during Reach, not so much through FOCUS. This is emblematic of the way FOCUS presents itself, again going back to the trendy cool kids and target group ideas.
Some people may also see FOCUS as a charismatic tool keying in on emotions. One of the most powerful moments during FOCUS Conferences (and I suppose even Steubenville Conferences for the youth) is the night of Adoration, where everyone is gathered to pray in front of the Eucharist, coupled with Reconciliation opportunities. It's a very emotional highlight of the conference because you're in a large dark room with thousands of other people, focusing on prayer and reflecting on past rights and wrongs, trying to get cleansed and draw closer to Christ. This is different from every day Adoration, where you're usually alone or in a small group in a chapel and still praying but in a calmer atmosphere. At least from what I could tell when I was involved, there's not much offered for those of the traditional, Solemn High Mass in Latin crowd, again because FOCUS is trying to reach a specific audience and it's hard enough to get young adults invested in the now standard form of Mass, much less the more traditional forms.
Recap:
Please remember that everything I have written down here is just based on my memories of the past, minimal research into FOCUS as an organization, and any chatter I catch from other people on social media.The mission of FOCUS is "Launching Catholic Students into Lifelong Catholic Mission". So really, they're just a starting point, a jumpstart, a catalyst, for someone to understand and grow in their Catholic faith. They're not trying to be a monastery or a seminary with deep, deep theological and historical studies (for the most part). They are trying to reach young Catholics raised in a relativistic secular American culture and prepare them to be disciples.
In fact, if we think of the original disciples, the Apostles, and use their timeline for example, FOCUS is really just that three year period where the Apostles were called by Jesus Christ, educated/instructed/challenged by Him, made and fixed their mistakes, and then once He ascended and gave them the Great Commission (i.e. once someone graduates from college), then the Apostles/disciples/college graduates take it upon themselves to live out their faith, to proclaim Christ as Lord and God, and to live a truly authentic Catholic life for the rest of their time here on Earth.
I've heard stories and known people who have gone on to seminaries and convents because of their involvement in FOCUS. I also know of some people (though not as many) who have fallen away from the Catholic faith even with their involvement in FOCUS activities. FOCUS is a resource that is constantly growing and adjusting its approach in its ministry. It provides multiple resources for people to jumpstart their faith and I think it will help us see more young adults in the Catholic Church overall. If we want to stop complaining about shrinking number of Mass attendees and how millenials are no longer practicing their faith, then we need to take all of the good that FOCUS is doing and continue to nurture that past the college years in order to help the American and global Catholic Church continue its mission.
