Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Become Who You Are
#591 "The Culture Project" Inspiring Hope In Young Hearts With CEO Greg Schleppenbach
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Greg Schleppenbach, CEO of the Culture Project, joins us for a riveting discussion on transforming the lives of young people.
Greg takes us on his journey from pro-life advocacy to leading the Culture Project. Working with passionate young missionaries who go out and journey with students while presenting concepts such as their inherent human dignity, self worth, the meaning of human sexuality and how living a virtuous life can change the culture and the world.
"The Culture Project is a team of young people across the country who have been where you are and know what it’s like. We see a future where everyone lives free and experiences their healthiest life."
"We tackle the pressing need to educate young minds with genuine teachings about the theology of the body and instill a culture of life amidst today's misleading ideologies.
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I am excited to be with Greg Schleppenbach. He's the CEO of the Culture Project. Very excited to talk to him. We see a lot of things going on with young people and bringing some solutions to them, bringing the good news to them. He was the executive director in 2022 with the Culture Project, became the CEO of July 2024. Prior to that, he served for six years as the associate director of the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities for the USCCB and for 25 years with the Nebraska Catholic Conference 23 years as the state pro-life director and the last two as its executive director. Greg and his wife, jacqueline, live in Haymarket, virginia. Greg, it's great to be with you.
Speaker 1:Wonderful to be with you as well, you know, I had a Trump hat back here, greg, hanging up there, and I wasn't sure. Sometimes I'm not sure before, you know, hanging up there and I wasn't sure, sometimes I'm not sure before we just met. So I don't. And people ask me sometimes, jack, why do you have a Trump hat hanging on our blessed mother? And I remind them that we don't think Trump is Jesus Christ or God in any way, but it sure seems like God saved them and is doing some good things in the country. Anyways, I'll just say that because you're not too far from DC, are you feeling some of the craziness going on? Are you far enough outside the Beltway there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're far enough outside the Beltway. We used to live much closer well inside the Beltway and very close to DC, actually in Alexandria, and you felt it a lot more there. But out here we're a little bit more in the country. It feels a little bit more like I've got one foot in Nebraska, my homeland, and one in the DC area, so it's a great spot right at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Oh, nice, nice, nice. So you're from Nebraska originally.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, born and raised in Nebraska and lived there until 2016 when we moved out here to the DC area.
Speaker 1:Okay, so work brought you out that way or yes, when I, it has to be work right, because otherwise?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. Yeah that when I took the job at the USCCB in the pro life, Okay. That's when we moved out here.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, tell us a little bit about the culture project, just to give people that our audience that doesn't know a little bit about the Culture Project, just to give people that our audience that doesn't know a little bit about that and how you got involved with them, greg.
Speaker 2:Yeah, happy to do that. So we're an initiative of young people set out to restore culture through the experience of virtue. This is our formal mission. We proclaim the dignity of the human person and the richness of living sexual integrity, inviting our culture to become fully alive person and the richness of living sexual integrity, inviting our culture to become fully alive. In a more colloquial way that I would talk about, our mission is that you know, we are trying to reach, form and equip young Catholic men and women in 7th through 12th grade age range, before the culture of death gets its hooks and takes them down very dark, destructive paths.
Speaker 2:So we are a missionary program. It's peer-to-peer. We hire young men and women right out of college. So our missionaries are 22 to 25 or 6. Typically they commit to one year on mission. Some stay a second year or occasionally a third year, but the commitment's one year year. Or occasionally a third year, but the commitment's one year.
Speaker 2:We form them and train them over several weeks during the summertime on how to be good speakers, be formed in spirituality. We're a mission program so they're not just speakers, it's not a speakers bureau. We form them in spirituality. So prayer is a pillar, work is a pillar, community is a pillar, so they live in community, our missionaries, when they serve in the dioceses we serve. So we train them in all of these different areas, on spirituality and prayer life, because they commit to a daily holy hour and daily mass while they're on mission.
Speaker 2:And then we train them in the areas that we're speaking to, which is human dignity, who you are, who we are and what we're made for, as human beings, made in the image and likeness of God, where our dignity comes, our identity comes from as children of God.
Speaker 2:Sexual integrity you know again what God designed for human sexuality and the beauty of that. And to recognize the counterfeits of love and sexuality in the culture. And then social media, where everybody's engaged and where so many people hear and experience and unfortunately accept these counterfeit notions of love and life and identity. So those are the three main areas we engage young people in and our missionaries through engaging presentations, through one-on-one encounters and mentorships, small group, through TOB, study nights, lots of different ways. Q&a sessions with the students, lunch encounters where our missionaries just go hang out at lunchtime with the students. This is how we engage them and so we are dioceses. Invite us, in contract with us, to come in and put a team of five missionaries in the diocese during the school year. The missionaries live in community together and they go around the diocese during the school year and speak to students in Catholic schools and parishes and youth groups and religious ed groups about these subjects.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, so you'll stay. They'll stay within the geographic area of a diocese generally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so they live. The diocese provides housing for them, usually unused convent or rectories and things like that, yeah, and then they're there from October through May and just going out and speaking to as many students as possible but they also speaking to the students is a big part of our mission. But they also engage in other ways in the diocese. So they'll go pray at the abortion facility. They, you know, do daily mass in different parishes. They, you know, speak to youth groups. They go to soup kitchens and volunteer there. They really get incorporated into the diocese and the community where they're living.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Let me ask you the million dollar question now. I mean, what are they finding with the young people today? So seventh grade, so we're looking at kind of junior high all the way through high school. You know how has it changed? You know you've been there since 2022. You know you've been there since 2022, but as far as what you've seen or what you're seeing with these young people, how would you size them up today?
Speaker 1:You know, the last stats we got were 70% of young people would consider themselves socialists. You know this is going kind of through high school and into college, 90% would consider themselves, greg, moral relativistsists. You know. But here's what we're seeing and I like to just get your idea on this. Now we're we're seeing this in a little bit older, especially the young guys that there's something really wrong. And you know, with the porn addictions and all this kind of stuff, and we really saw it in this last election. That's why I brought up the trump hat kind of, and I had been hanging it up there every once in a while when I'm doing shows with young guys, because somehow Trump rallied their spirits. You know it's almost like something's wrong. We don't know what it is. But we got to search for the truth and something's got to change. Like to see you know, you're working with a little bit younger ones and what you're seeing there, greg, I mean, where's our hope going to come from?
Speaker 2:uh, brother, you know yeah, well, I there's so much to unpack there yes, there is just like what are we seeing differences?
Speaker 2:so we've been an organization for 10 years, and so 10 years ago, the common experience of young people was, you know, the hookup culture and you know, engaging in irresponsible sexual activity, and you know, so a lot of our talks, you know, and our approach was based upon that experience amongst young men and women. Now, from what I understand, we're seeing just a flip of that. There's less actual sexual activity going on between human beings. It's all now virtual. So it's the online pornography, it's the sexting, it's things like that. The actual engaging in sexual activity is reduced. So it's this unembodied understanding or expression of human sexuality. And so the good news is the ideal that is what God gave us in our human sexuality never changes. And so, you know, we present that ideal, we present what God's plan was for us the beauty of sexuality, the beauty of our identity as children of God.
Speaker 2:And these young people are thirsting for that. They're thirsting for the truth and they don't want it sugarcoated, and they can spot a phony a mile away. And so this is one of the real, brilliant aspects of our mission is that our missionaries are real. They're embodied human beings, they are mentors, they go into these dioceses. They talk with these students, they interact with them, they listen to them and they can share their own lived experiences. Again, 22 to 25-year-olds, so they're close enough in age to relate to the students they're speaking to, but they're also at that age where they're kind of looked up to by the student. They've got a real opportunity to impact them and get their attention. So we want them to see there's a better way. Here's what the world's presenting, here's what our Lord has given us, and the beautiful distinction there that this is possible. It's beautiful, and you will be happier and more fulfilled when you know what again your real identity as a child of God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now you unpacked a lot there. But I'll tell you this when we first started to do high school retreats, I had a young girl in charge of those and one time she calls me up and she says Jack, we've got a big retreat coming up for the sophomore class at this high school and we want you to come with us and help to present to the boys, and it's an all day retreat. We give four or five, usually four sessions during the day. And I said no, I'm not going. And she said why don't you want to go? I said because I was a high school kid. I said I'm not going to go. You know, try to speak to these guys. Well, anyway, she talks me into it. This is many years ago and it was awesome. It was awesome, greg, for all the things that you just said. I said I'll go, but I'm not pulling any punches. I'm not going to speak down to these kids. I'll speak a language they can understand. But I'm going to relate some stories and I'm going to talk to them about theology of the body. And I said I don't know how to water it down and theology of the body. And I said I don't know how to water it down. And it was awesome.
Speaker 1:Those young people started to dig in, they started to hear the truth. And I tell you what. I'll give you one more thing. You'll relate to this, greg. So the counselors told me they go, jack, good luck with this class, they're not going to pay attention, they have short with these phones, short attention spans and stuff. And so they warned me about all this stuff and I said whatever you know and we present, and they started to lean in. It was amazing how, by the second or third session, they wanted more. Like you said, they really want to know the truth. And why are we watering this down, greg? It seems like the parishes must be watering it down. The youth groups are watering it down. It's like we're almost afraid just to speak the truth to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's. Yeah, I think that's right. And again, I think what our experience has been is the students don't want that, they don't want things sugarcoated, they want reality and they are open to hearing it, and especially when it is the beautiful reality of the truth, of our dignity and the source of that dignity and their identity. Because when you juxtapose that against what the culture has to offer the culture of death, and the false understanding, false notions of dignity, of identity, of sexuality, you know it's compelling to them. One of the things we do on a monthly basis as an organization is we have an all staff call, so all of our mission teams. We have five mission teams of 25 missionaries right now and then our support staff. We're all on a call together and we get reports from each mission team about you know, things they've done over the last month. And then we get an opportunity to share glory stories and these are particularly impactful interactions that they had with students and it's just, it makes you almost cry to hear these beautiful interactions, these students who are like seeing hope for the first time, seeing that there's a better way and know that it is actually realistic. I mean even a lot of our missionaries who end up coming on and serving as missionaries. When they hear about our mission they think, man, I wish I would have had that when I was in middle school or high school. So they're thirsting for it, they want it and they respond to it in a very big way. And I mean, jack, I came from you know, 20, 30 plus years of pro-life work, fighting the supply side of abortion, the abortion industry, all important work in the legislature and education and the pastoral outreach and post-abortion ministry. All of that is so important, really important. We've got to be engaged there.
Speaker 2:But you know, as our patron, st Pope, john Paul, was very clear in his whole life, as well as, clearly, his pontificate, that we've got to reach the young. If we want to turn the culture in the right direction or preserve the goodness of cultures that we have, we have to reach the young, and all you got to do is look at where the culture of death is. The culture of death is going younger and younger and younger. The average age of exposure to pornography is eight years old, and so the culture of death is getting into school boards and school curriculums and rampant in social media, trying again to drag these beautiful young souls down dark and destructive paths, paths. And if we're going to change the trajectory of the culture, we've got to invest a lot more into reaching those young people and getting to them before the culture of death, before Planned Parenthood and other organizations. Pornography industry hooks them in Because once they're hooked in, it's harder to get them out of that path of destruction. So that's why I'm so passionate about this mission.
Speaker 1:We this is absolutely critical if we're going to turn the cultural ship in the right direction yeah, that's a big thing and I hope people caught what you just said, because we find the same thing. You know, we're, we're, we're active in pro-life work ourselves too. But if you don't hit the other side of this, if you know all you're doing is trying to, you know, put your hand in the dam always right, trying to stop it up instead of going again to the source of this river and trying to divert it right To the culture of life. We see this over and over again.
Speaker 1:You know, we're in Illinois, we're in the belly of the beast here, greg, with the governor we have here and they're pushing the national sex ed standards down on us. So when you say they're getting younger and younger, they're teaching about these gender ideologies and stuff in kindergarten here in Chicago. And it's not only Chicago, california, new York, I think, new Jersey, I mean there's a number of states that are pushing this, mostly the blue states, right, but they're talking about gender and different types of families that you can get into, et cetera, et cetera, to kindergarten kids. They have no idea what they're even talking about, but they're pushing it already, you know pushing it already.
Speaker 2:You know, you know there's a case that's going before the Supreme Court of parents in Maryland who were resisting, wanted to opt their children out of LGBTQ story hour or whatever books that were it's amazing Present and you know they challenged the policy. They were originally allowed to opt out and then the school district said no, you can't opt out. And so they sued the school district and they lost at the district court level, they lost at the appellate court level and now they're going to the Supreme Court. It's like I'm reading this, I'm thinking what in the world is a case like this having to go to the Supreme Court?
Speaker 2:Something so ridiculous is forcing parents to have their kids sit through this indoctrination about sexual orientation identity. It is insidious. And again, it's one of a million examples of how the culture of death is getting younger, reaching younger, younger into the students and schools and trying to get them to go down, to think a certain way, to act a certain way. And while many dioceses and their Catholic schools and youth programs and all that are trying to reach young people, we can never do enough. We can never do enough to invest in really reaching and properly forming and inspiring these young people to be able to resist those counterfeit notions and destructive notions that come from the culture of death.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you know, with John Paul's work. Look, we're probably both prejudiced to John Paul's theology of the body because it really speaks to these hearts. What I find, greg, in so many parishes and even in the good dioceses and there's plenty of bad ones out there, but let's talk about the good ones they're still watering this down in too many places. We still walk into too many youth groups that have bonfires and kumbaya and they have some beautiful presentations, but unless you get to the heart with these kids, unless you unpack their identity, like you said, who am I? Am I an LBGTQ? No, you're a beloved child of God. In essence, you know and bring them to that story. See that when you take God out, they don't have.
Speaker 1:Human dignity goes away too. But the other thing you have to talk about the beauty of human sexuality and obviously age appropriate right. But if you don't talk about that and to high school kids? But if you don't talk about that, if you and to high school kids, if you don't address pornography and this and this using one another, if you don't do it and and present what's beautiful about it not just no, no, no, but the beauty of our sexuality unless you do that, you. You can't compete against the social media and all these other things, and I wonder why, like you said earlier, I wonder why they don't just give them the truth. Here it is. It's so beautiful, greg, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, it is, it's absolutely compelling. And, again, our experience is that students want to hear this, they want to know the truth. So it's just it is. Students want to hear this, they want to know the truth. So it's just it is. You know, again, jp2 set the laid the path for us, you know, I mean, he really did, he's, I mean, he is our modern day saint who gives us this example of in his own priesthood, his young priesthood, when he spent a lot of time with young people and you know, and he lived through regimes, you know, from the nazis to the communists, who were trying to destroy culture, and he knew that to preserve culture you had to do these things, you had to reach out to the young. And then, as pope, you know, with the, with the world, youth, world youth states.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and and evangelium vitae, the gospel of life, where he said you know, it's an illusion to think that we can rebuild a culture of life if we don't help the young to understand and appreciate and embrace the truth about human sexuality. So you know, again, we have to do all of these things to fight the supply side of the abortion industry, but we also have to lean into the demand side and that is by reaching young people earlier in their lives and forming them, equipping them, inspiring them to the beauty of this. You know, in our human dignity talk, you know you get to. You talk about identity and helping them to really understand who they are and what they're made for.
Speaker 2:Our approach to that is it's not a traditional pro-life talk. We don't come in and just say this is the church's teaching about abortion and all these different attacks against life and why you should be pro-life or whatever. It is really more foundational in helping them to understand where their dignity and their identity comes from, so that they can spot the attacks against that dignity. Now we do bring in examples of attacks against human dignity, including abortion, including bullying and, historically, slavery and the Holocaust and all those kinds of things. But we want them to be able to know that, have that solid foundation of where their dignity comes from, so they can say, wait a minute, that's not in line with my dignity, without the church having to tell them that these things are wrong, that they can sense it and spot it, because they really are rooted in their true identity as beloved children of God.
Speaker 1:So important what you just said. I don't know if you're familiar with SEL social emotional learning but they've got it in almost all the schools and what they do is they try to take that away from you, what you just said. They try to take away your reason, your discernment, a young person's you know. Is this good or is this bad? What they do, greg, and what you're saying, is so important, because what they do to these young people is they want them to be empathetic and compassionate, but it's a false empathy. Empathetic and compassionate, but it's a false empathy. They just have to accept everybody right, for no matter what lifestyle that they're pushing right, which we all have to be empathetic, we all have to be compassionate, we all have to love one another, but at the same time, young people have to be grounded in the truth. You know, whether they articulate this, they don't have to get into arguments with everybody, but they have to be able to say, hey, look it, I've got to love this person, but look it, that doesn't mean I have to agree with everything.
Speaker 1:And so that comes into this moral relativism. They haven't become moral relativists on their own. They have because the culture will tell you, and their parents, too, have fallen for this. They've often brainwashed. God bless them to say, no, we can't make any judgments at all about what's good and evil anymore, it's just all okay. And say, dude, no, it's not all okay. And if you can do that in a loving way with these young people and, like you said, bring them along to the point where you say, no, there's a right and a wrong, there is really good and evil and there's truth, truth exists, and if somebody's not living the truth, we're all sinners, we're all fallen. And you know to be really empathetic and compassionate. We want to help them see the truth. And, really empathetic and compassionate, we want to help them see the truth. And look, I know that those aren't easy things to do with young people, but at least we have to at least instill this foundation right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no question, it's one of the challenging questions or roles as Christians.
Speaker 2:To spread the truth, to proclaim the truth in a way that is compelling, is loving, is winsome.
Speaker 2:I have so many nieces and nephews who went through 12 years of Catholic school and are now not practicing the faith and, god willing, they will come back. But, you know, I've talked with them and you reach out and you want to help bring them back into the fold. You know, and there's various reasons, and these are, you know, going to schools in very solid dioceses where they get solid catechesis. But I think there's something missing in our approach to Catholic education, where we're not doing enough to truly evangelize young people and help them to fall in love with Jesus Christ, you know, which then helps make you know the teachings and the rules and the commandments that our Lord gave us more meaningful. You know you've got, and so like, then, like same thing with with those who have strayed from the faith, and trying to bring them back and do it in a way that doesn't shove it in their face, doesn't turn them off, but also doesn't sugarcoat, you know, and that's a. That's a tough balancing act, isn't it?
Speaker 1:It's doable though, you know, john Paul. You know, never, never impose. Right, don't impose anything. He proposed the true, the good and the beautiful, especially the beauty of authentic love and the beauty of how we're created. And if you can do that, right, he said.
Speaker 1:The more the world deprives young people of what's true, good and beautiful, he said, the more that their hearts will open, like this vacuum that's in their hearts, to the fragrant invitation to the sacred. And they do, because if you present this to them, you know it will touch them. It will touch them Because, you know, greg, at the end we forget that Jesus has, there's power. He didn't come just to manage our sins, he came with power. And it's a beauty of love, right, you gotta, like you said, you have to evangelize first. You can't just catechize these poor kids, right, the culture's beating them all up. And then the second thing is we have to understand that our hearts were made to hear that. See, we start with this thing. Everything's an argument.
Speaker 1:And he said, no, it's not an argument. Present the beauty of this. Look, there's ways to do that. But you give me the beauty, greg, and you give me the beauty, greg, and you give me the beauty of my sexuality. You tell a young guy not to stuff his passions down, and of course he knows the indulging doesn't work either. You'd ask him hey, let's, let's take those passions and desires and let's open those up. No, let's not be afraid, let's open them up right to the, to the truth, to the beauty of how we're created. That's a whole different approach, greg 100.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what we do. We present that truth in a beautiful, compelling way and and it does resonate I mean there's just there's so again so many stories that I hear of you know one-on-one encounter do you have?
Speaker 1:do you have any right off the top of your head? Can I put you on the spot? I mean, you know, you know because the stories are important and when we hear those, yeah, well, yeah, there's a number of them.
Speaker 2:There's one that kind of comes to mind of a young man who came up to one of the missionaries after the I think I can't recall if it was our human dignity talk or the sexual integrity talk both in which we do address pornography and this student came up very sheepishly kind of a weak handshake, started talking a little bit about it. Became very evident that he was struggling with it and felt you know, the shame and everything that goes with it. And this missionary was able to talk to him about it and by the time they were done, you know, it really had in many ways transformed him, even just physically. His presence, like he had a stronger handshake, he was more. You know. There's so many more. I wish I could. I'm not great at recalling specifics of the stories, but I mean every month there's dozens and dozens of these kinds of stories of interactions between our missionaries. The students hear this message and they come up to them afterwards and just say how grateful they are to know this, to know that there's a better way. It gives them hope.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's, I'll tell you. I remember a story from a couple years back. The first time it really impacted my heart how powerful this was was we were doing a high school retreat and I had the boys for two sessions with a group of a couple young guys with me. Somebody else had the girls and so we were talking about how a young man would treat a girl if he really loved her what does that look like? And then we brought them in the small group, you know, and so we were getting there I mean, we man, we had so much fun with those young guys right. And then at lunchtime we're gonna have two more sessions in the afternoon, co-ed sessions and and and the counselor comes up to me, she says, jack, we got to change the afternoon sessions. And I I go, what are you talking about? We got this all set and they said, well, the boys told the girls what you told the boys about how a young man should treat them if you really love them. And the girls want you to tell them what you told the boys. And so I said okay, and I did, and so we went in with the girls now just the girls, but our team, a couple guys with me, a couple young guys with me, and we just boom, told them.
Speaker 1:And about 10 minutes in, Greg, maybe 10, 12 minutes in a young girl started to cry like cry, cry, and I almost stopped and she gave me that look like, just keep going and don't pick on me. But she was sobbing and then a couple other girls started to tear up a little bit. So I asked the counselor afterwards. I thought I was going to get some nasty email for something, I said right from some parent or something. So I said go ask that young girl why she started to cry. She said I don't have a father in my home. That's the first man that ever stood up and told me what love was and how a young man should treat me if he really loved me. And it was so beautiful I started to cry. It was so beautiful, Greg, that I started to cry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, it's, there's no question about it. I, my my wife and I have done some speaking to young people as well, and you know about relationships and authentic relationships and you know even just mentioning such basic things about courtship, you know, and the way the man, the boy, should treat the girl, you know, and you know even just simple things like call her and ask her out. Don't text her and say do you want to hang out. You know. I mean just things that you and I probably grew up with or were much more commonly understood. You know, when we were dating and relationships. It's just not these, these sort of basic things that that come naturally I agree.
Speaker 2:They just don't know how to do it. They don't know. And now, in our virtual world, you know where it's phone-based childhood instead of play-based childhood. They have no idea how to interact with a real person. It's getting worse and worse. I'm reading a book called the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.
Speaker 1:Very good yeah it's a very good book.
Speaker 2:The Social Dilemma and all these kinds of things where it shows you how the social media has just absolutely changed the you know the way young people interact, and to great detriment. That I think we just have to get back to some very basic things and helping them to understand how to interact with another person, let alone the person of the opposite sex that you would like to court. We've got to provide those basics.
Speaker 1:You know a book like the Anxious Generation. You know which is really a secular approach. You know very pragmatic though right, Be careful with the phones, Don't give it to them too early. All these different things, right, and more, much more. Theology of the body is what bridges that then here's the problem. Here's some practical ways to do this, but the theology of the body and what you and I are talking about, actually reaches them now and gives them a model.
Speaker 1:What you are seeing today and what you described so well, Greg, is they don't see a model. They don't see the model. The model of the beauty of marriage, and the family say is they don't see a model. They don't see the model. The model of the beauty of marriage, and the family say has been distorted. Marriage is meaningless to these young people. Now. It could be two guys, two girls, it could be whatever. The beauty of a child. Now we buy children, right, we buy them, and two guys can chest feed them. Now it's a very confusing time when you show them a model. You got to see the model. If I don't see the model, Greg, I don't know what I'm aspiring to.
Speaker 1:St Lucia, Fatima, right, the last great battle between our Lord and Satan is going to be over marriage and the family and, of course, the children that come out of that, and that's what we're really seeing today. So the work that you're describing, Greg, is you can't do without it, it has to be done. And so how are you going to grow? How do we get more teams on? Because, at the end of the day, we need teams like this in every diocese. I don't know how we're getting along without it and, believe me, I know it's a battle because we're in diocese all the time too Just to present a parish mission now you got to get an okay from the diocese now. But here's what I was going to say they're so busy and doing all kinds of stuff that somebody needs to just shake them and say this is not brain surgery. But we got to go in and meet the young people.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, the good news is, jack, is that there's, there's, there are there's more interest amongst dioceses for our mission than we can currently fulfill.
Speaker 2:Okay, so when I was, in an organization for 10 years. I came on board eight years ago I'm sorry two years ago when we'd been in an organization for eight years, had a great foundation, a great mission, a great vision, a lot of great things in place. But we needed to figure out a way to scale up, because we'd only ever really recruited about at most 25 missionaries, which allows us to be in five dioceses and we could be in two, three, four, eight times that many dioceses. You know if we can start recruiting enough missionaries. So our top priorities over the last couple of years and moving forward is scaling up our recruiting effort. So we need to be able to recruit more young men and women to this mission, and so we're looking at every way in which we can scale that up. And our hope, our plan, our goal for this next year is to go from 25 missionaries to 40 missionaries, which would allow us to go from five dioceses to potentially seven or eight dioceses, and you know so that's a huge thing.
Speaker 2:Obviously, fundraising is another part of that. You know our mission is, you know, to bring us into a diocese cost the diocese, something and some dioceses may not be able to afford. That we want to be able to raise enough money so that if we need to subsidize a diocese to bring us in, then we can do that. So fundraising and recruiting are really the top two things that are priorities right now to be able to scale our organization. Our 10-year vision is to be in 25 to 30 dioceses. So the demand is there, there's no question about it. When I left the USCCB the pro-life office there to go to the culture project and announced that I was leaving to go to the culture project, I got many communications from representatives of dioceses saying you know, we love the culture project, we need the culture project in our diocese. So the need is there, the demand is there and so our goal, our objective priority right now as an organization is to scale up our recruiting and fundraising.
Speaker 1:Okay, so kind of, as we wind down here, greg, an organization like us, and there's other ones around the country let's just say that we wanted to help you get a team in place. What's the best way to go about that? Looking into that and I think we're interested in the John Paul II Renewal Center, and I'll tell you why we had pre-COVID, we had a couple of small teams. After COVID we didn't have anything for them to do for two years in essence, and it took the parishes a while to get things going again, the diocese a while to get. They lost a lot of people too. They're part of what they do.
Speaker 1:So I'm thinking, as I'm talking to you, instead of trying to put another couple of teams together, I think, hey, maybe there's a way to partner, and I wouldn't be the only group like that to say, hey, what would we have to do, greg, what's the blueprint, to say, okay, you're not in Chicagoland area, right, which you aren't, and let's try to get you out into this Rockford diocese or Joliet next door and Chicago, we've got a lot of area to cover here. How would we go about that?
Speaker 2:Well, I kind of go back to our two top priorities. So recruiting missionaries. So we're starting to also with the dioceses who want us to come in. We're asking them to help us recruit. So we got relationships with universities and colleges in the diocese or otherwise. Ways to communicate this mission to mission eligible young people. You know college, recent college grads or you know, you know those who are about to graduate.
Speaker 2:The more organizations dioceses can help us to recruit, the faster we can get into more dioceses. So that's number one. And then the fundraising part of it too, that there's the more funding we have, the more we can put into our recruiting efforts up front. You know, to be able to do more social media. So we get our main areas of recruiting is going to college campuses and recruiting there, referrals from our missionaries, social media and then also a big event we go to is SEEK. Focus is a big event and we get a lot of exposure and a lot of names of young people from that event. But the more we can do, the more funds we have, the more we can send our recruiting team to more college campuses. We can do more work on social media to get this message out there and recruit more. So those are the two ways that anybody interested in spreading the mission can help us.
Speaker 1:And you're training those young people. Do you have a location to train them in, greg? How do you do that? Just briefly, just briefly.
Speaker 2:We do so. Right now the model has been we have two times during the summer that we train, Beginning of June, two weeks where we gather at St Vincent's College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. So the Benedicta Monastery there. The monks there are very close to the mission of the Culture Project. One of their monks was a college campus at Penn State where Christina Whalen, the founder of the organization, went to school and got connected with the Benedictines from St Vincent's and then they also are missionaries. Support raised during the summer so they build a support team, you know, to cover their expenses and then we gather them again at a former seminary on Long Island in Huntington, New York, where they're there for several weeks to do more intensive subject matter training. So those are the two places now that we have been training.
Speaker 1:Ah, beautiful. Now are the missionaries like, I think, focus missionaries have to raise some of their own money.
Speaker 2:Same model yeah.
Speaker 1:Same model? Yep, yeah Well, hey, listen, thank you so much. If people want to reach out to you I know you have a robust website because I was just on it Give us a little info on if people want to reach out. They want to support you, want to donate and also maybe just learn more about what you do, greg. What's the best way for them to do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, certainly the website, which is thecultureprojectorg. That's a great way to connect with us and you can either donate there. You can reach out other ways to schedule a team. We do some one-off kind of presentations when we get those requests, but we primarily are focused on serving the dioceses that pay us to come in and serve them. But we have done things remotely as well as in person in some dioceses where we're not there yet to introduce the mission. But the website's the best place to go. The staff listing is there as well, so you can email me or any other staff members through our website. So thecultureprojectorg.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Thank you so much, greg. It's a joy to be with you. Hey, make sure you reach out, donate to the Culture Project. We've got to help these young people. We're seeing just so much brokenness. People are waking up to that. Maybe now, with a new administration, not trying to cut our heads off at the very top of this thing, maybe we can make some more inroads. So, greg, thank you so much for your work and we'll keep the Culture Project in our prayers. Appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Jack. Thank you for this opportunity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you.