"For the Life of the World: Eucharist and Mission" – Tim Glemkowski | 2025 Discipleship Conference

Keynote presentation from Tim Glemkowski at the 2025 Discipleship Conference for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. 

(A technical issue removed the first few minutes of this presentation)

Tim Glemkowski is a global leader for the Catholic Church in evangelization, leadership, and missionary renewal. He served as the founding CEO of the National Eucharistic Congress, leading the first ever National Eucharistic Pilgrimage and the 10th National Eucharistic Congress, the United States’ first in eighty-three years. He currently serves as the executive director of Amazing Parish, which serves pastors in changing the culture of their parish. Tim has authored two books, the award-winning Made for Mission: Renewing Your Parish Culture and For the Life of the World: An Invitation to Eucharistic Mission, with Bishop Andrew Cozzens.

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Learn more about the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City online at archokc.org, and follow us on social media by searching "Archdiocese of Oklahoma City."

Transcript

A Tough Classroom And A Turning Point

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And they hired me because they needed a sophomore theology teacher to teach a really difficult class of sophomore boys in particular. So, no joke, this group of sophomore boys, we had all these legendary teachers who were, you know, all the all what teachers want to do is they want to teach all the AP classes and all the seniors. And so all of these teachers actually retired the year before this class became seniors uh in order to not have to teach. Like they're like, I can't go out on that. And uh so they wanted a you know, it's sort of a young guy who could who could you know hopefully speak to some of these boys. And my first semester, I had to teach them morality. So that was our my job was to tell a bunch of 15-year-olds what the Pope uh and their parents thought they couldn't do, right? And so um it was a difficult first year, honestly. I had all this energy and this enthusiasm. I'd had such a conviction about the rich intellectual tradition of the church that I just thought for sure, like when they just hear these things, they're gonna totally get it, right? And and a couple months in, I was really struggling. I was really having a lot of difficulty reaching them. And I remember I was actually sitting one day, uh I was getting a haircut uh after school, just just like ready to give up, right? Like starting to look on job at jobs on catholicjobs.com. And I was like, how do we how do we talk to these young men about morality? And it kind of occurred to me. None of them really cared how they were supposed to live because they didn't know why any of it mattered. Does that make sense? Like I was teaching them what the church taught on all these hot button issues of the day, but they couldn't see the integrated whole, the logical consistency of it all. So this was on a Friday afternoon when I got back to school on Monday. All of them had sitting on their desks a copy

Aristotle’s Road To True Happiness

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of a book by Aristotle called The Nicomachean Ethics. This is where you would start too, right? So Aristotle was a student of Plato, not the stuff that my kids play with, but like the philosopher who was a student of Socrates, and Aristotle was very fascinated with how the world worked. And in particular, you know, over his course of study, right? He's this is a pagan philosopher in so many different ways. He was fascinated with the question of like, how are we supposed to live? What should we and should we not do? And so he wrote this book, The Nicomachean Ethics, and in order to unpack that, and he starts in a really interesting place. What he started with is asking, like, why do humans exist? Like, what are we for? What's the thing that we seem to desire in all other things? And he goes through all these possible answers, but but he finally lands at a point. So I I did this exercise with my students actually, my 15-year-old. I asked one of the worst behaved kids in the class, I won't tell you his name, but I'll never name a child that name. Let me just be like I told my wife, that one's off limits. So I asked him, you know, why are you here? Like, what are you, you know? He said, Well, you know, I'm in school. I said, Well, great, well, what are you doing here? What's what why are you well like what's your purpose here? He said, Well, I'm supposed to get good grades. I said, great, it's not working out so far. Um, why do you want to get good grades? And he said, Well, my parents want me to get into a good college. I said, great. Why do you want to get into a good college? And he said, Well, so I can get good grades. I said, great. I'll be praying for you. Um, why do you want good grades in college so I can get a good job? I said, great, why do you want a good job? He said, well, so I can make a lot of money. Like, I love your honesty, right? Why do you want a lot of money? And he stopped. And he kind of thought about it. He said, I don't know. Because I want to be happy. I said, great. Why do you want to be happy? And he said, doesn't everybody? So what Aristotle says in the Nicomachean ethics is when you arrive at the answer, which all other answers stop, you've reached the deepest desire of the human heart. What he identified is that there is a thing called happiness that all humans seek and everything else that they're doing. So they do a lot of different stuff, right? They have jobs and careers and marriages and families and religious beliefs and expressions, but every human heart seems wired for this thing that we call happiness. And so it's important for us as humans, if that's the thing we want, to actually identify the things that are gonna bring happiness. And so he goes through all of these different answers that humans ascribe to the meaning of their life, to the purpose of their life that will seem to bring them happiness, and says, Can this actually do it? So he says, a lot of people seem to want power, political power, right? Does that bring happiness? And he says, it's kind of funny, he's like, Have you seen politicians? You know? It goes through wealth. You know, people seem to want a lot of money because they want freedom or a lot of possessions, right? Could that do it? Or some people he said really want pleasure or fun. Right? If they can just live an exciting and adventurous life and traveling all over the world and seeing different things, maybe that would bring them happiness. Or being well-liked, being famous, being popular. Maybe other people's positive opinion of us, some people seem to think, will bring us happiness. And one by one, he shows all of these different things don't do it. You know what he says brings it? This is pretty good again for a pagan philosopher in the 300s BC. He says, It seems that the only people who have the freedom in their life, who have a happiness that no one can take away from them, are the people who show something that he calls eudaimonia. You means good, like a eulogy to speak well of someone. Daimon is where we get the word demon. It means spirit, right? He says it seems to be the people that have a good spirit. Their circumstances, right? If happiness is bound up ultimately in our circumstances alone, in the things that happen to us, well, there's no guarantee that those circumstances will persist through our entire life. So it must be that the only lasting kind of happiness that we can find is a life of virtue, he says, rooted in contemplation. It's pretty good. It's not bad. Again, for a pagan philosopher. So he says that the purpose of human life is eudaimonia or a good spirit. I want to do a similar exercise for us with the church

Eudaimonia And The Life Of Virtue

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here. What's important for Aristotle to understanding what we're supposed to do is to first get to the question of why we exist, like what's it for?

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Right?

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He says, until we really define that, we're not gonna have any clarity on the activities that are important for us in our life. And in fact, we might run the risk of doing a lot of things that seem to us to bring about the end we're looking for without actually doing it. So, what is it for us as a church? I know that you've had Father John Ricardo speak here at this conference, right? I love Father John. I think there's no better communicator basic gospel message today in our church, to really show the bad news that prompted the good news that Jesus Christ came to rescue, to seek and save the lost all of us. That it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us in order to bring us home. That the Father who had created us out of love wanted us to rest in that love for our entire lives. But because of that love, we also had the freedom to make a choice, to decide whether we wanted to stay in that love forever. And our primordial parents, Adam and Eve, right, chose to step out of that love. And in doing so, found themselves in a set of circumstances far beyond their own power to fix. That they were hopelessly lost, captive to powers, the world, the flesh, and the devil, far beyond their control. And so God set forth, like any father would, a plan to come rushing after his sons and daughters. And that 2,000 years ago, God accomplished the saving work in Jesus Christ that opened up the possibility that every person and every time and in every place can encounter the life and life to the full that we are made for. We are incredibly blessed and lucky people that we were born 2,000 years after the Son of God died and rose from the dead and made possible. Long lay the world in sin and error, pining for circumstances that we were born into, that we were baptized into when we were only months old, many of us. And that this is an incredible gift that's been accomplished. So what I want to focus on is where does the church fit into that picture? Is the church exclusively the place where people who have encountered that mystery come for sort of social activities and us to engage in kind of our own, like the club of the people who know? Or is there something more than that? The apostles had the same question. When they go to Jesus before his ascension, they go on a hill outside of Jerusalem at the beginning of the book of Acts. And they ask him a really important question. They say to him, they recognize like that, something important is about to happen, that

From Happiness To Mission In Christ

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like maybe Jesus is about to, you know, ascend into heaven. And they ask him, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Because remember, this was the whole point of Jesus' public ministry. When he bursts onto the scene in Mark's gospel, he doesn't come proclaiming uh just a new ethics and a new way to live. He comes proclaiming a kingdom that the gates of hell will never prevail against. A kingdom of God and a kingdom of light that will attack all the powers of darkness that hold God, the Father's children, captive in order to bring them home to the life and life to the full that they were made for in the first place. And so they ask him, they kind of say to him, it's almost like funny, right? Like, he's done so much at this point. He rose from the dead, he ate fish with them, he appeared to 500 of his disciples after his resurrection. And so they're kind of saying to him, like, hey, don't get it, don't get us wrong, like that was all great. But you promised a kingdom. And we don't see the kingdom yet. And he answers them very interestingly. When we read this reading at Pentecost, we think that Jesus is just doing his classic cryptic, like, doesn't answer their question type thing, right? Because he says to them, it is not for you to know times and seasons which the Father has appointed in his own authority. We're like, boy, what a non-answer, right? It's like the kind of answer I give to my kids when they're like, you know, where do babies come from? And you're like, it is not for you to know. Like, but he does actually answer their question. This is what we miss. Because they're asking him a when question. Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? And he says, I'm not gonna tell you when. It is not for you to know times and seasons which the Father has appointed in his own authority. But he does answer their question. How does he answer it? He tells them, who? But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit falls on you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Jesus Christ had one mission. On his Father's behalf, he comes to save his younger brothers and sisters and bring them home. And Jesus Christ, at the end of his public ministry, as he's about to ascend into heaven, has every possible option available to him for how he will extend that work to every person, every time, and every place. That's a problem, right? What's Jesus' problem at the end of his public ministry? It's you and I. We're gonna live 2,000 years later in a place that the apostles had never even heard of. I don't know, did any of them come to Oklahoma City specifically? I don't. So how does he extend this saving word to every person, every time, and every place? I'm not gonna tell you when, but I will tell you who. You will

The Kingdom Question And Jesus’ Answer

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receive power. He chose a church, and so the church does much, teaches much, celebrates much, has many institutions around which her life is carried out, but exists fundamentally for one person, for one purpose. Because everybody you've ever met is going to live forever. We didn't always exist. We talk about in philosophy, like your soul had a starting point, but now that it exists, your soul and your body are going to live forever, and there is only one answer to the question and longing of every human heart on this earth and in the next, and it's the life and life to the fold that can only be found in Jesus Christ. So, what's the issue for us today? If this is why we exist as a church, then we have to look, like Aristotle did, at all of our activities, and say, are they properly oriented to that mission? Does that make sense? Like we have to look at the life of each one of our parishes and each one of our schools and each one of our institutions and at our own life personally, and say, is it going to meet that end? If you've been called forth, which you have been because you're here, if in some way the light has been turned on for you, where in your own darkness and desperation you realize that there was only answer to every question and longing of your heart, then that gift is for you because your father loves you desperately. And every hair on your head is counted, and every second of your life is upheld by a creator who needs nothing from you, doesn't need you to achieve anything, but just wants to love you and lavish you with the gift of his grace. Who, when you were lost, did anything and everything he could to rush after you, sending his own son to die on your behalf to rescue you from the powers of darkness that held his daughter captive. But it also means that you were sent. Jesus says to his last apostles at the Last Supper, you didn't choose me. I chose you and appointed you to bear fruit that will last. If the light has been turned on for you, it's for your sake. But it's also because you're God's plan A for some darkness that exists in the world today. Whether that darkness is found in a human heart that does not yet know the light of Christ, or that darkness is a set of social conditions that you have a unique gifting to overcome, there is some mission, some definite mission that God has given to you and to only you. And whatever you are, that mission is irreplaceable

Why The Church Exists: Who, Not When

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in the body of Christ. You cannot be thrown away, it cannot be discarded. If you don't play your note, the orchestra will be missing something critical. Does that make sense? We don't often think that way, right? We think like, well, there are like special Catholics who have a calling. And most of them become priests and nuns, and some of them, you know, die when they're 12 and become saints. And for the rest of us, like we're just holding on for dear life to try to make sure we like scrape into purgatory. You know what I mean? Like, hopefully, our wife is holy enough that she's gonna get there and be like, come on, you know, you're not, you're not. Can he come too? God the Father has supplied all that we need in the church for our own holiness, and so that we might have the power to go on mission in whatever way we're called to. What that requires, though, today is a seriousness about the renewal of the church. There's been challenges to that mission in every age of the church, and the challenges today are unique. The secularizing wave is anomalous in some ways to our time. There's never been a time in the world that so many people are not just like swapping religions, but actually opting out of religion entirely and belief entirely. And that secularizing wave is captivating not just individual people's lives, but is becoming a dominant cultural worldview, right? And we inhale the fumes of this worldview every day, whether we like it or not. If we scratched beneath the surface and actually said, this is how Christians think about the world, and then we looked at so many of our own lives and we said, like, does my thinking comport with that? We would find a gap there in some ways. About how a Christian defines the world and what it's for, defines the ideas of our life and what they're for. Those are not just problems that are out there, those are problems that infect us in some ways. And so the renewal of the church today, the call from the Second Vatican Council through every papacy to today, is about this question of the missionary conversion of the church. How do we, as a church, if our end is the work of mission, so that every person and every time and in every place can encounter the life and life to the full that they're made for? And if in some way I have a definite part to play in that, then how do we take and orient and reform and renew all of the efforts of the church so that it is actually oriented to that end? How do the means of the church become more concretely and effectively and efficiently about that end? That is the question, in some ways, in my opinion. I don't get to tell this conference what it's for, but in some ways, like that's what this conference is for. We're here about the renewal of the bride of Christ and our part to play in it so that it might reach that end. Right? So there are a lot of things we could talk about in that renewal. There are the role, there's the role of pastors, right? You have an incredible archbishop. There's the role of bishops in that work. Uh there's the role of pair staff people, uh, of lay people in the pews, even our book my beloved Pope Leo in Rome. I'm from Chicago, so he's everybody's Pope, but he was ours first, you know. There's part

Measure Everything Against Mission

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Parts we all have to play in that. The Lord is pressing in on our lives in all of these different ways to bring about that work. What I want to give you instead of speaking to all those different parts of it is I want to give you a first step that I believe in some ways is universally applicable to all of us.

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St.

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Peter says in Scripture, do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. The first work in the missionary conversion of the church, in my opinion, is for each of us to adopt a worldview and a mindset that is consistent with the perennial mission of the church, with why we exist, and which fits our time, which is an apostolic time. Like if in our culture, in some ways, has more in common with the missionary work, the explosive evangelistic energy of the early church, then we should go back and in some ways say, well, like, what did they see and how did they think and what did they believe about the world and about their own life in order to operate apostolically in that context? So I want to give you, if you're taking notes today, is everyone taking notes? Take out your notes. I want to give you five aspects of an apostolic mindset. These are pulled from the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John chapter 13 and 17. Before he goes to his death, Jesus gives a very long and extended homily at the dinner about how the the mission he's about to send his apostles on and how he wants them to think in light of that mission that they're called to. I think these are incredibly important and relevant to us today. We have to first see the world the way the Lord wants us to see it in order to even understand what it is we're supposed to do so that the mission of the church can be fulfilled. So, first, characteristic of an apostolic mindset: a sense of a unique calling from the Father. A sense of a unique calling from the Father. Brothers and sisters, do you see, do you see clearly, in a way free from insecurity or anxiety, that you were called to life for a reason? Your life isn't an accidental product of a universe that doesn't care about you. You were chosen by a father when he set off a big bang 13.8 billion years ago. He looked at every conceivable possible multiverse, saw the one with you in it, and was like, let there be light. It's good, it's good, it's very good. And in this world, you were called forth into it not to just subsist and exist, but to thrive, to live. And that calling is for your sake, and it is also for others. John Paul II said, man and woman, right, finds themselves in a sincere gift of self. The happiness we long for, the life to the full that we're called to lead, will only be found when we give ourselves away in the exact way that God is calling us to. That is not the purview of the special Catholics alone. Every person that I'm looking at right now has the exact same unique calling on their life, the anointing on their life, a way in which they are called to give themselves away for the life and life to the full of the world. Second, a costly imitation of Christ. What the apostles knew is that comfortable Christianity was never going to be an option for them. Right? Peter, toward the end of his life, recognizing

Sent On Purpose For Someone’s Darkness

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the persecution that the Christians were undergoing in Rome, is actually convinced by the Christian community as the Pope to flee Rome. Like, hey, we're all gonna die, but like you're the Pope. You have to go and get out of here so that the church can live on. And so he leaves Rome and he walks away, south from Rome, on a street called the Appian Way. And as he's leaving Rome early in the morning, he actually sees a figure walking north on the road back into Rome. And as the figure gets close, he falls to his knees because he recognizes that it's Jesus, who he hasn't seen since he ascended into heaven. And he says to him famously in Latin, quo vadis domine. Where are you going, Lord? And Jesus says to him, I'm going into Rome to be crucified again, because you won't be. Bishop Barron is fond of remembering that today, in the place where Peter was crucified and buried, we elect and introduce to the world to billions of Catholics around the world the successor of Peter. This is the fruit of his suffering. And that all the emperors, Nero and all of his successors who led this persecution, all of their palaces and temples basically lay in ruins. You know the only pagan temples that remain in Rome, why they're still there? Because we turned them into Catholic churches. The only ones that have survived. The Pantheon. This is the fruit of a life given over wholly to Christ, but it's going to cost us something. One of the temptations we still fall into as Catholics is we want Christianity, we want Christ, but we want it to be comfortable. We get bewildered when the cross comes. We think this can't be God's plan. We follow a Lord whose apparent defeat turned into the victory that accomplished the life and life to the full for billions throughout the centuries. Why would it be any different for us? Third aspect of an apostolic mindset in utter reliance on the Holy Spirit. We are used in some ways, this is one of the beliefs that's infected us from the world, right? We are used to this idea that we are the directors of our life. That we can, through our own efforts, piece our life together in the way that we want it to end up. And if we work hard enough and we try hard enough, it'll turn out in the right way. This is sort of in some ways written into the American ideal. That through hard work and effort we can create the life that we want. We can in this amazing country, but not necessarily the life of grace that we're called to. An utter reliance on the Holy Spirit means that our life is no longer our own. It's hidden in Christ. And that we can do good in this world, but we can't become a saint without handing over and surrendering our life to Christ completely. What I think this requires is risk. I think the margin between what God wants to do in our lives and where we're at today is a leap of risk in some ways. Because when we risk on Christ, we show that we trust in Him. And so many of us say, well, I can't do that. I can't go there. I can't take that leap because, like, what if it doesn't work out? Or what if I fail? Or what if it hurts? So what? An utter reliance on the Holy Spirit,

Facing Secularism And Cultural Drift

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on being willing to listen to what God is telling us to do in our lives and then follow that radically is a key aspect of an apostolic mindset forth. A conviction of the power of the gospel. One of the reasons I believe that we as Catholics don't go on mission as a church, right, in our parishes or in our schools or in our own individual lives and in our neighborhoods is because we've forgotten that the gospel is what every human heart is wired for. When we're telling people about Jesus Christ, we're not just putting our sort of esoteric religious theology in front of somebody that like they're not gonna get. We are beggars telling another beggar where they can find bread. You know? Like, no, I like this can help. And so we can invite people's freedom. People are free to reject or to accept the gospel. But if we withhold that opportunity from them, how much would we have to hate them to do that? I've learned that in years in ministry. I used to get anxious, right? Like with even with my students, the story I tell or when I was in parishes, it was like, oh man, like why aren't people getting it and I'm frustrated, right? John Paul II was the master at this. He submitted perennial truths and goods and beautifuls to people's will and to their intellect and invited them, invited them further up and further in to the life and life to the full that they were actually made for. We have to have a conviction as a church about the power of the gospel. Our job is to preach it, and then the Lord will use it from there. Last, fifth aspect of an apostolic mindset, if we are going to be an apostolic missionary church again, every baptized Catholic in some ways has to think this way, right? We need to be willing and capable of a joyfully counter-cultural witness. And this countercultural witness, to be clear, can be in the world, certainly, in our workplaces and in our you know, the public domain. Also in the church. If the church is undergoing the choppy waters of a transition from a Christendom culture to an apostolic culture, then at least for a continued period of time, it's going to be uncomfortable for the church to operate apostolically, and we might feel out of step or out of touch with some of the ways other people see things. We have to be careful capable of and confident in providing a countercultural witness while avoiding becoming shrill. We all know those people, right? I love the quote: it's it's better to shine a light than curse the darkness. We typically, as people, to some degree, don't like making people unhappy or uncomfortable. We like being liked. All of us, in some place in our heart, are people pleasers. This is one of the ways we've learned to manage with and cope being social beings. Right? Is as much as possible, we want other people to be good with us. These are this is one of the things, one of the places in our own hearts, that we should have the courage to surrender to God. I don't need anything other than you, Jesus, include including that. Including

The Call To Missionary Conversion

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that. A sense of a unique calling from the Father, a costly imitation of Christ, an utter reliance on the Holy Spirit, a conviction of the power of the gospel, and a joyfully counter-cultural witness. Brothers and sisters, God is bringing about a revival in our church in our time. They're calling it the silent revival because it's almost like we don't know why, but in England and in France and in the United States of America and in all these different places, thousands and thousands of people, younger than you would expect, are coming back to the faith. John Paul II prophetically called for this. I sense the dawning of a new missionary era, right? A new springtime of evangelization. But here's what he ended on. That's what I'll end with you on. He said that this new springtime would come if we as Christians and we as Catholics respond with generosity to the challenges and opportunities of our time. I believe that the things we're seeing in our culture, the vibe shift, right? These are deposits on a work that the Lord wants to bring about in an even greater way over the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Here's the question. Are we going to respond as a church with generosity? I would hate to see up there someday what it could have been. If we had stepped out of the boat in faith, with courage and boldness, and a church were willing to go to places that are uncomfortable and difficult. So that every person and every time and in every place might encounter the life to life to the full that they're made for. So good to be with you. Thank you so much. God bless.