Peter Andrastek Interview | Red Dirt Catholics LIVE — 2025 Discipleship Conference

Jayce and James sat down with Peter Andrastek from Evangelical Catholic at the 2025 Discipleship Conference for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City to draw a bright line between ministry and apostolate and then show how to form the laity to live mission where life actually happens. Peter from Evangelical Catholic helps us imagine parishes as workshops for friendship, holiness, and real-world witness.

Learn more about Peter and Evangelical Catholic here: https://evangelicalcatholic.org/ 

• ministry as public, structured service tied to holy orders
• apostolate as outward mission flowing from baptism and confirmation
• reducing mission to volunteering as a common trap
• mission ready friendship as a practical path for evangelization
• training versus lifelong formation and conversion
• lay co responsibility and the laity’s office in the world
• building parish imagination beyond programs
• start with faithful, available, teachable, normal people
• resources for forming laity in everyday mission

************

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

Welcome And Conference Vibes

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hey, thanks for listening with your conflict. If you were not at the 2025 Assembly Conference, we're going for another retreat, and then we've got another one of our guests and attendees on the lineup here. Hope you enjoyed the listen, and it's as fruitful for you as it was for us.

Meet Peter And Evangelical Catholic

SPEAKER_00 0:27

And we're back with another episode of Red Dirt Catholics Live here at the Discipleship Conference. The energy is buzzing, and we've got Peter here from Evangelical Catholic. Peter, tell us a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_03 0:42

So myself, I'm married, got eight kids. Whoa. Yeah. Live in the Milwaukee area. And I'm senior consultant with Evangelical Catholic. We're an apostolate that partners primarily with parishes, but we're also doing seminary and formation, and we do some campus ministry stuff, and um we basically work with ministry leaders to help them form the laity for apostolate.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

What's it like living in the Catholic bastion that's Milwaukee? Like every single thing every single person that I've met in like doing national stuff with Catholicism, like Milwaukee is just is kind of cooking with some stuff. You guys got you got Bruce City Catholic, which is a nationally recognized young adult ministry in the the diocese is is doing really great things as well. Like was that where you're originally from? Did you grow up there?

SPEAKER_03 1:30

No, I grew up in Manitowak, which is about an hour and 15, hour and 20 minutes north of Milwaukee.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

I can hear it, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

You hear the Manitouak? Yeah, I can hear it. I spent I spent the summer in North Dakota, so I just started hearing the northern area.

SPEAKER_03 1:42

Yeah, yeah. That that northeast Wisconsin thing, uh upper Midwest. But yeah, I I've been in the Milwaukee area since hmm 2008. Yeah. And um it's it's great. It it it's uh in the time that I've been there, I've been able to watch a lot of the transformation. When I was when I first moved there, when Chrissy and I first moved there, um Cardinal Dolan was the archbishop at the time. And um it's it's been interesting watching the seminary turnaround um and and and everything. It's it's been it's wonderful. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Wow. That's that's an amazing thing. And so with an evangelical Catholic, you're working in all of these different areas, and we know that you are um deep as a consultant in helping with understand the difference between apostolate and ministry, which some of us I'm super guilty of using them as synonyms, you know, of like, oh, what's your ministry, or what's your apostolate? Oh, it's all it's all.

Milwaukee’s Catholic Renewal

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Peter, can you can you share the distinction for our listeners?

Ministry Versus Apostolate Defined

SPEAKER_03 2:43

Sure, sure. So when the church uses those words, okay, ministry is typically connected to holy orders, so it flows from holy orders. Uh it it's ordered to um it um forming the the laity for apostolate, okay? Um ministry is typically not always, so these are not like airtight chambers or anything, but ministry is typically a little ad-intra. There's there's parameters to it. Apostolate flows from uh baptism and confirmation. Um and we're we're consigned to the apostolate by Christ Himself. Um ministry is typically you know given through orders, right? So there's it comes from Christ, but there's also a uh there's also an empowerment or delegation by those in authority. Um apostolate is ad extra. Uh apostolate is you know, there are fewer, if any, parameters. It's a little bit more messy. It is, you could say, um the final cause of ministry, as I indicated before. So ministry is like the efficient cause of apostolate. Now we're getting into like Aristotelian causality, but I like this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

I love that as a backdrop, and then I would ask like to ask a messier question. So sometimes we use the word ministry to describe something happening at the parish.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

And we have like we might say we have a hundred ministries here or something. Um so in this maybe less defined thing where I'm seeing that we've got these different ministries I could be a part of, uh using just lay persons' terms. Could my paradigm change if I'm realizing I'm living out the apostolate versus I'm active in a ministry?

SPEAKER_03 4:28

Yeah. Well I think so. Um paradigm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

We're using some really big words.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

Uh I I think so. I hope so. Um, you know, there's a lot of ministries and parishes that are, you could say like legit ministries. So how do you know if something's a ministry in a parish? Well, typically there's a public dimension to it. It's been um, I don't know, uh authorized or allowed by the pastor. It's somehow connected to a structure, there's rules to it, there's a room, there might be a budget, there's some kind of official leadership to it. And that's that's fine. That's that's that's great. But not everything has to be a ministry. And sometimes, sometimes Catholics, actually oftentimes Catholics, um, will reduce their mission in Christ to a ministry so that if they're feeling called to deeper intimacy with our Lord or a deeper sense of mission, they start looking for these like official quasi-professional ways to do that. When in actuality, your apostolate um is on the one hand, it's everything. So your apostolate is you could say just the outward radiation of personal holiness. It's people living off of your interior life. Um and but at the same time, you know, like anything that you take seriously, you should also be intentional about it. So our apostolate is everything, but if we want to be serious about it, it should also be specific things. So like pray at all times, right? But you can't pray at all times if you don't pray at specific times consciously willing it. That's in the catechism. Well, same thing with apostolate. Uh live apostolate at all times. But you can't live apostolate at all times unless you do apostolate at specific times, consciously willing it. So um that could be accompanying a few in a small group. That could be a one-on-one thing. That could be just eat, drink, and hang with some friends who aren't ready to talk about Jesus explicitly.

SPEAKER_02 6:27

That's my favorite one.

SPEAKER_03 6:30

Yeah. And so really, I mean, what when we partner with parishes, what we want to help parishes do is understand that dimension of the apostolate. And ministry leaders should be laser focused on equipping people and accompanying people to do just that. So that they're not multiplying ministries, multiplying volunteers, but they're equipping you and me and and everyone else to eat, drink, and hang and to be mission-ready friends.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Mission ready friends. I love that.

Parish Ministries And Public Structure

SPEAKER_00 7:02

I love that too, and everything that he's saying is really driving with what I'm doing right now. So like I just came to the became the director of evangelization at the cathedral here in Oklahoma City, right? Congratulations. Thank you. And and loving it. And there's and my background coming uh as a focused missionary before I worked for the diocese for six years and then wanted to be more closely with the people and eat, drink, and hang a lot more and whatnot. And it's been it's a fascinating ordeal. I will have these great moments with people in ministry, something that's something that's funded by the cathedral and flows through me, which flows from Father Rick, all of that. But at the same time, I I want it to get to apostolate as well. And so I'll invite, I'll invite all volunteers. I've I've gotten through almost all of them now after three months of just like going out to eat and doing something. But there's the thing that I am still wrapping my mind around, I'd love for you to speak into, is like when I'm making an invitation uh to somebody into ministry.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Into ministry or into relationship?

SPEAKER_00 8:08

I mean, both. Okay. But but if I mean if they're working, like it it it gets a little murky here because you're from I just wanted to clarify your question.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

So you're at the cathedral, you're inviting someone to kind of come come on the team of whatever part of the ministry.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

They could be coming on the Mirage in his image team, or they could be coming on, you know, the big old evangelization team, or something like that, and I'm inviting them on, and I see their apostolate, I see them, I see them in their talent meeting and greeting people before and after mass in a way that you don't typically see in the Catholic Church. Or I see them, I see them inviting someone else that just came to the OCIA room uh out to dinner or going out to drinks with them after OCIA. The things that I'm noticing are picking up on, they're like, all right, they they get apostolate. And so I want to take like where does apostolate and ministry meet? I guess is where I'm at, is where I'm like driving towards. And is there is there a responsibility, and you mentioned this just a second, is there a responsibility a responsibility responsibility as a ministry leader to see that apostolate and when you make the invitation to ministry, delineating the difference and letting them know that we're asking for both and really of all of the person, you know, in a way. And I haven't I haven't wrapped around my head, I'm still like kind of in the in the midst of all of that. Yeah am I making sense?

SPEAKER_03 9:32

You are and and there there's probably a dozen questions in that question or a a dozen distinctions that we could that we could go into.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

So is there the Can we have a follow-up podcast later and do that too?

SPEAKER_03 9:41

I'd love to. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

All right, keep going.

SPEAKER_03 9:43

So okay, one of the questions you asked was is do I have an obligation as a ministry leader to do what?

SPEAKER_00 9:49

To d to to share that I'm inviting them into ministry, but I want their apostolate to like be a part of that ministry and to like to like use those terms for them. Yes. Yes, because we haven't done that.

Apostolate As Radiating Holiness

SPEAKER_03 10:00

Right. So so as a ministry leader, um, one of one of your roles, one of your jobs, one of your responsibilities is to help people discern their charisms and to help and and there's there's all sorts of stuff in there, okay? And people really shouldn't be engaging in in ministries for which they don't have the proper formation, charism, time, etc. Right. Okay. So so you're on the you're on the official end of things, helping so you see what the needs of the community in a way that they don't, because you have a certain grace of state, because you've been delegated a ministry. Okay. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Yeah, and we've been there and been in the middle of it all.

SPEAKER_03 10:37

Yep. And and they have they have charisms, they have their own desires, they have their own gifts and talents, and and you're trying to, you're trying to you are trying to to hit that meeting point of ministry and apostolate. When you see someone who has certain skills and gifts, a certain vision and outlook, you know, to to to approach them and invite them to use that uh in a more official capacity, right? That's a that's a ministry. They should be engaging those charisms, you could say unofficially in their apostolate as well. And I st I no one can see this, but I'm I'm I'm doing the air quotes with unofficially because Pope Benedict the 16th talked about um the the lay faithful um are co-responsible for the life and mission of the church, which means that okay, now we're gonna extrapolate a little bit a little bit here and borrow from canon law and and do some theology, the lay faithful, you could say that our ecclesial office uh is in the world. Okay, so like you've been delegated an office to work in a parish, there's an official ministry thing here, but to to office official, my official, um and and every lay person's official, I don't know, office in the church, their jurisdiction is in the middle of the world. Interesting. And that's been given to them by Christ Himself. So they so we have to act in the world, in the apostate of the church, um, in our own manner, and there's a specific uh the catechism says there's a peculiar efficacy to that. Oh yeah. Because it's because it's our office, we have the grace for that. Okay. So I would say even primarily, even prior to asking people into ministries, the role of uh pastoral workers is is to equip and accompany the laity in their in their apostolate in the world. In the world, and that's what's primary.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

By analogy, in my own mind primary my state and season has me coaching a lot of youth sports, yep, and my avocational reality is business owner, real estate developer. I've said to other friends, like, hey, the corner of the world I'm sent to by the Great Commission, like those are a couple of the corners. Yep. You know, like youth sports, the dads, the moms there, the kids, the young minds, and these contractors and attorneys and bankers that I deal with. 100%. Like that's my office. That's your office.

Equipping Mission‑Ready Friends

SPEAKER_03 13:14

That's your ecclesial office. Absolutely. Wow. And such that, okay, now I'm gonna borrow from Saint St. Jose Maria, uh, I'm probably gonna paraphrase this that your post in the world is your post in the church, such that ordinarily, if you were to leave your post in the world to get more engaged in parish ministries and activities, it would be equivalent to leaving your post in the church.

unknown 13:45

Dang.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

Okay. So it it's contrary to it. We don't it the the Catholic Church, popularly speaking, lacks an imagination for this. Our imagination, shaped by our experience, is that you know, we um get involved. Get involved.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Be a volunteer at this ministry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:01

But what's what's difficult about this is that the as the lay faithful, our vocation is to pass unnoticed. We are the soul of the world. And how how do you give formation if if you don't have an imagination for what that's supposed to look like? And that that's the tricky piece of this.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Okay. I feel like we need to continue to have the imagination of the parishes. I'm gonna use totally untrained words, but I feel like a parish should be like a little missionary factory, no? Or a little missionary apprentice shop. Absolutely. Um, so like Jace's ministries that he's doing in some sense. I'm just kind of being creative and imagining with you, okay, there's a target-rich environment in marriage in his image. We've got people, couples who want to come be formed in their marriage, right? And then some couples who are like ready and equipped to talk about their faith or whatever, well, we can practice it here. And they can be formally invited to it. But in reality, it's not actually so that they can do a postulate better here, so that they're trained in the apostolate in a safe environment where they can fail and learn with another person so they can go apply it in their post.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

100%. Absolutely. Yep, yep. And here's another thing. So you used a word that that triggered something, right? Train, right? Okay, so training is really important. But oftentimes we tend to reduce evangelization apostolate to kind of like the accumulation of skills, and we think that like a weekend training or even like you know a multi-weekend workshop is gonna like train them up to do it, right? And I I don't want to discredit the importance of skills and training and things like that, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Yeah, have to do it.

SPEAKER_03 15:36

You have to do it, but we do that to the neglect that of formation being a lifelong thing. Apostolate is the radiation of personal holiness, it's a fruit of conversion. And so this this requires ongoing lifelong formation. We think that just giving someone a charygma training is gonna do it. It's not gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

By analogy, if you were a part of a artisan guild in the medieval times, you would be returning back to the guild frequently being refined by others in the guild.

SPEAKER_03 16:05

Or it would be like a few young men want to be a priest, let's put them through free weekend workshops and give them a Roman missile.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

That's so good. So it's all it's like living in the community. In it in a sense, is like what we're what we're referring to here is like it just takes it takes longer in being involved uh in that and it's not just a it's not just something like that.

Where Ministry And Apostolate Meet

SPEAKER_03 16:28

And many many pastoral workers, many parish workers were so immersed in church world that we lose that imagination, that vision for what it means to live in the world. And there's all we could talk forever about that. Um but then if if you yourself aren't living it, if if all of your friends are church workers and all of your all of your interests are like churchy, and and all of your training is theological, and all like you actually begin to develop a little bit of an inferiority complex, you can't relate to these things. Um your only imagination for what a vibrant parish looks like is is many programs, and you get a chip on your shoulder for people who aren't there, and you're trying to compete with the secular world, and and and and rather than trying to equip people for the secular world and feel attacked.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

And that is pretty good.

SPEAKER_03 17:20

But it but it it's it's true, and and and then it it it it's frustrating, it's hard because then the how where do you begin then as a pastoral worker?

SPEAKER_01 17:26

That was my exact question. So let's say I'm a church lady or a church worker, and I'm compelled by this conversation. Like, where do I where do I begin?

SPEAKER_03 17:36

Yeah, yeah, that's a really good question.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Well, I would say where do you build that imagination?

SPEAKER_03 17:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Easiest way to You just go touch grass, you go do you go get an interest outside of the church and and do something else?

SPEAKER_03 17:48

Actually, um that's not a bad idea, not to leave your job, but like develop some secular interests, you know what I mean? Like uh do that, stop being weird, you know. Like a lot of you know, like that's one of the things I work with seminarians. It's like, guys, don't be weird, and they all laugh at that and they're like, Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Yeah, but for real. Yeah, I was in a group chat with a seminarian this summer, and some of the memes that he would send me are like such deep cuts from like a random council, and I'm like, bro.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

Yeah, yeah. And there's there's there's goodness to that, like this like insider humor, which is beautiful and funny.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

And um But you need to be able to like with discretion turn that off and just be a normal person in the setting of this world we were.

SPEAKER_03 18:25

Totally. You need to be able to talk about music, you need to be able to talk about secular art and things like that, whatever the interests of your people are. But to answer your question, um best place to start really, in addition to that, you could say in a in a professional way, is you know who are your most faithful, available, and teachable parishioners?

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Okay, what about contagious too, no?

SPEAKER_03 18:46

Contagious, that too. Well, I like to use the word normal. Okay. Faithful, available, teachable, and normal, right? Uh and and start start getting together with them and and and just I don't know, read a book together, do some formation together, um, partner with the evangelical Catholic. We'll give you a curriculum. I was waiting for that.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

We're trying to give it a little bit of a play.

SPEAKER_03 19:08

We'll we'll we'll help you with that. But I mean, even apart from that, just start hanging with them. And um, you provide formation to them that they're probably really hungry for, but you have to be open to the formation that you're gonna receive simply by rubbing shoulders with them. You're gonna learn what how they have to sacrifice. As church workers, we oftentimes have like very kind of a cushy existence, right? Like if you want to get to daily mass, you just like walk down.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Waddle on over. What do you mean? Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

But if you need some extra time in prayer, like they're probably not gonna get too angry that you're in the chapel.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

But like if if you're a if if you're a doctor, you're an engineer, you're a teacher, and you want to get to daily mass, for example, you gotta wake up at like five, five thirty to get to a six thirty mass.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

There's a lot of you need to get all the six thirty to seven thirty hour stuff done some other time.

SPEAKER_03 19:58

And what it takes, like that forms as pastoral workers, that forms our imagination for holy cow, like what do we do? Yeah, like uh these people need a different kind of formation. I need a different kind of imagination for what their life looks like so that I can form them for that. But we need to get formed first. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Well, we gotta pray first. Yeah, yeah, that yeah, that whole thing. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

I would love a follow-up conversation on this. Oh yeah, he'll be. Yeah, this is I think we'd just scratch the surface. I'm super excited. It'll be fun.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Same. Well, it's been a pleasure having you, Peter. When do you when do you go live? You wanna say you wanna say what you're teaching on today? Yeah. Um, coming through, going live?

SPEAKER_03 20:42

I give two breakouts, one at 1.45, and then the other one at, I don't know, it's at like three o'clock or something like that. The first one is mission ready friendship. What does that look like? And the second one is all about changing the paradigm and how our parishes operate, becoming a becoming a center of formation and community.

Co‑Responsibility And Lay Office

SPEAKER_01 20:58

If I'm the type of person that's hungry, wants to learn more of this, whether, you know, what are some resources? Where can I find it within your organization or some favorite things you've enjoyed reading?

SPEAKER_03 21:09

Sure, sure. So, first place, just check out our website, evangelicalcatholic.org. Just all spelled out, evangelicalcatholic.org. Um, great, there's a great book. Our president Jason Simon wrote a great book called Mission Ready Friendship. It's available on Amazon, it's available on our website. That really helps to give an imagination for what evangelization like looks like in real life. Really, really helpful. Um, you know, if you really want to begin to grasp vision, imagination for lay vocation, lay apostolate, check out anything written by Saint Jose Maria Escriva.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Love it. You know what I appreciate about that is you don't always hear like someone with the charism of evangelization quoting Saint Jose, you know? Like you might have feel someone that has more of a traditional lean and is very much about like Latin mass liturgy more. But to your point, the pragmatism and the imagination of here's where this like they go together so well. There, you know, you can't you can't you need to live in the real in the real and accept the real constraints in the real way in these ways that most people are working out their holiness.

SPEAKER_03 22:24

He has a great homily called Passionately Loving the World.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:28

That's you gotta check everyone who's listening to this should really check out that homily. Read through it slowly. Passionately loving the world. That's really hard.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Passionately loving the world. Yeah, I just realized that I need to put the way in my office and just kind of live in that. Like I really I think my favorite takeaway as like uh the old lady church worker of the group here uh is that like smelling like the sheep is like super important. Like we've talked about that before, but that's a that's a mutually exclusive thing that but even more important thing understanding like ministry versus apostolate. But this idea I love the I love the most is this idea of developing your imagination for ministry by understanding and spending time with the prize, like who we're ministering with, and not and not at the church.

SPEAKER_03 23:21

Yeah, trying to try to contort them to do the things you want to do. It's actually like we have to learn their life so that we can begin to bend to them.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Yeah, that reminds me of a time where, like, this is similar but different, where I was a missionary, and the only way I could hang out with this guy, like the only thing he wanted to do, and I absolutely hated it, all he wanted to do was watch anime, and I was like, I was like, please, please, God, no, yeah, I don't know. I don't want to, but it was the only way, and he was put in my life for a reason. So then I spent an afternoon watching it with him, and like I didn't hate every second, but I hated a lot of seconds of it. But it ended up, you know, but that like kind of opened the floodgates and made things different, but that's amazing. But we are out of time with Peter. We appreciate you being here, and uh, we'll see you next time. We'll bring him back for a for a sequel for a more in-depth conversation for sure. I'd enjoy that. Thanks for sharp. Thank you. Thanks for having me, guys. Thank you.