At the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) Leadership Summit from Jan 1-5, I met and talked with FOCUS founder and CEO Curtis Martin. If you’re not familiar with FOCUS, the organization’s missionaries “meet college students where they are and invite them into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ and the Catholic faith.” This bi-annual leadership conference equips college students in leadership, evangelization, prayer, and discipleship techniques.

As campus minister for Texas Woman’s University in Denton, I’m able to see the fruits FOCUS brings to our campus and to our ministry, so it was a great opportunity to meet the man behind the mission.  Below is my interview with Martin. He explained what the bi-annual summit does for FOCUS’ student leaders and gave an overview of his keynote at the summit.  He also explained that the Leadership Summit is meant to equip students for the rest of their lives as Christ’s disciples.

As the founder of FOCUS, how would you describe the Leadership Summit’s mission?

Curtis Martin: There are two basic parts as you raise up young leaders: You share a vision with them that invites them to change the way they live. This summit is designed to answer this question: “How do I begin to live as a leader?”  It addresses the skill sets and the habits they will need in order to be effective in leadership. I hope that it won’t just change the way they serve on college campuses, but that these same habits…will allow them to be business men and women, lawyers, doctors or politicians, moms and dads, priests and religious, sisters, or whatever they want in order to be effective, because we believe that Jesus wants us to be faithful more than anything. If we can be faithful, he also calls us to be effective and fruitful.

Did you design the format of this summit?

Curtis Martin: Many people did it…We’ve tried to mine the truths of Christianity and looked at Biblical and proven principles throughout Christian history, and tried to gather those together.

What do you hope the students and missionaries take from this?

Curtis Martin: I them want to take away two things: that their role in the Church and their role in the New Evangelization is irreplaceable. If they don’t do what God invites them to do, there’s no back-up plan. We live in a world that is dark and cold, because too many people are not hearing the call of God and are not allowing themselves to be transformed by Christ. We really want them to have that sense of a deep calling.

What fruits have you seen come out of the Student Leadership Summit? 

Curtis Martin: First of all, we ask and invite young people to commit their lives to Christ and allow themselves to live as Christ-like leaders. As we look back on the past Leadership Summits, the number of the students leading Bible studies will peak in the next month because of their experience this month. This has been true every time we’ve done this event. More students will say, “Now I know why I ought to do it. It’s not somebody else’s job, it’s my job. Even though I feel that I won’t be great at it right away, I feel as though I am competent enough to be an expert someday, but I can at least do an adequate job.”

One of the powers of our program is that we’re not asking people to just go and lead. As they lead, we mentor them through that process. Some people say, “Well that’s nice that it’s a weekly Bible study that’s an hour of religious education.” That’s not what’s going on here. What we try to do is invite people to engage the word of God with their very lives. As they do that in a small group of trusted friends, they start to really wrestle with the opportunities in their lives, but also the boulders that sometimes impede them from following Christ. In our culture…there are giant boulders…that don’t allow people to live as they ought to. By submitting themselves to the love and mercy of Christ that comes to us through the sacraments, and through a good Christian friendship, those boulders are moved to the side. Then they are able to lead. We’re trying to remove the obstacles and clarify the vision so they can run.

Can you give me a brief overview of what you talked about in your presentation? 

Curtis Martin: I spoke on the issue of discipleship. We’re grateful for super-teachers who can teach thousands, but not everyone can be a super-teacher.  Everyone can be a super friend. A disciple is a relationship between a friend and a friend who is a few steps further behind. They walk together on the Christian path. I tried to encourage people that the first step is to try to encounter Christ. A lot of times Catholics know about Christ but they don’t know Him personally—to really have an encounter like St. Paul did on the road to Damascus. That’s the foundation to our Christian faith. Then, to recognize and rejoice in God’s Mercy.

[I also explained that] Pope Francis stresses accompaniment. It’s great that we’ve encountered Christ, but we actually need to gather in clusters of friends and walk together. It’s hard to be a Christian on your own, and discipleship lives that out. One person invests in three, four or five, and equips, empowers and mentors them. Then those three, four or five invest into two, three, four or five, and all of a sudden you set up a geometric growth model, which allows us to reach the world for Christ, which is the great commission. And because of discipleship, everyone is known, loved and cared for. The super-teacher can teach a million people, but they can’t love a million people. Through Christ’s blueprint, we want to be able to set off an evangelization model in which everyone can be reached. Once they’ve been reached, they can be known, loved and cared for.