Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.79 – Pete Burak On Why Catholic Men Must Lead With Grit & Grace | Catholic Dads | Spiritual Leadership | Courage | Raising Boys
Transcript
- 0:00You could argue the primary leave behind for Jesus.
- 0:02He left behind the sacraments. He left behind His teachings,
- 0:04but he left behind men and women who had been formed into Him who
- 0:08then, through the power of the Holy Spirit, were able to go out
- 0:10and replicate Him and to do what He had done in them in others.
- 0:15This is Virtuous Leaders, the podcast for based Catholics who
- 0:18will speak truth, do good, or die trying.
- 0:21Here's the show. Pete, you're the Vice President
- 0:29of Renewal Ministries and the host of the Spirit Filled
- 0:32Leadership podcast. Thanks for joining today.
- 0:35Thanks. It's good to be with you.
- 0:37Can you fill us in a little bit more about what do you do?
- 0:40Sir Yeah. So within Renewal Ministries,
- 0:42our mission is to help preach the gospel and help people meet
- 0:45Jesus, fall in love with them, begin to share them with others.
- 0:48Our heart is evangelization and renewal within and through the
- 0:51Catholic Church. And so that takes lots of
- 0:53different forms. We have lots of different ways
- 0:55that the Holy Spirit has, I think, LED us, hopefully
- 0:58directed us to have impact in the world and in the church.
- 1:01So media and writing and preaching and teaching and
- 1:04ministry to priests and light people, some youth ministry
- 1:07efforts and camps. So just a lot of a lot of
- 1:10international missions. So just kind of from every
- 1:12conceivable angle, as the Lord opens doors for us, we're just
- 1:15trying to bring the message that we feel like he's put in us,
- 1:18both in our, our lived experience, but then also what
- 1:22we feel anointed to, to proclaim.
- 1:25And so at the, at the very simplest level, we're just
- 1:28trying to follow the Holy Spirit that goes through the doors that
- 1:30he opens and not run into the wall in the process, you know?
- 1:34And what do you do with your Spirit Filled Leadership
- 1:36podcast? Yeah.
- 1:38So this podcast was an effort to just kind of be a compliment
- 1:41really to a whole framework of formation that we've been
- 1:44utilizing within the young adult communities that we work with.
- 1:47Because what we realized was like, especially within the
- 1:50young adult, young adult world, but really in the church at
- 1:53large, that anything fruitful in the church, anything we see that
- 1:56we'd go like, wow, that's fruitful.
- 1:58At the core of it is men and women who are disciples
- 2:02themselves, but who have actually been like stepped into
- 2:05some form of leadership that we would call spiritual leadership.
- 2:08Like you could argue the primary leave behind for Jesus.
- 2:11He left behind the sacraments, He left behind his teachings,
- 2:13but he left behind men and women who had been formed into him,
- 2:18who then through the power of the Holy Spirit were able to go
- 2:19out and replicate him and to do what he had done in them, in
- 2:23others. And so the week, we call that
- 2:25spiritual leaders. And so the podcast is just an
- 2:28effort to kind of bring little tidbits of insight and hopefully
- 2:31inspiration and formation to help people become spiritual
- 2:34leaders. We say like the world needs
- 2:35disciples, but disciples need spiritual leaders.
- 2:38Yeah, the way you just described leadership there is actually
- 2:41exactly how I see it too. Inspiring others, inspiring
- 2:45others to bring out the best, bringing out the best in others.
- 2:48So what? What are some of the gems that
- 2:50you've taken out of your experience talking to these
- 2:52leaders? Yeah, well, there's a there's a
- 2:56lot of different things. I mean, I think the best leaders
- 2:59are also very adept at obeying, which it seems like ironic, but
- 3:05everybody's beholden to somebody and everybody needs to learn.
- 3:09You cannot lead if you haven't learned how to obey first.
- 3:12Because part of what you're inviting others into in your
- 3:15direction in your vision is flows from the, the humility in
- 3:19the, the experience of being submitted to somebody else's for
- 3:22a time. And at some level we're all
- 3:24submitted to the Lord. And every spiritual leader is
- 3:27asking 2 questions constantly and every disciple, but every
- 3:30spiritual leader in a particular way, what's God saying to me?
- 3:34And the spiritual leader would also say, what's God saying to
- 3:36us? And then what am I and what are
- 3:38we doing about it? And so at the core, a spiritual
- 3:42leader is preoccupied with the opinion of God to say like God
- 3:48has an opinion about every aspect of life.
- 3:50And not only does he have an opinion, but he wants to make
- 3:52his opinion known. He, he's given us the ability to
- 3:56hear him, to understand him, and then he actually empowers us to
- 3:59be able to live in accord with what he's inviting us to do.
- 4:03And so you got to be humble, You got to be obedient.
- 4:06You have to be courageous. I mean, like anybody who's ever
- 4:10tried to lead anything or kind of step into the, the breach and
- 4:13say like, OK, it's time to try to do something.
- 4:16Because one of my favorite definitions of, of leadership is
- 4:18helping people get from here to there.
- 4:21Wherever we are, we cannot stay here.
- 4:25It's a part of the role of the leaders to create a certain
- 4:27discontent with where we are, part of the world leaders to
- 4:30cast a vision for where we can go and where, why we should go
- 4:34there, and then to show the path for how we get from here to
- 4:37there. And every step of that process
- 4:39that I described are are, you know, accurately articulating
- 4:43what's going on in the present, in the current moment, receiving
- 4:46the vision and, and articulating why that's compelling.
- 4:49And then the process of actually going from here to there takes
- 4:52courage because it's painful, it's convoluted.
- 4:55There's going to be all sorts of stumbling blocks along the way.
- 4:58And and so a leader absolutely has to be courageous in the
- 5:01midst of that. I'll be curious to hear which of
- 5:04the spirit filled leaders most strikes you most inspires you.
- 5:09In what? In what way?
- 5:10In in you mean like in the lives of the Saints or just in
- 5:13general? I was thinking either
- 5:15specifically people you've interviewed on your podcast or
- 5:18people that you you'd like to interview, who, who do you think
- 5:21has has like the most magnanimous vision?
- 5:24Who, who do you think is someone that like you, you really look
- 5:27up to, you want to imitate? Yeah, it's a great question.
- 5:32I haven't interviewed him for the podcast, but I know him well
- 5:36and I've been observing him for a long time.
- 5:37His father, Dave Pavanca, was the president of Franciscan
- 5:40University in Steubenville, OH. I think he embodies a healthy
- 5:46percentage of everything that I'm describing.
- 5:49I mean, here's a guy who's just radically himself.
- 5:51He's totally kind of aware of how the Lord has made him and
- 5:54the gifts that he has. He's a very much aware of some
- 5:57of his weaknesses. And so he's been able to
- 5:59compliment those weaknesses and fill those and overcome those
- 6:02weaknesses through putting people around him who have those
- 6:06strengths where he is weak. He's casting a compelling vision
- 6:09for the university and he's been courageously going about seeing
- 6:12that vision actualized. And, and he's just, again, he's
- 6:15just very much a kind of himself in the midst of it.
- 6:18He's not trying to play a, a role.
- 6:20He's not trying to be like the university president.
- 6:23He's, you know, he's relaxed, he's with the students, he's on
- 6:27social media and he's he's and he's filled with the spirit.
- 6:29And so when I think about kind of men and women who are
- 6:33actively walking in their gifting and and seeing a
- 6:37tangible impact from that faithfulness, Father Dave would
- 6:41definitely come to mind. I just had him on this show last
- 6:44week, in fact. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 6:47He was gracious enough to accept that.
- 6:49Yeah. One thing that struck me about
- 6:50him was, yeah, how normal he is. And at the same time, he does
- 6:54strike me as being an effective executive, to use the term from
- 6:58Peter Drucker, that he knows how to how to use his time for
- 7:02highest impact and how to use his team so that he can have the
- 7:07highest impact. Definitely no, he's, he's a high
- 7:12capacity, high output guy in a very normal and very relatable
- 7:19and engaging package. You know, he's very disarming in
- 7:22this habit and you know everything about him.
- 7:24He could talk about Notre Dame football and then at the same
- 7:27time he's raising millions of dollars to transform university
- 7:30and help these students grow academically and in their
- 7:33relationship with the Lord. So it's he's an impressive guy.
- 7:36Any other leaders that you met or you hoped to meet that really
- 7:38stand out to you? Oh man, there's a ton.
- 7:43I, I tend to be a bit of a like curator of leadership qualities.
- 7:47So and I, I taking the same approach to my speaking where I
- 7:52just, I tend to watch how people operate and go, Oh, I really
- 7:55like that piece. Or I really think that's
- 7:57something that I could grow in. So for instance, like Curtis
- 8:00Martin, the the founder and, and president of focus, the
- 8:03fellowship of Catholic University students.
- 8:05I like talk about a guy with a huge vision.
- 8:08I mean, just like this guy is it lives in and it's such a
- 8:12beautiful way like the bigness of what God can do.
- 8:15He's got a huge God right or another one is Father Matthias
- 8:18the day on the the Co founder and president of or the chairman
- 8:21of the of encounter ministries. Here's a guy who just either
- 8:24parish priest here at Saint Pat's down the street in
- 8:26Brighton, totally in love with the Lord, totally transformed by
- 8:29the power of the Holy Spirit who just believes in this core that
- 8:33the Holy Spirit is going to confirm God's word when it goes
- 8:36out and encounter the particular way helps remind the Church of
- 8:41the signs and wonders and the kind of the majesty of God and
- 8:43and finally the diocese. It's like yeah, we're we're
- 8:45going for the world. You know we're not we're not
- 8:47playing it safe or a woman. I got the interview one time who
- 8:50I just was so in kind of incredibly captivated by her
- 8:55courage was a woman named Helen Alvare, who's been at the
- 8:58forefront of religious liberty and defending life and just in
- 9:03all these incredible circles at some of the highest levels of
- 9:06government, been able to remain very faithful to the Lord and
- 9:09very true to herself, but unequivocally willing to share
- 9:13the truth. And then I I think some of the
- 9:15best friend for the leaders are the ones I could say all these
- 9:17names and you'd have no idea who they are because they're just
- 9:19going about their life. They're leading their family
- 9:21well, they're leading their communities.
- 9:22Well, they're leading they're, they're, they're great workers
- 9:25or their employers or whatever their job is, is, is part of who
- 9:29they are. Think about a buddy just down
- 9:31the street from us. His name is James Cresta, who's
- 9:34a, he's a lawyer. He and his wife have, I think 8
- 9:36or 9 kids at this point. And like, he's not necessarily
- 9:40like famous in the Catholic world.
- 9:42But I tell you what, his impact on the local church here in Ann
- 9:45Arbor, MI is profound. He's serving on boards, he's
- 9:48leading worship at our parish masses.
- 9:50He's raising his kids to know the Lord.
- 9:52He's donating to different things.
- 9:54I mean, he's absolutely building the Kingdom and his his circle
- 9:58of influence. And to me, that's every bit as
- 10:01important as some of the names that I could say that would be
- 10:03more obvious or known to the listeners.
- 10:07Well, the fact that you find inspiration in these magnanimous
- 10:09leaders tells me that you're probably a magnanimous leader
- 10:14yourself, or at least you're striving to be so.
- 10:16I want to hear. I want to hear.
- 10:17Pete, What? What is your vision, man?
- 10:20I love the way you said it. He has, he has a really big God.
- 10:24He has big God. So what?
- 10:26What is your vision, Pete? Well, I think I think to answer
- 10:31that my parents always used to talk about like a mature man has
- 10:35four legs of a stool that the Lord has an opinion about.
- 10:38And if any one of them, if one is out of balance, the stool can
- 10:42still kind of still speak exist, but is a little wobbly if but if
- 10:452 are out of balance or gone, you're falling over.
- 10:49And so, and that was like personal health, relational
- 10:52health with the people closest to you, relationship with God
- 10:55and then contribution to the world.
- 10:57And so I, I tend to think of it as like, Lord, what is your
- 11:00vision for me and my family and, and workplace and try to try to
- 11:06wrap my hands around arms around all of it, but also be it's like
- 11:09one of those classic Catholic both hands.
- 11:11It's like both very specific to individual aspects of like
- 11:14what's my vision for my personal health right now?
- 11:16It's like play pickleball and do kettlebell workouts, right?
- 11:18And, and lose a few pounds. Like that's, that's the vision
- 11:21for like just my personal health, but that's in context to
- 11:25a bigger vision that I feel like the Lord is calling our family
- 11:28to be radically missionary. Radically missionary in where
- 11:31he's planted the Sierra Ann Arbor.
- 11:32Then also radically missionary in the fact that he's opening
- 11:35doors for me to, to go preach and teach and minister all of
- 11:38the world. You know, whether it's Brazil or
- 11:39Australia or Spain or Canada and the different places that he's
- 11:43been sending me. So to boil it all down though,
- 11:45what has been the driving understanding of my life since I
- 11:49was about 8 years old was it was very simple.
- 11:52It was God is real and he loves me and I, I want to stand up for
- 11:56him and make him known. That became that kind of core
- 12:00element of like, what's the vision of my life is?
- 12:02Like I know that Jesus is real and I'm in the relationship with
- 12:05him. I have faith that everything he
- 12:06has revealed about himself is true.
- 12:08I love him and I want to follow him and I really want other
- 12:11people to know him. I mean, even when I was trying
- 12:14to figure out what to kind of do professionally with my life, the
- 12:16thing that just kept rattling around in my brain is I just
- 12:19want people to meet Jesus. I want people to meet him in the
- 12:22power of the Holy Spirit. And so my like, the biggest
- 12:26possible vision, like most magnanimous vision I can come up
- 12:29with is I just want the whole world to know Jesus.
- 12:33And or maybe a better way to put it is I want the whole world to
- 12:36be to hear the gospel preached with faith such that they are
- 12:40given a chance to respond in faith.
- 12:42Because I can't, I know I can't control whether or not somebody
- 12:45says yes to the Lord, but I can't control as to whether or
- 12:48not I participate in the Lord's plan for everybody to have the
- 12:51opportunity to respond to him. You know, the Scripture tells
- 12:54God desires that all would be saved and come to the knowledge
- 12:56of the truth. And how could people be saved
- 12:58unless they hear? And how can people hear unless
- 13:00those are sent to preach? And so in many ways, like I
- 13:03spend most of my time or good percentage of my time trying to
- 13:07figure out how do we help people hear the gospel and how do we
- 13:10help them hear it preached in such a way that it leads to a
- 13:13decision point for them. What did you come up with?
- 13:19Well, I think we're doing a lot of different things.
- 13:21I think there's some of it is the people right under our nose.
- 13:24Like I'm preparing right now for our boys camp, which is just a
- 13:27week long boys camp. Yeah.
- 13:28You know, how do we help the whole world hear the gospel?
- 13:30Sometimes it starts with the smallest circle of people that
- 13:34you can influence who are going to influence their small circle
- 13:36or going to influence their small circle.
- 13:37So I got 175 seventh, 8th and 9th grade boys about to spend a
- 13:41week with me and my 75 staff. And the whole focus of the week
- 13:45is to help them meet Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit,
- 13:49learn what it means to be a Christian leader and to have a
- 13:52great time. Those are three goals Boys Camp
- 13:54and we've been doing it for since 1980 and that we're going
- 13:58to keep doing it. And so that's like, that's a
- 14:00very tangible expression of, OK, I want to, I want the world to
- 14:03meet Jesus. But I know if I can help these
- 14:05boys meet Jesus, they're going to become future fathers who are
- 14:08going to have children who they can help meet the Lord.
- 14:11They're going to become future priests who are going to lead
- 14:13congregations. And I know that not just in like
- 14:15the hypothetical, I hope I've I've seen it.
- 14:17I've been, I've been, I've been the camp director since 2010,
- 14:20but I've been coming out to camp since 2002.
- 14:23I was a 7th grader in 2002 and I've been every year since.
- 14:27And so I've, I can just see the, the ripple effect of the grace
- 14:30of like when these boys meet the Lord, it does start to transform
- 14:34the world. So it's, it's, that's an
- 14:36example. And then, you know, but in a
- 14:37week, I'm going to be flying to Spain to spend a weekend with
- 14:40about 50 young men in Barcelona to do a retreat weekend with
- 14:45them. How does that help meet the
- 14:46world? Well, that's a whole nother
- 14:48circle of influence, a whole nother circle of a concentric
- 14:50circle of impact. I hope that's the Holy Spirit
- 14:53can utilize to to help people step into the Kingdom.
- 14:57So I heard about you, Chief, through John Bishop, who, who
- 14:59does the Forge resources, really good stuff.
- 15:03I guess you're involved in the leadership there.
- 15:05He spoke really highly of you. What, what, what are some of
- 15:08your leadership skills or strategies?
- 15:11How do you how do you help organizations run better and be
- 15:13more effective? Me personally.
- 15:16Yeah. Well, I, I tend to, it's funny,
- 15:20I don't know if anyone's ever really asked me quite directly.
- 15:22It makes me a little uncomfortable to be like, well,
- 15:24what this is what I'm good at. But as I think about it, I think
- 15:27the impact I've had on organizations that I've either
- 15:30served on boards for or been in leadership of is ideas come very
- 15:34easily to me. They're not always good ideas,
- 15:37but I'm always kind of searching for, you know, the God ideas in
- 15:40the midst of all the good ideas. So it's, it's not hard for me to
- 15:45spend a, a relatively short amount of time with something
- 15:48and immediately come up with different ways to help it grow.
- 15:52I think the Lord has given me a gift to, to help win people to
- 15:55things. So I, if you've ever taken like
- 15:58the Clifton strengths finders assessment, my number one is
- 16:01woo. So I I love helping people get
- 16:05excited about something. And what I've seen over and over
- 16:07again a lot, often what I bring to an organization is an
- 16:10enthusiasm for whatever the idea is.
- 16:12I'm not the one who's probably going to execute on the idea.
- 16:15I'm certainly not the one who's tenacious enough to kind of see
- 16:17it through, but to get people moving.
- 16:22So, for instance, like John had had his first forged Forge
- 16:26conference close to 1000 men in Des Moines and he asked me to be
- 16:30the MC, which was perfect because what's the role of the
- 16:33MC is to get everybody excited to get everyone comfortable to
- 16:36win everybody to what the day is going to be about to kind of
- 16:39draw threads throughout the day of oh, here's what God is doing.
- 16:42Here's what you're hearing in the talk, culminating with that
- 16:44kind of let's go rallying, Let's let's go conquer the world type
- 16:49of thing. And so that's that was the role
- 16:51I played and I loved doing it. And from all accounts it was it
- 16:55was an effective contribution to the day.
- 16:57And then the other thing, I think, at least in the various
- 17:00Catholic or Christian realms that I've been in, as I, I
- 17:03really try to listen to the Lord and sounds so obvious, like of
- 17:07course, every board listens to the Lord, but I really do like
- 17:10believe he's going to speak to us.
- 17:13We, we call it, it's a core value of ours that we call it
- 17:16expectant listening. We don't just kind of like, hey,
- 17:19lip service to listening to God. We really expect him to
- 17:22communicate to us. And we expect that when he does,
- 17:25we'll be able to recognize it as such because he gives us the
- 17:27power to. And then we expect we'll be able
- 17:29to have the courage to act on it because why communicate it to us
- 17:33if he's not going to expect us to do something about it?
- 17:35So I think a lot of times I've been in environments where all
- 17:38sorts of things are flying around and all different ideas
- 17:41and strategies. And sometimes my role has often
- 17:43been like, OK, let's pause for a second.
- 17:45And just like, what does Jesus want us to do here?
- 17:47Like have we actually asked the Lord what his his opinion is?
- 17:51So yeah, those are some things that come to mind is.
- 17:55There anything else you want to share with our audience?
- 18:00Oh, I mean, there's so many things I'd love to share with
- 18:03the audience. That's the core.
- 18:04It's, it's just continue to repent and believe in the
- 18:07gospel. We were just in staff meeting
- 18:10today talking about Chapter 2 and Peter's speech in Acts
- 18:15chapter 2 is it's the rallying cry of the church.
- 18:18It's the first Pope standing with the other apostles
- 18:20proclaiming what this is all about.
- 18:22What does it culminate with? This is let the whole House of
- 18:24his room know assuredly, but the whole listeners of this podcast
- 18:27know assuredly that God has made him both the Lord and Christ,
- 18:31this Jesus whom he crucified. I mean, the core message is
- 18:33Jesus Christ is the Lord, He's the King, he's the all powerful
- 18:36one. And as Christ, he's the
- 18:38anointed, he's the Savior, he's the Messiah, He's the only one
- 18:40the way to the Father. And the response to that reality
- 18:43has to be repentance. The response, the only right and
- 18:47true response to who the fullness of who Jesus is, is out
- 18:50of both love and kind of fear of God, we bend our knees, proclaim
- 18:54who he is, and say, please forgive us so that his life
- 18:58could come into us. And so whether we've heard this
- 19:00before 1000 times or this is the first time hearing it, it's
- 19:02always every day as Catholics, this opportunity to reaffirm,
- 19:06Lord, I believe, help my unbelief, Lord, forgive me for I
- 19:10don't know what I'm doing. And Lord, fill me with your
- 19:12spirit so that I might deal out, go out and be your witness to
- 19:15the world. Well, I wish more Catholics can
- 19:17speak with your conviction. I I think we need more converts
- 19:20from Protestantism. Because they're not.
- 19:23I don't, Yeah. I didn't even convert.
- 19:24I was born and raised Catholic. Can you believe that I'm a, I'm
- 19:27a, I'm a cradle Catholic. Wow.
- 19:28I would never. I would never have guessed that,
- 19:30man. I don't know.
- 19:32I don't know where you got that fire.
- 19:34I do. It's from the community I was
- 19:36raised in. We are a bunch of the bunch of
- 19:40people, the adults my parents surrounded themselves with, with
- 19:43men and women who love Jesus. We're filled with power of the
- 19:45Holy Spirit and we're just radically Catholic in the midst
- 19:49of all that. Because everything I'm saying,
- 19:50this is, this is the heart of the Catholic Church.
- 19:52This is the heart of the Catholic message.
- 19:54This is this is what Scripture reveals to us and what the
- 19:56Magisterium has consistently taught.
- 19:58This is what we see in the last of the Saints.
- 20:00And so, yeah, no, I, I always appreciate a good like
- 20:03evangelical brother and sister coming in with some passion and
- 20:05view and all that. But it's like, that's great.
- 20:07But that's, that's our heritage too.
- 20:09That's that's our DNA just as much as it is theirs.
- 20:12Well, thanks for the preaching, man.
- 20:13Keep it up. Yeah, Yeah.
- 20:14I will, thanks. Thanks for listening.
- 20:17Please like, subscribe and share with your friends.
- 20:19See you next time.