After years of walking alongside college students, each felt the Lord calling them somewhere new: the parish. There, they saw an opportunity to bring the same model of evangelization and discipleship that they had lived out on campus to every stage of life.
Here’s what led each of them to say yes.
Reaching the Whole Family: Abby
After five years as a campus missionary, including serving as a team director, Abby Hlad began to sense that the Lord might be preparing her for something new.
FOCUS Parish wasn’t initially on her radar. But when Abby attended a discernment weekend, stories of parish missionaries reaching entire families caught her attention. She heard about mothers whose lives had changed through discipleship and the impact their conversions had on their children.
For Abby, those stories became personal.
“I had my conversion in college, and if this had happened to me when I was in high school, if my mom had met a parish missionary, I wonder what my life would have looked like?” she recalled. “I want that so much for my parents.”
The possibility of reaching not only individuals but families and generations began to change the way Abby saw the parish. She described her heart “breaking for this mission field” and wanting to be part of it.
Abby’s parents attended SEEK, where her father saw firsthand the impact FOCUS was having on the students Abby served. When Abby visited home afterward, her dad told her how proud he was of her and how important he believed the work was.
When Abby mentioned that she had an upcoming interview with FOCUS Parish, his response surprised her: “Abby, you have to do this.”
For Abby, it helped confirm what had been growing in her heart.
“The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few,” she said. “I felt very called just to go out and to serve there.”
Now serving in a parish, Abby has been surprised by how much is already happening — and how ready parishioners are to take the next step.
“There are women who really love the Lord and really know how to dive into Scripture,” Abby said. “With just a little shift toward ‘How can we invite people into this?’ there could be so much fruit.”
She has found parishioners eager to learn how to think like evangelists and bring others into the faith they already love.
“It’s just as thrilling and as exciting as being on campus,” she said, “and even more so in different ways.”
Lifelong Mission in the Midst of Everyday Life: Jake
Long before Jake became a FOCUS Parish missionary, he had already seen the need.
After his final season playing football in the CFL, Jake worked in adult ministry at his parish. He loved ministry, but the experience also left him with a conviction: “We need to have missionaries all over the country in parishes.”
Eventually, Jake and his wife, Brenda, became FOCUS missionaries and served on a college campus. They loved campus mission. Even as they continued to recognize the need for missionaries in parishes, their response was essentially: maybe someday.
That began to change at a FOCUS Parish discernment event. As Jake encouraged other missionaries to be open to the possibility of serving in a parish, he realized he wasn’t offering the Lord that same openness himself.
Their prayer changed from Maybe we’ll do this one day to a much more immediate question: “Lord, do you want us to go right now?”
As Jake prayed with the story of the road to Emmaus, where the disciples’ hearts burned within them as Jesus opened the Scriptures, he recognized something similar stirring in his own heart.
“That’s how my heart felt with the idea of doing Parish,” Jake said. “It was kind of scary. I loved my life on campus, our community, our team, the students we’d walked with. But there was something in my heart just burning with the desire, ‘I think this is what God wants us to do.’”
By the time Jake and Brenda left the discernment week, he said, “We just kind of knew: this is what God wants us to do.”
Only weeks into their new assignment, his enthusiasm is clear.
“This is the best job in the world!” Jake said. “I’ve had a lot of different jobs. I’ve played football, taught, worked in ministry at a parish and been a FOCUS campus missionary. And at a lot of different times, I thought it was as good as it could get. But these three weeks in the parish have truly been the best thing in the world.”
What excites Jake is the opportunity to practice what he calls “incarnational evangelization” alongside families and people in different stages of life. And he has found people ready to respond.
“They’re hungry for the Lord — hungry for small groups, hungry for fellowship, hungry to grow in discipleship and learn what that looks like,” Jake said. “They’re just ready to go.”
A Mission Field of 50,000 Souls: Collin
After years in collegiate outreach, Collin Likover wasn’t questioning his call to mission. But he did begin to sense that the Lord might be asking him to live it somewhere new.
“Every time I would pray about it and think of what was next for me, God kept showing me that there’s nothing better I could be doing with my life than fulfilling the Great Commission,” Collin said. “However, I did start to see that my heart was desiring something different and that God was showing me the desire to go beyond collegiate outreach.”
While serving as a campus missionary, Collin began getting involved at his local parish with his family. There, he encountered faithful Catholic leaders — people who prayed, attended Mass, raised their children in the faith and had years of leadership experience. But many would come to Collin with the same question: How could they do what he did as a missionary?
“I saw just all these amazing leaders who need to be equipped with the tools that we have,” Collin said. “What we do isn’t that complicated, but someone does need to teach the art and science of mission.”
Collin began to see how the model of evangelization he had practiced on campus could multiply within a parish, reaching young adults, families, empty nesters, retirees, teachers, parish staff and countless others.
“Every Catholic lives within the bounds of a parish. This is actually an amazing way to reach the whole world for Christ.”
But the scale of that opportunity has also challenged him in a new way.
“This is the first time I’ve been intimidated by the sheer scale of a mission,” Collin said. “There are 15,000 households in this boundary. There are 50,000 souls. But God is showing the way.”
And already, Collin is seeing what can happen when parishioners are equipped and sent.
Just two weeks into formally serving in his parish, 11 people had committed to discipleship and joining him on mission. Among them were fathers raising families, young adults and two men Collin had first encountered years earlier as freshmen while serving at the University of Florida.
Another was a recent college graduate who had spent the previous year searching for a Bible study. Collin challenged him to stop looking for one and start one himself.
“You were the one who led Bible studies at Florida State,” Collin told him. “You’re not going to find one. You need to start it. Are you ready to run on mission again?”
Reaching 50,000 souls challenges Collin to trust in God’s power and the impact of one relationship. He looks to the model Christ gave us: gathering a small group, forming them in His teaching, and sending them out to reach others. As Collin follows that example, he is beginning to see the Great Commission come to life in his own community.
“The number one area I’m realizing that I need to work through is really trusting in a deeper way than ever before that spiritual multiplication really does work,” Collin said. “In a parish, there is nothing but spiritual multiplication. So, lean into spiritual multiplication.”
A New Mission Field, the Same Mission
Abby, Jake, and Collin each arrived at FOCUS Parish differently. But each is discovering the tremendous opportunity within the parish: people in every stage of life who can encounter Christ more deeply, be formed as disciples, and learn to bring the Gospel to others.
The same model that has formed missionary disciples on college campuses is now taking root in parish life, accompanying people through authentic friendship and equipping them to make disciples within their families, communities, and beyond.
And more missionaries are needed to join them.
Could the Lord be calling you to FOCUS Parish?
Learn more about applying to become a FOCUS Parish missionary.
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