Description God’s Approval, Human Applause, Abundant Affirmation. I’d be lying if I said these three things DIDN’T factor in deeply to my motivation and experience as a Catholic Speaker over the years. You want to do an excellent job, that brings God honor, meets the expectations of your boss or whoever has hired you, and you want it to be received well by everybody listening. But is that approval, applause, affirmation, solid ground to stand as the motivation and criteria for succuss for people...
Oct 30, 2023•45 min•Season 2Ep. 58
Description “Always be ready to give a reason for your hope.” 1 Peter 3:15. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone remind me of this passage, I’d be well really rich, but if I had to pay back every dollar for every time someone explained to me an ‘easy way to always be ready’, well I’d still be rich. :) This is one of those verses that Catholic speakers, priests, Catechists like to throw around WITHOUT also equipping us to make it a reality in our lives. Well today is that day, my f...
Oct 23, 2023•16 min•Season 2Ep. 57
Description If we aren’t teaching and preaching the gospel to change lives then what in the world are we doing? Right? But heres the thing, no one would likely suggest any other goal, but at the same time, also not know how to teach and preach in such a way that actually leads to life change. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not easy, and just saying that’s what you are doing doesn’t make it so, In my conversation today with Michael Gormley, aka Gomer, we set our sights on this very thing - how do we ac...
Oct 16, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 56
Description I love checklists and systems; doing it once, writing it down and then putting the plan on repeat. Why keep reinventing the wheel? When the routine needs tweaking, make the edit, update it, and put it back on repeat. This is especially true for me “Day of” for the talks that I give. I have routines and checklists I follow BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER a talk. Again, this is just my routine. What I hope is that it inspires you to make your own! What do you need “Day of”, at the venue and ...
Oct 09, 2023•28 min•Season 2Ep. 55
Description Giving a great Catholic talk is hard to do. It takes a lot of practice, grace, life experience, confidence, and knowledge to pull it off. Now try ratcheting up the degree of difficulty a few notches by also addressing difficult and thorny topics, especially hot-button issues today around sexuality, gender, and marriage. This is a tall task for anyone. But every once in a while you hear someone speak on difficult topics and they make it look effortless, almost easy, while also packing...
Oct 02, 2023•44 min•Season 2Ep. 54
Description If you’ve been listening to the Better Preach Podcast, even for just a few episodes, you know that one of my favorite questions to ask is: What is your process for preparing a talk? This one question, actually, is what drove me to start the podcast and to keep going. I thought - I’d love to know what different speakers do, behind the scenes, to bring great talks to life. So, I thought, I’d love to share my process too - again with the help of my favorite trusty occasional co-host, Co...
Sep 25, 2023•36 min•Season 2Ep. 53
Description Have you ever wondered what it would be like, as a layperson to go from listening to homilies to giving them? I know I have. What if you as a ministry leader, professor, and conference speaker were also called to be a Deacon in the Catholic Church? You’ve been giving talks, thousands of them, for many years and now you are giving homilies in a local Church on a weekly basis. What would that transition be like? What are the challenges, hiccups, and new lessons to learn? Well, if you’v...
Sep 18, 2023•49 min•Season 2Ep. 52
Description For many of us a big challenge we have in ministry is NOT developing and delivering talks ourselves, it’s being confident that we have an effective plan to help OTHERS develop and deliver talks. For many years I took the easy way out. I’d be in charge of, let’s say, getting others to give talks at a retreat, and I’d wind ‘em up and let em go. Very little engagement, oversight, and almost NEVER any feedback. And you could tell. They could too. No one felt good about it. But about 10 y...
Sep 11, 2023•37 min•Season 2Ep. 51
Description What happens when you really stand back and let Jesus lead the way? Yes, in every aspect of your life - career, vocation, raising kids, etc.. But what if Catholic speakers, with great talent, opportunity and ambition don’t follow this principle. I shudder to think, but then again I just have to look at my own life to see the results. Self-reliance is an idol that needs to be crushed in each our lives as disciples, and certainly foremost for those who come to serve the Lord through sp...
Sep 04, 2023•42 min•Season 2Ep. 50
Description In this podcast we have focused almost all of our attention on helping people get better at giving discrete talks, teachings, or testimonies to Catholic audiences (at retreats, conferences, in homilies, ministry nights, you name it.). But there’s another kind of speaking, in the Catholic world, that is super important and often overlooked and it DOESN’T involve addressing an audience through a keynote talk, teaching, or testimony. And that’s the role of an emcee. Sometimes called a h...
Aug 28, 2023•35 min•Season 2Ep. 49
Description There may have been an era in the history of the Church when Catholic teachers and preachers didn’t need to share anything really at all from their own lives in their talks. This is not that era. With all of the Church’s teachings available free of charge on that smart phone in your pocket, knowledge and information isn’t where we are lacking. But there is one thing that I can’t access on the internet - your story, your experience, and your struggles to live as a disciple of Jesus. I...
Aug 21, 2023•39 min•Season 2Ep. 48
Description it's been well-documented that the Catholic church has, historically, had something of a proclamation problem. The gospel, the good news hasn't been a regular part of our spiritual diet. It's not something we hear week in and week out. And yet I'd say that things have been shifting, things have been changing. And I'd say over the course of the 25 years that I've been in ministry with college students and young adults, the tide has turned and it's really exciting. And yet while we may...
Aug 14, 2023•29 min•Season 2Ep. 47
Description As the three year Eucharistic Revival began in 2022 in the U S. 50 different Catholic priests from around the country. We're commissioned and sent to preach: to announce again to the church that Jesus is Lord and that a perpetual sign of his love and mercy has been given to the church through the gift of his real presence in the Eucharist. When Jesus said just before he ascended into heaven, that he would be with us always. He meant it. Both in his personal ministry as a Bishop and a...
Aug 07, 2023•39 min•Season 2Ep. 46
Description What's so good about the good news? As much as I've shared this and reflected on it, has it taken proper root,, in my life? Have I heard it fully, to the depths of my being? Have I allowed myself to receive it and to be transformed by it? The answer's gotta be sort of, mostly. . So much of it has taken root in my life and transformed my life. I just got off a four day silent retreat and oh my goodness, the gospel being proclaimed for a few days and me just again, receiving it,, and s...
Jul 31, 2023•24 min•Season 2Ep. 45
Description There is a weightiness to preaching that differs from every other kind of speaking. The message isn’t our own. The impact isn’t up to us. It’s power comes from without, by grace lives within, and cannot be tamed, controlled, or cajoled. As the Spirit blows where it wills, the preacher waits on the Lord. This is the burden of preaching. But it’s not a burden that rests heavy, only to crush, but a weight imbued with the Spirit that can (and must) be carried as the Preacher grows in tru...
Jul 24, 2023•38 min•Season 2Ep. 44
Description There are thousands and thousands of people in the Church today, youth ministers, DRE’s, Catechists, Priests, Deacons, Religious, who are teaching the Catholic faith to others. And from me to all of you, first of all ‘Thank You!!” You are sharing the best news on planet earth with a world that desperately needs to hear the truth that will set them free. And if I could be so bold I just want to offer only one small piece of advice - today’s episode sums it up. When you teach, don’t fo...
Jul 17, 2023•24 min•Season 2Ep. 43
Have you ever been asked: “if you could have lunch or dinner with any saint, who would it be?” Well today we are going to have a conversation of sorts with a great saint in our Church’s history, a renowned teacher and preacher. St Augustine. And we are going to interview St. Augustine by way of a conversation with a theologian and Augustine expert, Dr. John Cavadini. His knowledge of St. Augustine, the preacher, teacher, theologian Bishop and Doctor of the Church can give us an exacting insight ...
Jul 10, 2023•39 min•Season 2Ep. 42
Whether it’s at a retreat, a Conference, a prayer night, parish mission, even in the midst of a homily - there’s a fine line between a powerful effective testimony and a true ineffective one. Can you share the truth about God’s action in your life in a compelling and powerful way, and in such a way that it deepens the hearer's relationship with God and His Church? In this episode I want to share five pitfalls to avoid when developing and delivering a personal testimony. And it must be said - I a...
Jul 03, 2023•19 min•Season 2Ep. 41
When we see great Catholic speakers at conferences or giving talks online, we experience a brief snapshot in time, not just of stories, humor, and application of scriptures and Church teaching to our everyday lives, but a whole person. We see it simply as a person with a microphone, but in reality the moment they grab the mic is simply the current state of the journey that began years and years before with countless hours of prep, prayer, and a consistent desire to be a disciple before ever bein...
Jun 26, 2023•36 min•Season 2Ep. 40
Have you ever heard a bad homily? No clear connection to the readings, it rambled on and on, and didn’t in any way apply to your everyday life. While this may not be the case at every Mass, bad preaching happens more often than it should. In my conversation with Fr. Joshua Whitfiled, we discuss where this crisis come from, and what can Priests and lay people can do about it, and among many other things - what role might the Liturgy of the Hours, yes the official prayer of the Church, might play ...
Jun 12, 2023•42 min•Season 2Ep. 39
Description Let’s be honest, the Great Commission of Matthew 28 won’t commission itself. While it stands in graphic relief in the New Testament as the hinge between Jesus’ time on earth and the era of the Church, it must be encountered and announced to be unleashed. Because if you look around the Church today - it doesn’t appear to be an obvious self-evident truth, that we must preach the gospel to all nations. We have to be reminded, exhorted, and given a living example to follow. Fr. Josh John...
May 29, 2023•50 min•Season 2Ep. 38
Description As someone who speaks, teaches, or preaches for a living, one of the last things I would want to be called is “unoriginal”. I associate that word “unoriginal” with words like boring, lame, predictable or unimaginative. And one of my biggest fears as a communicator, especially one for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is having people use any of those words to describe me or my speaking. And yet there it is, unoriginal, even with all of it’s negative connotations, is PRECISELY a word all Ca...
May 15, 2023•30 min•Season 2Ep. 37
It has been said, from the perspective of Christian mission, that if you can “change the campus” you can “change the world.” For better or for worse it is during these years in college where people decide, maybe once and for all, exactly who they are going to become. Paths are chosen -, faith, worldview, marriage, career are DECIDED during this consequential season. It was true for me and likely true for you. I’ve had the honor of working with college students and young adults for more than two ...
May 01, 2023•34 min•Season 2Ep. 36
Description Here we go folks! As promised at the beginning of Season 2 I plan on interviewing more and more priests in upcoming episodes. Today we kick things off with Fr. Emmanuel Mansford for a great discussion about GOOD and BAD homilies. He shares openly and vulnerably from his own experience of both. And what we people in the pews can do to help too! Fr. Emmanuel was born in London, England, and joined the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in September of 1998. He was ordained in 2007, has s...
Apr 17, 2023•39 min•Season 2Ep. 35
Description The principal agent of evangelization is the Holy Spirit. Today I want to share two convictions that I hold about how to actually follow the Holy Spirit in talks; two ways to think about how we can best be led by the Holy Spirit before, and during the talks that we give. Because after all the Holy Spirit is the principal, primary agent of evangelization. If anyone is evangelized it is because the Holy Spirit has intervened, and helped to make it so! As I mentioned in the first episod...
Apr 03, 2023•26 min•Season 2Ep. 34
Description Confidence (or lack thereof) has a way of shining through the moment you open your mouth to speak. When it’s there - it puts everyone listening at ease. When it’s not the audience remains vigilant and alert, worried more that this person makes it to the end in one piece. And forget remembering anything they had to say! My guest today brings the power, joy, and freedom of confidence to every talk she gives. Katie McGrady is a wife, mom, award-winning author, international speaker, pod...
Mar 20, 2023•46 min•Season 2Ep. 33
Description I want to share with you a short clip from an episode of another great podcast called “This Whole Life”. This show is hosted by Pat and Kenna Millea, good friends of mine here in the Twin Cities. Pat is a Catholic speaker, leader and podcaster - also a Better Preach alum - episode 21 - and his wife Kenna is a podcaster and licensed marriage and family therapist and their show, “This Whole Life” explores the crucial overlap of mental health and the spiritual life, sanity and sanctity....
Mar 06, 2023•13 min
Description So today is Ryan’s turn in the hot seat. He invited his good friend and previous guest on this podcast, Connor Flanagan , to do the honors. They talk about the chaos of family life, how it feels to get paid to preach the Gospel, some encouragement to those wanting to do more speaking, and what launched him into ministry in the first place! Links For more information about the Better Preach Podcast visit: www.ryanohara.org/betterpreach Better Preach is a proud member of Spoke Street ,...
Feb 09, 2023•44 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Description Have you ever had to prepare a talk at the last minute? Like day of or day before? Not the fault of poor planning, but somebody gets sick or there’s car trouble. There are any number of good reasons why your number might be called - to give a talk - without a ton of notice. Well, if you have ever found yourself in that situation and are not sure how to whip up something solid in a timely way - I believe this episode can help. I’ve put together a simple four-part template that can gui...
Feb 02, 2023•25 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Description I want to share today about the surprising way God taught me, perhaps the most important lesson I’d ever learn about the call and ministry of speaking to Catholic audiences. It wasn’t the lesson I was looking for but it was a lesson that was on the lookout for me…something i really needed even though We’ve talked about this principle in a variety of ways throughout the podcast so far and I’m excited to share the unique way God planted this truth in my heart. Let me know what you thin...
Jan 26, 2023•20 min•Season 1Ep. 30
