“Be who you are meant to be, and you will set the world on fire.”
The words of St. Catherine of Siena lit a spark in the heart of Maria Bremerkamp.
Am I setting the world on fire? she wondered.
Bremerkamp and her future husband, Adam, served as missionaries for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) from 2013-15. They married afterward and decided to use the skills they acquired to set the world on fire for Christ.
FOCUS is a national Catholic outreach that aims to share the Gospel with college and university students and then send them out to fulfill the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. (Matthew 28:19)
The Bremerkamps and their four young children reside in Mount Vernon and are parishioners at Mount Vernon St. Vincent de Paul Church.
In January at SEEK23, the FOCUS conference in St. Louis, the couple was presented the national FOCUS Alumni Saint Francis Xavier Honor. The award recognizes former FOCUS students and missionaries from across the United States who live committed to Jesus Christ as missionary disciples beyond campus.
The Bremerkamps said they felt called to continue evangelizing and began two years ago at their parish by forming a men’s and a women’s small-group Bible study.
They invited a few middle-aged parishioners to join. Then, they formed a small group with mothers or fathers at the parish who have younger children.
The Bremerkamps also evangelize to college students on campuses that do not have FOCUS missionaries and invite students into small-group Bible studies.
“The Gospel message, no matter where you’re at in your faith, how much you know, it always speaks to us,” Adam said. “It always impacts and convicts us.”
The Bremerkamps’ small groups consist of between five and 10 people. Over time, each group goes deeper and transitions into what Adam described as a “discipleship group,” which teaches members how to pray, study Scripture and share their faith.
After meeting for several weeks, the Bible study concludes with an invitation for members to continue into discipleship and answer “the high call to go on mission,” Adam said.
Unlike a “six- or seven-week program, discipleship is a lifelong thing,” he said. “You’re running the race until you’re in heaven.”
“We invite them to go deeper and look into their circle of influence to see who God might be calling them to reach out to and evangelize to,” Maria said.
The Bremerkamps have seen members go on to form their own small groups with neighbors, co-workers and college professors.
Twelve discipleship groups and 11 Bible studies have formed. There are 86 people in such groups as a result of the Bremerkamps’ efforts.
They use the “Little Way of Evangelization,” which was developed by FOCUS founder Curtis Martin.
“Anybody can make a few friends, invest in them deeply, teach them and then help them to go do the same,” Adam said of Martin’s vision. “It’s very much so a borrowed phrase from St. Therese, the Little Flower. … We don’t have to do these things that seem incredible or seem great. No, we just do the little things with great love.”
FOCUS uses the phrase “‘teach teachers to teach,’” Adam said, which is drawn from 2 Timothy 2:2. The verse recounts St. Paul sharing the faith with St. Timothy, who shares the faith with others, and so forth.
“Not any one of us can teach the whole world, but if we can teach our disciples to make disciples who can be taught to make disciples, … (there is) this concept of spiritual multiplication,” he said. “Ultimately, the end goal is to reach the whole world.”
The couple seeks to “deeply invest” in a few people, rather than “get as many converts as they can.”
“The (evangelization) model is kind of based off the idea that Jesus Himself had a small group,” Adam said. “He invested so much of His time, relatively speaking, during the three years of His ministry – He spent the majority of His time with 12 guys.
“And of those 12, He spent even more time with just three: Peter, James and John. In the same way, we try to model what we do after Him.”
Small groups provide an opportunity to encounter Christ, authentic friendship and spiritual multiplication.
The Bible study is “Kerygma focused,” Maria said, which means participants encounter or re-encounter Jesus in the Gospel and discover “what it means to have a relationship with Him.” The study concludes with an invitation to accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ and share it with others.
The couple uses free resources available on focusequip.org and the ‘FOCUS Equip’ app to lead small-group Bible studies and discipleship groups.
“A lot of Catholics finally understand we need to evangelize,” Adam said. “But how? How do we actually do this? And that’s the beautiful thing that I think FOCUS has to offer – a very practical and repeatable and accessible way to do it.”
The FOCUS Equip website has two tabs, “‘Bible Studies’” and “‘Discipleship,’” Adam said. The ‘Bible Studies’ tab has 10 prepared, multiweek Bible studies, and the ‘Discipleship’ tab has approximately 25 topics covering prayer, the sacraments and sharing the Gospel or leading a Bible study.
Small-group activities include reading Scripture and praying together, forming friendships with people who are seeking to grow in virtue and building up others in faith to be sent out to do the same.
“They’re very relaxed and welcoming,” Maria said of small-group Bible studies. “We usually start out just with some tea, ‘How was your week?’ and an icebreaker to build that friendship. Then, we start delving into Scripture and the topic.
“What makes this so repeatable is that it’s so easy to prep and do. It’s not this daunting thing. It’s all there for you. I really pray with it and discern what discipleship material we should go through that week because there’s several to choose from. I just print it off, we read it and talk about it.”
She said the materials are “not just for college students” and “anybody” can lead a Bible study.
“It’s very applicable, which I think is also needed in our faith right now. Here are very practical things you can do to equip yourselves to share your faith, so you can give an account of why you have the joy that you have, your relationship with Christ.
“If there’s somebody you know that needs to hear the Gospel, … you have the words to share it with them.”
The couple seeks out new faces and couples who have young children at Mass. They introduce themselves, plan to attend the same Mass each Sunday, and their children play on the playground together afterward.
The Bremerkamps also invite families to their house for birthday parties and other events.
“People forget that people want to have friends,” Adam said. “If you walk up to somebody with a smile, and you say, ‘Hi,’ chances are they are going to smile and say, ‘Hi,’ back. It can be a little nerve-wracking, but at the same time, it’s easier than you think it would be.”
The Bremerkamps invite new parish families to join their small groups.
“The ground is so fertile right now,” Maria said. “People are so hungry for this, that just giving that invitation, most people are saying, ‘Yes.’”
The couple said that, to lead a Bible study, it is important that the leader is also being led. Small-group leaders need a support system “when things get hard” and for accountability.
“For everyone that we are mentoring, who is leading a small group, we require them to stay in our discipleship group, for that reason, so that way they’re being fed, and the same with anyone who is being discipled by them and leading a small group,” Maria said.
The Bremerkamps said they feel a “tug” on their hearts to train men and women how to lead Bible studies and discipleship groups, so more people are equipped to lead others to Christ.
“We have been discerning if God wants us to make our services available to other parishes,” Adam said. “(Parishes) can hire us for some small monthly amount, and we can come train some leaders of that parish to lead groups like this. We’re really in the beginning phases of this, but it is an option.
“If there are parishes that hear about this and say, ‘Hey, I want to do this,’ that is something Maria and I are discerning. And if the doors start opening, I think we would be willing to start walking through those doors, … and make it more of our full-time job, helping to train other parishes how to do this.”
The Bremerkamps said they are willing to meet in-person at a “halfway point” between Mount Vernon and Columbus to train a “core team” of between “two and eight men and two and eight women,” who will be trained in how to disciple others and lead small groups at their own parishes.
“Literally anyone can do this,” Maria said. “If there’s a stirring in your heart to do it, then it’s probably the Holy Spirit, and God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called.
“(Don’t) be so hung up on, ‘Oh, I don’t know enough,’ or ‘I’m not good enough to do this,’ getting stuck in those lies, but instead, hold onto Christ and trust Him. Love people, because people just really need to be loved.”
Maria said if parents want their children to evangelize one day, parents need to be a model and show their children how.
“We have heard a lot, ‘Oh, you have little kids, you don’t have to do all that,’” she said of leading groups. “It’s actually like, ‘No, I have little kids, so I have to do all this. They need to see it. They need to know that this is important.’”
Maria said the “biggest lie” is for a family to say, “‘We don’t have time for this,’” when, in reality, giving time to lead groups “has the potential to transform families and light it up.”
Evangelizing has made their family “come more fully alive,” she said.
To learn more or be trained by the Bremerkamps to lead a small parish group, contact Adam at (314) 775-9004 or Adam.Bremerkamp@gmail.com.