Catholic Foundations | The Trinity | Session 3

Foundations is our 10 week course on the basic teachings of Catholicism. This week we focus on The Trinity: the truths, the heresies & our relationship with God.

In week three of our Foundations course, Taylor Schroll teaches on the central mystery of our faith: The Trinity. We will explore how God revealed Himself as the Trinity, what that means for our understanding of who He is and our relationship with Him & dissect some of the main heresies in understanding of the Trinity throughout the Church's history. Ultimately, this entire session is built for us to understand who God is more so that we can love Him more deeply.

New to the series? Check out our introduction here: https://youtu.be/nGvOQP3U8tU

Catholic Foundations | Divine Revelation | Session 2

Foundations is our 10 week course on the basic teachings of Catholicism. This week we focus on Sacred Scripture & Sacred Tradition

In night two of our Foundations course, Jennifer Stavinoha shares about Divine Revelation: how God has spoken and speaks to His people. She shares about the two pillars of revelation: Sacred Scripture & Sacred Tradition. How do these two go hand in hand? Where did the Bible come from? Where does the ultimate authority on the Scriptures come from? Jennifer, armed with his Masters degree in Theology, answers all these questions and more.

So whether you are a new Catholic looking to grow in your faith, not Catholic and interested in what the Church teaches or you've been Catholic your whole life and just need a refresher, we hope you enjoy today's session! :)

Share Your Presents: A "Living Room Retreat" Video Session

What's the best gift you've ever received? For many of us this questions brings nostalgic thoughts of childhood birthdays or Christmases.

In today's Living Room Retreat, Taylor shares his favorite memory of receiving a gift as a child along with one of Jesus' parables. Sit down, grab a drink(water, juice, coffee, alcohol...all are welcome with no judgement) and spend some time with the Lord(yes, Taylor understands this doesn't mean him).

Hit the link below to watch on YouTube and hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss next week’s :)

Covenant with Abraham

God promised Abraham amazing things but asked for complete trust in return. Taylor shares on Beyond the Pew how the story of sacrificing Isaac foreshadows the cross and Christ's submission to the Will of God. Our God is truly a father that keeps His promises!

Intro to the New Testament (Video Guest Appearance)

This is probably my favorite Beyond the Pew video I've ever recorded. This series is built for parents but can be a great jolt to any of our spiritual lives. I hope you enjoy. Let me know your favorite book of the New Testament and why in the comments.

The New Testament of the Bible is the history of our Church. But how much of it have you read? In this video, Taylor challenges all of us to take the time to read the Acts of the Apostles, as they began preaching the Gospel, to be inspired by the letters of Paul & early Church leaders, and to dive into the Book of Revelation, which should inspire a hunger for the Mass.

The Old Testament Is Not Boring (Guest Appearance)

In the most recent "Beyond the Pew" episode from Ablaze Ministries, I talk about how the Old Testament gets a bad rap but is actually hilarious AND helps tremendously in ability to grow deeper in our love and appreciation of the Lord.

Check it out and let me know whatcha think!

The Old Testament can often be skipped over in our Christian life, because we focus on the New Testament and the life of Jesus. But the Old Testament is the story of how God has loved us over thousands of years!

Becoming a Holy Family: Jesus in our Midst Keynote Session

I was honored to give the opening keynote at the first annual REC-C Family Retreat. The theme is becoming a holy family, Jesus in our midst. I dive into 10 stories in the history of salvation to see what we can learn about growing closer to God from families in the Bible and early Church.

Note: This session was geared towards adults. Two sections may not be good for children(i.e. I talk about certain Christmas and Easter parenting secrets and about a story in Scripture that children may not be ready to hear).

Do You Trust Me? (Guest Post)

Way back in 2015, I wrote a blog on what we can learn about trusting the Lord by combining the Scriptures with the Disney movie Aladdin. I wrote this for Ablaze Ministries before I had this website so I thought I would share it with you now. Click here to read it on the Ablaze website.

The Psalms

My favorite part of preparing the music for Mass every week is writing the music for the Psalm. The musical setting is always different and allows me to pray with the words of the Psalms in a new way each Mass.

It is fun to be creative and "sing to the Lord a new song"(Ps 96:1) by taking the ageless words of Scripture and allowing my mood and creativity to bring to life each week. As many of you know, David wrote most of the Psalms. He was the King of creativity and drew on his life situations in his writing. I often try to imagine what it would be like listening to him play and sing each Psalm for the first time. 

The Psalms are one of my favorite books of the Bible to pray with. There are some that are joyful, some that are laments and others in between. They truly capture the human experience. No matter how I am feeling when I come to church that day, I always know that the psalm can speak to the depths of my heart.

Below are some of my favorite verses from the Psalms about music and a video of the most recent Psalm I sang for Mass on Nov 17th. Enjoy :)

Psalm 95:1 "O come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!"

Ps 71:23 "My lips will shout for joy, when I sing praises to thee; my soul also, which thou hast rescued."

Ps 150:1-6 "1 Praise the LORD! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament! Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his exceeding greatness! Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with timbrel and dance; praise him with strings and pipe! Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals! Let everything that breathes praise the LORD! Praise the LORD!"

"Make a loud noise and rejoice and sing praise."
Psalm 98:4

Was Jesus weak? (guest appearance)

Here is today's video from "Beyond the Pew" where I make a monthly appearance. This month's series is on common misconceptions of Jesus. In this video, I tackle the misconception that Jesus was weak in comparison to the "modern strong man". I hope you enjoy it. 

The Lying Minister Epidemic

Honesty

Being honest is something we are taught to do from a very young age. There is so much importance in telling the truth and we learn very quickly that people can see through lies. As kids, when we tried to lie, our parents knew it instantly about 99% of the time.

This was very true for me in Kindergarten(that's a very hard word to spell for me...let alone 5 year olds). I was a compulsive liar at 5 years old. My teacher would write me up and send me home with a note for my parents informing them that I had lied. It happened so often throughout the school year that my mom told me that if I lied again, I would not be able to go to the concert of my then favorite artist, James Taylor. 

The last day of school came around and I'll bet you can guess what I did. Yep, I lied. My teacher wrote me a note to give to my parents. I knew the consequences so I.......gave it to my parents? Nope. I threw it away in a trashcan on my way out of class. Now I wasn’t just a bad liar, I also wasn’t a smart criminal. My teacher saw me throw it away, called my parents and there was no James Taylor concert in my future. I had learned my lesson.....or so I thought.

James Taylor

Molded To Lie

I began my journey in ministry in 2008. I was often taught, either explicitly or by example of ministry leaders, to always bring your A-game to ministry, no matter what. Never show any weakness. Always look happy. Always make it look like you have it all figured out so that others will look at your perfect life and be inspired to live holy lives. There are two problems with that. First, who doesn't have any weaknesses, is always happy and lives a perfect life? Second, why are we lying to people, including ourselves? All those years of being told not to lie and now, out of what I thought were good intentions, I was doing it again in ministry. I was being taught to lie and probably should have had a letter sent home to my parents :)

A Solution Is Found

Last fall, the Ablaze Ministries staff went to National Youth Workers Convention. In a room full of approximately 3000 people in ministry, one of the speakers addressed this issue head on. He made it clear that while we think we are protecting our image or helping people in their faith life by acting perfect, we are actually turning them off to growth in faith. Most people who see someone whose life looks perfect and they have it all together will NOT be inspired to live like them, they will quit trying to grow in faith because they know they don't have what it takes to be perfect. The effect that those in ministry desire by acting this way brings about the exact opposite response more often than not. 

So what are we to do as people in ministry?(which is all of us...thanks Baptism!) We don't want to add scandal by revealing all of the details of our past and present sin but we also need to be honest that we are sinners as well. As I was reflecting on this recently, two statements of Paul in the New Testament stood out. They seem to give parameters so that we don't swing too far on either side of the pendulum, but are somewhere right in the middle.

In 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul says, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” This is boldness that inspires. As people in ministry, we should want to lead lives that can be imitated to follow Christ. This is one of the basic tenets of discipleship. But we can’t stop there. We have to also remember the first few lines of Paul's letter to Timothy when he says, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost.” We can see in example of Paul, the greatest evangelist of all time, that we do not have to pick whether we are a good role model or a sinner. We can be both and be honest about both. We should all seek to root sin out of our lives but we should be examples of how to do that, walking the journey with those our faith community.

As I challenge you to examine how these verses apply to you, I’ll leave you with this. “If we say, ‘We have not sinned,’ we make (God) a liar, and his word is not in us.”(1 John 1:10) I, for one, don’t want to be liar anymore. 

In Christ,
Taylor Schroll/Forte Catholic

Go Forth I Will Be With You (Audio)

Over the past few weeks, God has placed a burning desire on my heart to minister to youth ministers. I have been amazed at the opportunities God has put in my path to do just that. All those who work in ministry or know people that do, know that it can get tough at times. My goal is to encourage you by reminding you of the call and promises that God has given you.

This is a recording of a sending forth for those who work or volunteer in ministry. We walk through the stories in Scripture of many who were called and sent to share the good news of the Father. We also look at the beginning of Ad Gentes, the Vatican II document on missionary activity and what it means for those called and sent by God into ministry. We end with the overwhelming list of the promises of God that He is always with us.

If you need some encouragement in your ministry, give this a listen. If you know someone in ministry, share this with them. We can all use the encouragement.

In Christ,
Taylor Schroll/Forte Catholic

Two-Face the Christian

I have been a gamer since I was a little kid. I can remember playing the original Mario game on the brick called the original Gameboy that I received on a beautiful Christmas morning. It was so long ago that you couldn’t even save your progress so if you wanted to beat a game you had to play it for hours and hours straight!(insert gasps of anyone under 20 here) My love for gaming continued through childhood with the Nintendo 64(what odd controllers those were) and countless hours playing sports games with friends through Junior High and High School. Video games are a big part of who I am. As I grew throughout these years in my journey with Christ, I wondered where gaming fit into the Christian life. There are some obvious possible positives and negatives about gaming but I wanted to focus on one of the many instances where I have learned something about myself and have been able to grow in my faith through playing video games.

Recently, I have been playing the finale to the fantastic Batman series, Arkham Knight. So many of the characters in the world of Batman are extremely interesting. One of the big take aways I have been able to glean is what made each the criminals in the story turn into the “bad guy.” In seeing what led them to do bad things, we can recognize those patterns in ourselves and cut them out of our lives. Let me give you the biggest example of this that I found in the game.

Two-face, whose real name is Harvey Dent, is a villain in the Batman universe that most people have at least heard of through pop culture, the recent Batman movies, comics or video games. Dent was an upstanding district attorney who partnered with Batman to dedicate their lives to putting the worst criminals in jail in a city rampant with crime and corruption. Sadly, Dent was driven insane after a mob boss threw acidic chemicals in his face during trial, leaving terrible scaring and disfigurement on half of his face. The event changed him from being a shining knight of justice to now one of the most notorious crime lords in Gotham. 

As I was playing through this story line, I started thinking about how one of the biggest complaints about Christians is that we are “two-faced,” teaching one thing at Church and living a different way. Everyone has met a christian who acted like one person at church and completely different person elsewhere. I met one a while back that I couldn’t stand. I saw him all the time, couldn’t get away from him and avoided him as much as I could. The time I saw him most was in the mirror. Yep, it was me. 

I was at a point in my life that I was very compartmentalized. There was “Church Taylor,” “Athlete Taylor,” “Student Taylor” and other variations of myself that didn’t seem to mesh with each other. It got to a point a few years later during college that someone told me something that rocked my world. She looked me dead in the eye and said, “Taylor, do you know what I like about you? You are one person at Church and a completely different person when it is just us.” This was the point where I had to stare at myself in the mirror and decide who I wanted to be. 

I realized that no matter what happens, I am just one person and can’t be a different person in all of these different scenarios. I needed to let God and my life with Him permeate every single aspect of my life. 

The Bible says that Christians will be known by our fruit. Instead of being fruit that leaves a bad taste in the mouths of those who see us as “two-faced,” I want people to be able to look at our Christian communities and see in us our love for God and His people. Love is attractive. The only way we will be able to be a loving community, a community that attracts others to a relationship with Christ, is to be connected to the Vine. 

In the Gospel of John, Chapter 15, Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[a] so that it will be even more fruitful…Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.” If we are going to bear fruit as God asks, we need to cling to the Father and cut away the parts of ourselves that are holding us back. God is never done working on us. He wants us to be “even more fruitful” and wants us to help Him in molding and forming us throughout our lives. What are the things that make you “two-faced”? What can you do to cut them out of your life so that you can be more fruitful?

Thank you for reading. I hope you have enjoyed today's blog. If you have, please like/comment and share it with your friends. For more posts in the future, subscribe to the blog below.

In Christ,
Taylor Schroll/ForteCatholic

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