Jenny Snarski
Catholic Herald Staff
“Serving God by Serving His People” is the phrase that greets visitors to catholiclakescluster.org, website for the churches of St. Joseph in Amery, Our Lady of the Lakes in Balsam Lake and St. John the Baptist in Clear Lake. Those words could also be the personal motto of Jennifer Lefler, the business administrator who also co-leads the cluster’s Order of Christian Initiation of Adults program.
Lefler has been part of St. Joseph Parish in Amery for 30 years but took on her current position in October 2024.
“The Lord spoke to me and said, ‘I want you to take that role,’” she recounted. Which she did, leaving a director of marketing position at Normandale Community College, which serves 17,000 students in Bloomington, Minnesota. Her work experience includes operations and project management in addition to marketing and journalism, but Lefler said this new job has probably been the most challenging role of her career.
Her reasons? “Service to the people,” she answered. “Making sure that I’m not just doing the work to do the work but applying myself to the serve the individuals of this cluster and its leadership and demonstrating the faith.”
She was frank about making the job description her own: “I oversee financials and operations, et cetera, for the church, but administering to the souls in this role is the most rewarding and challenging work.”
For example, when someone comes in requesting a Mass intention, Lefler doesn’t just write it in the book and take their money. “I sit down with the people, listen to their stories, find good days for the intentions,” she said, and then follows-up with a card to the family with Fr. Chandra’s and her name.
“Personal service to every soul that walks into each of these churches” is the same approach Lefler takes in her OCIA work with those expressing interest in the Catholic Church. She applies her people skills to every person.
“Everyone’s got a story,” Lefler recognizes, “and there’s not much listening going on in our world.”
Something she has insisted on at each of the three churches is having the buildings “fully open and all the lights on in the sanctuary.” Not worried about paying the bills, Lefler believes “if just one person comes in off the street to pray, that’s worth it.”
Even with the mid-March snowstorm and snow drifts in front of the door, she watched a man drive up in his truck and walk over the snowbank to come in and pray.
“It’s about paying attention to the needs of souls the way our Lord would expect us to,” she said. That, she added, is what every OCIA person has shared about how and why they chose their clustered churches. Self-identified “church-shoppers” say they find the cluster’s parishes “welcoming and inviting.”
“This is it. This is where we want to be,” Lefler has heard repeatedly. “I want everyone who walks through the doors, Catholic or not, to feel that way … and we’re batting 1000 so far.”
Step one, she says, is making sure the both the church and the Church are welcoming and inviting. This requires conscientious commitment and simple acts of human dignity. Besides the vibrant Evangelization Team, “not just our ushers, but everybody, is tasked with being an ambassador.
“If you’re Catholic and you go to this church, you are responsible for looking at somebody you don’t know, walking up to them and saying hello.”
Commenting on the need for a strong Evangelization Team, stemming from Bishop James P. Powers’ leadership, Lefler shared how their clustered parishes started with tearing down “walls between the churches.”
The 30-plus person committee, with more than half very active and the others supporting as they’re able, understands “each parish is a distinct entity, but we are still one universal Catholic Church and we act that way.”
As people, on average two a month, come inquiring about joining the church, the one common denominator is that they are seeking. “Every single person,” Lefler emphasized, “says they have shopped a lot of churches.” Of the seven currently in the OCIA process, none found “it” in any of the others.
She says “it” must be truth and faith in the Lord, and the cluster’s welcoming environment is the safe, comfortable and inviting place where seekers feel they can finally commit.
From these conversations, Lefler asks herself, “How many more OCIA candidates are sitting in our church pews that we don’t even know about?”
Lefler confirmed there are parish members who reach out and invite non-Catholics, but the goal is truly to create an environment where someone’s personal search finds fertile soil to set roots, be fertilized and grow.
“This is ‘it,’” they all tell Lefler. While some are Protestants, many were raised without any faith.
She thinks about those of us who “show up at church to check the box, sit in the pews and maybe get a cookie after Mass, but then leave.” When the priest gives the final blessing and says, “Go in peace,” he doesn’t mean, “See you next Sunday.” Lefler is helping her parishes understand that it means, “Go out there and meet people and make them curious about Catholicism.”
Step two is being accessible. Lefler comes in every Sunday morning and opens the office before Mass and again afterward.
“That’s the secret sauce, right there, in addition to being welcoming,” she stated. “People love it. They’re feeling ‘churchy’ and almost every one of the seven people in their OCIA program came into the office after Mass saying, “I want to join this church.”
Having people come to weekend Mass with offices closed, no one looking at anyone they don’t know, and then rushing out when the service is over is like sending an invitation but then tossing it out, Lefler feels. It’s like saying, “Can you call me Monday instead?” when they try to respond.
“Well, guess what?” she said, “by then, they’re off to something else.”
For Lefler, a widow and caregiver for her mother, this has meant shifting her schedule, but it’s where she’s seeing fruit. A “boots-on-the-ground mentality” is how she feels called to fulfill her role.
Once candidates get to step three, learning the faith, Lefler inverts the classroom learning model. She insists that books, programs and resources are all wonderfully informative, but she sets them aside for the first few meetings.
“I take them for a tour of the church. We go everywhere – the confessional – and I let them kneel before the screen, sit in the chair. We go into the sacristy. We walk the Stations of the Cross.” She continued, “They’re curious about everything as I explain along the way. When we’re done, they say how much they loved it, and that it all makes so much more sense.”
The second and third classes are then presented in the sanctuary on the Mass, going through the hymnal and missalette. After this introduction, each candidate has expressed how much more acclimated they feel, that they can actually participate in Mass. Then, the rest of the book learning fits more naturally, and she is intentional about connecting it outside the classroom.
“I have nothing to do with this,” Lefler spoke honestly. “I listen to the Holy Spirit and do what he tells me to do.” She teaches and guides responding to their seeking to “be part of this.
“’This’ is our church. ‘This’ is where they want to be, and there’s nothing here that they can’t see and touch or do other than receive the Eucharist.”
“But you’ll get to that,” Lefler tells them. “And they get it; they love it.”
The dynamic is also spreading to current parishioners, who have been asking for the same tours and classes, which is leading to their adult faith formation.
“It’s all being woven together beautifully by our Lord,” she said.
As far as her own journey, Lefler, a cradle Catholic, says she didn’t know this much about her faith until the Covid-19 pandemic. She recalls her childhood catechism classes as cookies and coloring pictures, “and that Jesus loves you, and nothing bad can ever happen to you … until it does.” During that time, she cracked open her unopened Bible and let Fr. Mike Schmitz’s “Bible in a Year” help.
She admits to continual learning and growth: “You walk the faith walk and then see where the Lord takes you.”
Which isn’t always easy, especially when there are bills to pay, “but the bills will be there tomorrow,” Lefler quipped. “People come in the office all day, every day … and I have to put down what I’m doing because they want relationship.
“They want to talk, whether they’re a parishioner or in OCIA,” she said. “Your door has to be open.”
Lefler knows she doesn’t have all the answers but says what people really want is “relationship, and podcasts.”
Many are getting interested in the faith when they stumble across a podcast, which they can listen to more flexibly than reading materials. She has suggested both “Bible in a Year” and “Catechism in a Year” as starting points.
“How did Jesus work with the Apostles?” Lefler reflected. “He didn’t say, ‘okay read this or that chapter in Scripture.’”
She sees how he talked with people, listened to them, taught them to pray, healed them. Pour yourself out, then return to the Lord to be filled and pour yourself out again.
“We best teach the faith by living it,” she summarized. “And isn’t this our mission as Catholics? Isn’t this what we’re supposed to be doing?”
Lefler shared she simply “lives Catholic,” whether she’s at Kwik Trip, the grocery store or her office at church. She offers to pray for people, to pray with them, meets them where they’re at.
When the cluster posts events or inspiring things to their Facebook pages, she shares them – “without being in-your-face about it” – on local community pages: “I can’t tell you how many people say they love it.” The whole community came to a recent Lenten fish fry, Catholics and non-Catholics.
“They loved it because they like us,” she believes. “We’re welcoming, and that’s all there is to it.”
She concluded with the importance of not seeing Easter sacraments as the end goal.
“Faith is a gift,” she asserted. “What matters is how many people you have successfully welcomed into the front door … Each journey is a story, and we need to align with that.”
Lefler recently asked her team, “How do we manage this as a process? Because it’s your life, your journey.” She told them she wants a revolving door where people are coming in and then going out, coming in and going out …
“The day they commit to starting their journey is the success … They have to be able to guide and participate in that, at their own pace,” she added, iterating that they gauge success by continued inquiries and committed starts.
Lefler is grateful for the many priests she knows, active and retired, from whom she learns and receives advice and support.
She ended with two personal stories, the first of a woman she met in the kitchen while helping serve a parish retreat. They chatted, and through conversation Lefler learned this woman had been away from the church for years because of the priest abuse scandal. After that casual encounter, the woman began attending Mass, then sought out Lefler. They met, talked and listened some more and then, sensing this woman’s gifts and interests, Lefler invited her to get involved with the Evangelization Team. She later shared an issue of the Catholic Herald; the woman returned wanting to join the Diocese of Superior’s Servant Leadership program. This lady now leads the cluster Evangelization Team.
The other story was of an encounter last Christmas. After Mass, a man came up and said hello. She introduced herself, but he seemed to know her. He said his name, and she immediately recalled him as a former confirmation student. She hadn’t seen him in years, but there he was, introducing his family, who now are in the process of coming into the church. He’s also bringing his parents and grandfather back to church.
At the recent baptism for one of his children, Lefler said the parish “brought the house down” in celebrating and welcoming.
“We never know the work we’re doing … the seeds we’re planting, and where they are going to blow, settle and grow … Recognize human dignity, treat people with a smile, wash their feet. Give them something to eat, sit down with them and look them in the eye. That is the secret sauce.”
“My goal is to welcome and make people curious about Catholicism. That’s it … to share the faith with people who are interested in learning” and encourage their missionary spirit where it crops up.
“We are the apostles,” she concluded. “Things aren’t always logical or according to a plan, but the Holy Spirit is with us, and like Jesus, we’re meeting people where they are at and welcoming them to more.”
