Description

  Are you Like me? I always watch TV shows and movies at home with captions on. It's one of the reasons I don't want to go to the movie theater. Because I can't do the captions. I don't know if I'm getting old or what it is, but it's just so much better with the captions .

I can follow every little thing that's said, and I feel like I'm understanding what's going on much better, because I can hear it and I can read it. That's kind of the idea that I'm tapping into today. There's this psychological theory called the “dual coding theory. It says that we store information in two ways, words and images.

And if you put them together, there's a much better likelihood that you'll remember the idea. Words connected to images.

Most people are running away from slides. I think you have an opportunity to make incredible slides that can really reinforce the big ideas. From your talk

It's really helped me to communicate ideas better using slides sparingly, but strategically. So I wanna share three principles that really help guide me in that during this episode:

1) Think Images not Text

2) Think Phrases not Paragraphs

3) Build it Last

Tools

For designing slides: canva.com

For finding great free images: unsplash.com

Caravaggio’s “The Call of Matthew” - https://www.caravaggio.org/the-calling-of-saint-matthew.jsp#google_vignette

Links

For more information about the Better Preach Podcast visit: www.ryanohara.org/betterpreach

Better Preach Podcast is now on YouTube. Here’s a link to the channel.

Check out Ryan’s FREE course on “sharing your faith as a Catholic.”

Follow Ryan on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook

Join the Better Preach email list. 

Description

 I don't know if you know this, but Father Mike Schmitz is a huge fan of Superman, but in my conversation today, you get the really strong impression that he's got a lot more in common with the everyday man, just you and me and the kinds of things that we struggle with. And he shared just humbly and honestly about some of his speaking missteps and struggles and the questions that he has around preaching.

It gives us this beautiful window into the man, the disciple that's, you know, behind the crazy number of views on YouTube and downloads on podcast apps. And by doing so, he gives us each permission to be real with each other and with the Lord, and to name those struggles in our spiritual life.

That we might normally, you know, keep under wraps, but when we share it, it really does shed light on our own lives and the lives that we're in community with. This was a fantastic conversation. I'm so excited for you to hear it.
++

Father Mike Schmitz is the Director of Youth and Young Adult Ministry for the Diocese of Duluth, as well as the chaplain for the Newman Center at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He has preached to thousands locally and nationally, and is the host of the widely popular Podcasts Bible in a year, and the Catechism in a year, produced by Ascension. Father Mike also offers weekly homilies on iTunes, hallow, and bulldog catholic.org, and weekly videos viewed by millions on YouTube through Ascension presents.

Connect with Fr. Mike and learn more about his mission in campus ministry at University of Minnesota-Duluth here: www.bulldogcatholic.org

Links

For more information about the Better Preach Podcast visit: www.ryanohara.org/betterpreach

Better Preach Podcast is now on YouTube. Here’s a link to the channel.

Check out Ryan’s FREE course on “sharing your faith as a Catholic.”

Follow Ryan on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook

Join the Better Preach email list.  

Description

One of my favorite questions to ask anyone that I'm interviewing on this podcast is first or worst, I want to hear a story about their first talk or their worst talk. And this is probably the one shot. This is the one shot that I've got on. Better preach to comment on a Pope's first homily, like as a pope, not his very first homily.

But anyway, Pope Leo, Pope Leo the 14th, Hauss Popham, we've got a Pope from America. He comes out swinging and I'm so excited to share a little bit about. Uh, this homily that he preached, uh, to the Cardinals.

I decided to do this episode for two reasons. One, I didn't wanna miss out on discussing the first Pope born in the us. Lots of ink and airways have been spilled and spoken into about this historic moment in the church, and I wanted to share a few of my thoughts, but I wanted to make sure that we kind of aimed those thoughts, uh, in a quintessentially better preach direction, which is to say, you know, let's talk shop about the Pope's preaching.

Link to text of Homily: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/263981/full-text-pope-leo-xiv-s-homily-at-mass-with-the-cardinal-electors-in-the-sistine-chapel

Link to video of Homily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYhfqwFaHTc

Links

For more information about the Better Preach Podcast visit: www.ryanohara.org/betterpreach

Better Preach Podcast is now on YouTube. Here’s a link to the channel.

Check out Ryan’s FREE course on “sharing your faith as a Catholic.”

Follow Ryan on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook

Join the Better Preach email list. 

Description

Alliteration is like a specialized tool that can unlock understanding and retention for the people who are listening to your talks. And those are two things that we want to make sure our talks are always aiming at.

Are people picking up? We're laying down and are they walking away with something that can change their lives? Alliteration, I think, can help us do both of those things.

And today I'm gonna cover the when, the why, and the how of using alliteration in your talks.

Links

For more information about the Better Preach Podcast visit: www.ryanohara.org/betterpreach

Better Preach Podcast is now on YouTube. Here’s a link to the channel.

Check out Ryan’s FREE course on “sharing your faith as a Catholic.”

Follow Ryan on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook

Join the Better Preach email list. 

Description

In the wake of the news this week of Pope Francis’ death, I immediately wondered what we could do here at Better Preach to honor his legacy, teaching and example - particularly around Preaching.  For a while I wanted to do a dive into his first major letter to the Church, the Joy of the Gospel, from 2013, and look closely at his lengthy section in that document on homiletics.  And thanks to Fr. Craig Vasek, who joined me way back in the beginning on episode 2 of Better Preach, he agreed to join me again at the last minute here to look back at Pope Francis’ longest magisterial teaching on Preaching.  

Father Craig Vasek currently serves as pastor of St. Bernard's Catholic Church in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. Ordained in 2010 as a priest of the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, Fr. Vasek is a graduate of the Pontifical North American College in Vatican City, having obtained a Licentiate of Sacred Theology in 2011.  Father Vasek has worked extensively with the Missionaries of Charity of Saint Teresa of Calcutta in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. He has produced works on the topics of Scripture and the Spiritual Life, and served as Specialist for the National Eucharist Revival with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Check out Fr. Vasek’s homilies here on: 

Podbean: https://stbernards.podbean.com

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6mwAvHPBm7c0pjGYUZxWEd

Links

For more information about the Better Preach Podcast visit: www.ryanohara.org/betterpreach

Better Preach Podcast is now on YouTube. Here’s a link to the channel.

Check out Ryan’s FREE course on “sharing your faith as a Catholic.”

Follow Ryan on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook

Join the Better Preach email list.  

Description

Every once in a while you come across a new perspective, fresh eyes, on an age old challenge > and it breaks through lots of baggage and pre-conceived notions.  And this podcast in the grand sense is about addressing the age old challenge of reaching everyday Catholics in the pews with the Gospel.  

Kristin Bird helped me see this perennial challenge with fresh eyes.  And she conceives of this challenge and talks about it in a way that is so helpful and accessible.    Stick around..this is a good one folks!

Kristin Bird is a wife, mother, disciple of Jesus, and an on fire Catholic.  She serves as the Executive Director of Burning Hearts Disciples and is a popular speaker and consultant with a long history of helping Catholic parishes and schools facilitate deeper discipleship and conversion.  Kristin and her husband Tony live in Oshkosh, WI with their three teenage children. When she gets out from behind the computer screen, you can usually find her quoting movies with her husband, laughing at bad puns with her children or with her nose in a book.

Connect with Kristin’s apostolate “Burning Hearts Disciples” at www.burningheartsdisciples.org

Links

For more information about the Better Preach Podcast visit: www.ryanohara.org/betterpreach

Better Preach Podcast is now on YouTube. Here’s a link to the channel.

Check out Ryan’s FREE course on “sharing your faith as a Catholic.”

Follow Ryan on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook

Join the Better Preach email list.  

Description

 In this episode I discuss the reasons why we are afraid of the PAUSE in our talks and three reasons why your next talk needs the PAUSE.

Links

For more information about the Better Preach Podcast visit: www.ryanohara.org/betterpreach

Better Preach Podcast is now on YouTube. Here’s a link to the channel.

Check out Ryan’s FREE course on “sharing your faith as a Catholic.”

Follow Ryan on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook

Join the Better Preach email list. 

Description

As you listen to this episode, I think it will be abundantly clear that you're witnessing me in real time have something of an “aha” moment. I went in thinking one way: that to teach and preach about same sex attraction to all God's people, including those who experience it, it was really about a technique or a method or a kind of a tweak in style of communication.

And that's not at all where we ended up, by the end of the episode, even though I kept yanking the conversation in that direction. The secret is embedded in the title, but I want you to go on this journey yourself too. A huge thanks to my guest, Kim Zember, who preached to me all throughout the episode. I think I finally got it at the end.

You'll have to stick around and find out.

Kim Zember speaks internationally about the love and freedom she has found from leaving a homosexual lifestyle. She loves people and strives to be totally transparent, to help others know they're safe to do the same. When Kim is not at home in Dallas, Texas, she's most likely found in her base for her ministry in Ethiopia, surrounded by 400 plus children.

Check out Kim’s website here: www.boldlybeloved.com

Links

For more information about the Better Preach Podcast visit: www.ryanohara.org/betterpreach

Better Preach Podcast is now on YouTube. Here’s a link to the channel.

Check out Ryan’s FREE course on “sharing your faith as a Catholic.”

Follow Ryan on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook

Join the Better Preach email list.  

Description

 The most precious real estate of any talk, I would say is that first 90 seconds where the audience is trying to figure out: Are they gonna stay tuned or are they gonna tune out? Today I wanna share with you what not to do, and hopefully what to do in those first 90 seconds to make sure that you make the most of that precious real estate.

Links

For more information about the Better Preach Podcast visit: www.ryanohara.org/betterpreach

Better Preach Podcast is now on YouTube. Here’s a link to the channel.

Check out Ryan’s FREE course on “sharing your faith as a Catholic.”

Follow Ryan on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook

Join the Better Preach email list. 

Description

Welcome back folks, Season 4 of Better Preach is here, and we kick things off with a really special episode, one that was recorded and filmed live (Check out YouTube) at SEEK 2025 in Salt Lake City.  You are going to love this conversation, Fr. John didn’t blink at any of the questions I shared - it was an incredible conversation to be a part of.  And the big takeaway for me was how well knit together is the gift of preaching and a daily personal prayer life.

Father John Burns is a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. He studied business at the University of Notre Dame but then realized a deeper call to give his whole life to God. He was ordained in 2010, and in 2019 he completed a doctorate in moral theology on the topic of healing through forgiveness. He is founder of Friends of the Bridegroom, an apostolate dedicated to the renewal of the Church through the renewal of the priesthood and women’s religious life.

Check out “Friends of the Bridegroom” here: https://renewreligious.org

And connect with Fr. John on Facebook and Instagram @fatherjohnburns

Links

For more information about the Better Preach Podcast visit: www.ryanohara.org/betterpreach

Better Preach Podcast is now on YouTube. Here’s a link to the channel.

Better Preach is a proud member of Spoke Street, a Catholic Podcast Network that amplifies the voice of the Creator through fostering content that invites. 

Check out Ryan’s FREE course on “sharing your faith as a Catholic.”

Follow Ryan on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook

Join the Better Preach email list.