From Duluth campus ministry to Radio City: Father Mike Schmitz's Parables tour nears its end
A crowd was gathering outside Roy Wilkins Auditorium in downtown St. Paul on Friday night to see Father Mike Schmitz.
He's not a rock star, or even a musician, yet Schmitz is on the tail end of an international tour. He is one of the most recognizable Catholic voices in America, with millions of people tuning in to his podcasts, videos and daily Bible readings. He says the real measure of his success isn't how many people know his name, but whether they come to know Jesus better.
The focus for Schmitz is on funding a new building for his ministry to students at the University of Minnesota Duluth. The tour, called Parables, doubles as a fundraiser for that project. It ends at Radio City Music Hall in New York in mid-November.
Schmitz said he expected the crowd to laugh and have a good time, but the question that matters to him is whether people leave thinking "Father Mike's awesome" or saying "God is so good."
His fame took off during the COVID-19 pandemic, when his "Bible in a Year" podcast, produced by Ascension Press, a Catholic media company, topped the charts. He launched it as a pandemic project while working as a campus minister in Duluth, and it had 238 million streams as of March 2022.
His success has many asking what comes next. Schmitz chuckled at the question and said he doesn't know, only that he hopes to "keep serving, keep helping."
He also said he sees the Catholic Church growing. People have always come to faith, he said, but he now sees it more often, more powerfully and more dramatically. He called it "a great wave," and said if it grows into a revival, "that would be incredible."
Nick Hall, leader of Pulse Evangelism, told WCCO's Bigger Than Belief podcast in July that he believes America is closer than ever to a spiritual revival and that Gen Z is leading it.
Schmitz said he sees fewer young people questioning whether God exists. What he sees instead, he said, are young people questioning whether God is good. That is the key message of his tour.
"God is good," he said. "And not only is God good, but he knows your name. He cares about everything about you. You matter to him."
Because people matter to God, he said, they are invited to live as though their own lives matter.
Schmitz sat down with Adam Duxter during his St. Paul stop for the latest episode of "Bigger Than Belief," a WCCO podcast that explores faith through the stories of believers. In the full conversation, he also discusses returning to Minnesota, the difference between being loved and being admired, advice from his mother and the influence of Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
