A trucker stood in the entrance of a Catholic church, looking through the glass doors toward the crucifix. When Adam Janke greeted him, the man apologized and offered to leave.
“Glad you’re here. What’s your name?” Janke recalled asking.
“My name is Tom. I’m going to hell.”
Janke put down the boxes he was carrying and asked what had happened. The conversation that followed, he said, brought the man and his wife into the Catholic Church and gave them a community to turn to when she was diagnosed with cancer about a year later.
Speaking with hosts Tom Hornacek and Dean Patterson on “Men Answering the Heroic Call,” Janke, introduced as chief operating officer of St. Paul Street Evangelization, described an approach to reaching men that begins with a greeting, a meal and a willingness to hear what another man is carrying.
“Men want to be respected, valued, wanted and loved,” he said.
‘You do belong here’
Janke was working as a parish director of religious education when he encountered Tom in the church entrance. The trucker told him he traveled for a living and had felt a need for God.
He had gone into a Catholic church, sat down and looked at Jesus on the cross, trying to figure out how to speak to God. According to the account Janke recalled, a woman working there saw his tattoos and questioned whether he belonged.
Tom took that encounter as confirmation of what he already believed about himself. He had committed crimes and done things he regretted, he told Janke.
In his travels afterward, he sometimes slipped into the back of Catholic churches, hoping to be as close to Jesus as he could before he died and went to hell.
Janke offered him a different response.
“Brother, you do belong here. You’re meant to be here,” he recalled telling him. “God put you here today. Let’s sit down. Let’s talk more.”
The two got to know each other. Tom and his wife entered the parish’s Christian initiation program and eventually joined the Church, Janke said.
When his wife received her cancer diagnosis, they had a Christian community around them.
Janke returned to the moment in the hallway. He could have kept walking with his boxes. Instead, he stopped.
“That conversation might have never happened, and who knows where he would be today,” he said.
A return to the faith, and a place to belong
Janke’s own path began with baptism in the Catholic Church. He grew up Lutheran after his mother married his adoptive father, then became Baptist in high school.
“Thanks be to God that I fell in love with Jesus at that point,” he said. “Fell in love with the Bible, with my faith, and really began to learn what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus in a world that is broken.”
Catholic friends later invited him to explore their faith. He and his wife spent about three years doing so, drawn toward its spirituality and the sacraments.
“We could receive the Eucharist. We could receive forgiveness in the sacrament of confession. We could receive anointing of the sick,” he said.
Understanding their marriage as sacramental also deepened his sense of responsibility as a husband and father. The couple became Catholic in 2005, he said, and he continued in ministry as a Catholic layman.
The hosts recalled that food and the presence of other teenagers had helped draw him into a high school Bible study. Janke said being known helped him stay.
“Other teenagers know me and I know them. I want to be in this Bible study. I want to go to this church.”
That sense of belonging mattered when he entered Catholic parish life, too. He wanted to be valued for what he could contribute while remaining open to the healing he needed.
He described the welcome in a simple phrase: “Oh, good. Adam’s here.”
Taking the parish mission into everyday life
Janke said St. Paul Street Evangelization was founded in 2012 to help Catholics participate in evangelization through their everyday encounters.
He described a parish’s missionary responsibility as extending to everyone within its boundaries. Reaching those people requires lay Catholics to participate, he said.
“Can Father reach everybody on his own? No way. He needs us as Catholic men to be part of that journey.”
The organization’s street teams establish a public presence where people can approach, talk, receive prayer and begin a friendship. Janke described the purpose as building “that bridge of trust to the local church.”
He said that experience also helps participants speak about faith with their families and the people they encounter elsewhere.
After one workshop, a young man named Armando told Janke he felt called to serve homeless men in Florida. Janke responded enthusiastically, but Armando pressed the point.
“You don’t get it, Adam. I have a burning in my bones that I need to start doing this ministry,” Janke recalled him saying.
Janke also shared a personal example: His wife baptized her father on his deathbed. He connected that moment to growing bolder in evangelization.
From six men to 90, one lunch at a time
Asked how to reach men who have become disengaged from the Church, Janke pointed to ordinary invitations.
“We’ve got a lot of stress on our shoulders,” he said. “We’re trying to take care of our families. We’re trying to be there for our kids. We’re trying to figure out how to live this life.”
His approach is to offer a specific time and a meal.
“Let’s go grab lunch. It’s on me. You got time next week, Tuesday?”
Small talk can open the conversation. Then comes a more direct question: “Now, what’s really going on in life?”
Janke said a friend named Jeff began inviting men from his office to lunch, paying the bill and listening. He then invited them to his Wednesday men’s group.
“I watched his men’s group grow from like six guys to 90 men,” Janke said.
He described the invitation as “free from pressure,” a way to draw men into study and prayer together, where the Gospel could be proclaimed.
“They feel confident and comfortable now that they feel actually part of this group,” he said, describing how those relationships helped men give their lives to Jesus more deeply and return to the Church’s sacramental life.
Earning the right to be heard
Listening comes before the invitation, Janke said.
“We need to earn that right to be heard by listening to what’s going on in their mind, to hearing their story first, to hearing their concerns, and then we can minister in that place.”
He recalled a friend who worked as a diocesan evangelization director. One day, after Mass, the man sat in a pew with his arms crossed. His life had fallen apart, Janke said, and he was struggling.
An older man approached and asked, “Excuse me, young man. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” the friend answered.
The older man challenged that response and asked what was really happening. The friend asked whether he truly wanted to hear it.
“That’s why I asked.”
The encounter gave the friend someone to speak with, Janke said, because another man had been willing to approach him and listen.
“That’s where we feel like other guys know us and we know other guys. And so I want to be here now.”
An invitation can receive a refusal
Janke also urged men to accept that people will sometimes decline an invitation. He described much of evangelization as planting seeds.
A declined lunch, beer or conversation can receive a simple answer: “All right. God bless you.”
When a man is interested but has a scheduling obstacle, Janke suggested finding another time: “Let’s put our schedules together.”
He said men can also respond to a direct challenge. Recalling a conversation with a Catholic who said he lacked time to return, Janke asked whether he worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When the man said no, Janke offered to meet him for confession.
“Guys need a challenge. Men need a challenge,” he said.
Prayer, friendship and the next invitation
The hosts asked about men who hesitate because they feel they lack the knowledge to evangelize. Janke pointed to the Samaritan woman, who encountered Jesus and then went to tell others about him.
Drawing on his own experience, he said, “99% of the time it’s listening, responding to a person in that moment,” offering prayer, meeting for coffee and introducing someone to God’s love.
He encouraged men to ask God for boldness and a willingness to let the Holy Spirit work through them.
“God, set up the divine appointment for me,” he said.
The episode also covered the organization’s medals, prayer cards, online courses and parish workshops as resources for that work.
Patterson connected the conversation to the Heroic Pledge, describing its goal of one million men participating by 2033. He outlined a daily commitment to pray for three men, a weekly effort to meet a man and offer brotherhood, and a monthly invitation for another man to take the pledge.
“Offer to be a brother to him,” Patterson said. “Listen to him. Talk to him.”
Janke’s account of the trucker returned to the same starting point: a man saw someone standing at the entrance of his church and took time to say hello.
“It was all the Holy Spirit,” Janke said.
Men Answering the Heroic Call brings Tom Hornacek, Dean Patterson and their guests together for candid conversations about faith, family and the battles men face every day. Through personal stories and practical Catholic wisdom, this Heroic Men series calls men to deepen their relationship with Jesus, build real brotherhood and become the men God created them to be.