FRIENDS IN THE FIELD - TRACY MORAN

Now She Sells Life Assurance
This former insurance agent is now selling the greatest product of all - the truth.

The day after Johnnette Benkovic requested a leave of absence from her job as an insurance agent, she returned to her boss's office.

"I've changed my mind," she told him.

"Good," he said. "People just don't give up great jobs like the one you have."

"You don't understand," she said. "I don't want a leave of absence. I'm resigning."

And with that, in August of 1987 she gave herself full-time to her fledging ministry, Living His Life Abundantly, an apostolate committed to sharing the love of Jesus Christ through all aspects of the media. Today, her radio interview show airs each weekday, and she can be seen weekly on "The Abundant Life," a mainstay on Eternal Word Television Network's program lineup since 1993. In addition, she's working on her second book, which she describes as "a response to the radical feminism that seeks to redefine the very nature of woman."

Her success is undeniable, but ironically, Benkovic initially shunned media ministry.

"In prayer time I would sense the Lord asking, 'Will you let me prepare you?'" she says. "I told him yes, but for what? I thought media ministry was a prideful thought and I tried to pray it away for six months."

But the promptings only got stronger.

Plus, she was unprepared for such work or so she thought. In retrospect she knows that seven years as an English teacher honed her writing and research skills and taught her how to pull information from her students. And in her second career in insurance, she learned how to conduct interviews with clients and communicate important information to them.

She continued praying but kept secret the call to evangelize through media. Then toward the end of 1986, she received a phone call from her friend Diane Brown. The two women knew each other through the House of Prayer, a local prayer community, and they had worked together on the diocese's charismatic commission. Brown wanted to meet with Benkovic; she had a proposition for her.

On the way to the meeting, Benkovic told the Lord, "I have a successful, full-time job as an insurance agent, a husband and three children. I don't have time to volunteer, but if there's something you're calling me to do, speak through this woman."

He did. St. Petersburg, Florida's 100,000-watt diocesan radio station, WBVM, wanted the House of Prayer to host a regular program, Brown told her.

"The secret thoughts of my heart were laid bare," says Benkovic, who immediately told her friend of the calling she'd been avoiding. "She listened and then told me that my taking the show was exactly the right thing to do. It was a moment between the divine and the human. I knew this was a life-changing moment, and from this moment forward, things would never be the same. Tears sprang to my eyes and I was sitting in a moment of grace."

By February of 1987 her interview program was on the radio, 10 minutes each weekday, and shortly thereafter, LHLA became one of four ministries under the auspices of the Marian Servants of Divine Providence, an association of the Catholic lay faithful established in the diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida.

"We structure our personal times of prayer through daily Mass, recitation of the rosary and the Liturgy of the Hours. Our spirituality is basically charismatic with a strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. After Christ Himself, she's the one we hope to imitate. We also have a tremendous devotion to our Lord's presence in the Eucharist."

Such spirituality was not always a part of Benkovic's life. Born in 1950, she graduated from Penn State in 1972 and married the following year. She was raised Catholic, but fell away from her faith during her college years. Through God's providence, a friendship with a Catholic charismatic woman brought her back home to the Church in the early 1980s.

Now, through her apostolate of evangelization and prayer at LHLA, she's doing the same for others. "The response we receive from our viewers is amazing," she says. "People tell me they've watched 'The Abundant Life' for a full year and the program led them back to the Church. I had an ob/gyn doctor wrote me to say he had been heavily steeped in New Age, but as a result of watching the program for awhile, he broke completely with the New Age and came back to the Catholic Church, and he gave up prescribing contraceptives. Now he has a Natural Family Planning-based medical practice!"

The shows that generate the greatest response include those that focus on apologetics, conversion stories, sola scriptura, and those that deal with parenting issues.

"Catholics are hungry to understand how their Catholic Faith should influence their daily life," Benkovic explains. "Our apostolate is aimed at feeding that hunger with the joy and confidence that comes from knowing Christ."

Living His Life Abundantly can be contacted at: 702 Bayview Ave., Clearwater, FL 34619, (800) 558-5452. Their Web site is located at www.divineprovidence.org.

A New Tool for Bishops

Millennium Evangelization Project

There was a time when Joseph Stibora actually shunned national publicity for the Millennium Evangelization Project (MEP) he directs. He was busy getting the program up and running when moral theologian Janet Smith, one of the project's founders, mentioned it at a talk she gave in Virginia. A diocesan paper there wrote about the project, and Stibora says he was "suddenly swamped with calls, letters and e-mail from people wanting to get involved."

"It scared me," he says, explaining that as a one-man office, he was devoting too much time to responding to all the inquiries.

These days, however, things are quite different. With a $100,000 grant from a large Catholic foundation, he was able to hire a staff of three and purchase office equipment. That's when the real work began. Responding to the Holy Father's exhortation to prepare for the Jubilee Year 2000, the Millennium Evangelization Project works with dioceses around the country to identify and train people as evangelists.

"We seek those who wish to deepen their own love for Christ and their understanding of Catholic teaching and to help others to do so as well," according to the Project's information. While each bishop is responsible to prepare his diocese for the millennium, the Millennium Evangelization Project assists them.

"We provide material they can incorporate into their own program if they want," Stibora says. "We work with them to select the teams of speakers who'll present the material and we train them. We send a training video and background material to these people and get them to start practicing."

Then Stibora visits team members, helping them perfect their presentation, which includes a talk backed by a whiz-bang slide presentation that includes everything from great art to children's drawings.

The benefits of having a team available to speak within its own diocese are twofold. First, it's less expensive for a parish or organization to have a local speaker come to a parish and give a presentation. There are no room and board or transportation costs to worry about. Also, says Stibora, "There are a lot of people all around the country who want to be involved in evangelization."

"The real benefit," he explains, "is we're able to train people to become active evangelists."

This is in keeping with Pope John Paul II's reminder during his 1995 U.S. visit that "Christ wants to go to many places in the world, and to enter many hearts, through you."

Stibora, a doctoral candidate in political philosophy at the University of Dallas, explains that the Millennium Evangelization Project will provide three conferences, each consisting of four talks, for each of the years leading up to the millennium, starting in 1997.

The first year, one of the conference themes is "The Culture of Life vs. the Culture of Death." It will include talks entitled: "The Modern vs. the Christian View of Man," "The Myths of Overpopulation," "The Modern vs. the Christian View of Sexuality," and "Euthanasia and Capital Punishment." The presentations are written by theologians, including Dr. Janet Smith and Douglas Bushman, who initially presented the Project concept to bishops at a Dallas meeting in February of 1995.

The enthusiastic response motivated them to press forward with the Project, and today, its episcopal advisors include Cardinals Adam Maida, Anthony Bevilaqua, and John O'Connor, Archbishops Eusebius Beltran and Harry Flynn, and Bishops Charles Grahmann and John Myers.

The response to the Millennium Evangelization Project from lay Catholics eager to evangelize has been just as enthusiastic, says Stibora. "The incredible commitment so many people have for the Church," he says, "and their ardent desire to share their Faith has really been striking."

Contact the Millennium Evangelization Project at the University of Dallas, 1845 E. Northgate Dr., Irving, TX, 75062-4736, call (972) 721-4063, or e-mail: mep@acad.udallas.edu.

At First He Was Stumped Now He's on the Stump

San Juan Catholic Seminars

After years of seeing Catholics leave the Church for Mormonism, Fundamentalism, and the Jehovah's Witnesses, Jim Burnham had enough. It was time to take action. In 1992, he and his father, the late David Burnham, arranged for a Catholic apologist to visit their town of Farmington, NM, to conduct an apologetics seminar that would strengthen lay Catholics in their area, who were being targeted by door-to-door proselytizers.

"The seminar was great," Burnham recalls. "Many of those who attended were under assault by anti-Catholics, so they were eager to learn how to better explain and defend the Faith from the Bible." Jim himself was a burgeoning lay apologist; later that summer he and a local priest, Father Frank Chacon, presented a series of apologetics lectures on how to defend the Faith.

Once again, the response was enthusiastic - so much so that the 29-year-old Burnham and Father Chacon reworked their presentations into Beginning Apologetics, a booklet designed to teach lay Catholics practical apologetics. They've since produced a second booklet, Beginning Apologetics II: Answering the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. Shortly after that Burnham helped found a Catholic apologetics apostolate called San Juan Catholic Seminars.

Originally formed to give seminars, the apostolate has grown to include tracts and tapes, apologetics study materials, and an association of lay apologists, men and women who meet monthly to study the doctrines of the Faith and evangelization strategies. Their efforts are paying off: membership is growing, Catholics are being strengthened and energized, and quite a number of conversions to the Church have come as a result of their efforts.

While most members don't have any formal background in theology, they all have a deep love for Christ and His Church and are committed to learning how to share the Faith. Some of the group's most effective evangelizers are homemakers. Burnham himself is married, the father of three, and busy with the everyday cares of earning a living for his family.

"We focus on evangelizing using whatever opportunities come up in a typical day. That's why we promote practical apologetics and evangelization techniques." Under the direction of Burnham and Father Chacon, members get a "basic training" in how to explain and defend the Faith using the Bible and Church history.

"Most Catholics these days aren't ready to explain or defend the Faith, they don't have answers to the difficult objections anti-Catholics pose and, what's worse, they often lack the confidence to do so, even if they do know the answers. But when they take time to study basic apologetics, they gain a great sense of confidence in being Catholic. Strengthening that confidence is one of the most important elements of our apostolate," he explains.

Burnham learned this lesson the hard way while he was a student at Hillsdale University, completing his degree in philosophy. "I was confronted on campus by zealous Evangelicals who challenged me, asking questions like, 'Why do you Catholics worship Mary?' and, 'Why do Catholics believe the pope is infallible? Those things aren't in the Bible!'"

"That's when I realized that the religious education I received during nine years of Catholic school hadn't prepared me to go toe-to-toe with these Protestants. I knew what I believed as a Catholic," he says, "but very little about why. I think that's the situation most Catholics are in. I had the conviction that Catholic teaching is right, but I had no idea where to look in the Bible to explain these teachings."

Many Catholics facing this situation would shy away from such discussions. Not Jim Burnham. Rather than roll-over, he told the Evangelicals he'd get the answers to their questions, and then he hit the books and sought advice from a wise priest he knew.

"Father encouraged me to study apologetics," Burnham remembers. "He reminded me that since the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Christ, it can deal with any challenge, withstand any scrutiny. 'You personally might not have the answer to a given question, but the answers are there,' he reassured me. 'Don't lose heart. Roll up your sleeves and find the answers.'"

This sage advice launched Jim's apologetics education and, eventually, his apostolate. He started by reading the works of Frank Sheed, G.K. Chesterton, and other Catholic apologists, and he devoured resources from St. Joseph's Communications and Catholic Answers. Before long he was known on campus as "that Catholic who can defend his Faith from the Bible."

"San Juan Catholic Seminars gives lay Catholics a ray of encouragement that they too can do this," Burnham explains, adding with a chuckle, "They look at me and say, 'This guy had the same anemic religious formation I did. He was able to reopen his Bible, rediscover the answers, and recommit himself to sharing the Faith confidently. Heck, if he can do it, I can do it.'"

Jim Burnham and San Juan Catholic Seminars can be reached at P.O. Box 5253, Farmington, NM 87499-5253, (505) 326-3572 voice, (505) 327-6811 fax.