C4C’s Brad Endres: Equipping Young Adults for a Lifetime

Story by Shelley Wolf

Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series based on conversations with each member of the Crossroads 4 Christ National Servant Leadership Team. Next up is Brad Endres, director of mission advancement for Crossroads 4 Christ, a young adult ministry. Endres is also known for his work as a former FOCUS missionary at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. He is stepping down later this month to return to his home state of Texas.

MANCHESTER – What’s so important about reigniting the Catholic faith in young adults? “They’re the future of the Church,” says Brad Endres, director of mission advancement for Crossroads 4 Christ young adult ministry.

In addition to fundraising for the lay apostolate, Endres is well known among its members, dropping in on weekly chapter meetings. He acknowledges that young adulthood is a passing phase of life, but a very important one.

“We see that people are not going to be young adults forever, but how do we equip them to be on lifelong mission after young adult life? How do we equip them to transform their parish?” he asks. “If you read our vision statement, it’s ‘Young adults reinvigorating the life of the Church.’ That’s a big, bold statement, but it’s what drives us.”

Crossroads 4 Christ, a lay apostolate, aims to assist the Catholic Church by reaching beyond the parish walls, calling young people back to their Catholic faith through weekly evening gatherings at six different church locations across the state. Their invitation to young people is clear.

“For this period, for this season of life, come and see, come and be formed. Then go back out wherever you land – even when you’re not a young adult – to radically transform your parish and your family,” Endres says. “And that’s what changes the world. It truly does.”

It wasn’t always so challenging to attract and form young people in their faith, he says, but times have changed.

“The parish was given the role of forming young adults, especially as they married and had a family. And that was the model for a long time,” Endres explains. However, young people today are waiting longer to get married, are not having as many children, and some are choosing to leave organized religion all together, making it difficult for parish priests to reach them.

“Young adults aren’t looking for Church anymore. They’re looking for what I was looking for, for fulfillment in the world,” Endres says. “So we have to be able to go out and reach them and share with them the goodness of the Gospel – it is the fullness of what they’re looking for. Jesus Christ is everything. Man yearns for God.”

The future of the Church depends on everyone working together to bring young people back, he says, “not with a heavy hand but with an invitation.” Endres looks to the writings of Pope Francis in the Joy of the Gospel and to Pope St. John Paul II before him, who championed the New Evangelization.

“We have to bring them back with an invitation to consider who Jesus is and let them choose that for themselves. So it takes a lot more than just telling them what the truth is. It’s really showing them who Jesus is,” Endres explains. “At Crossroads 4 Christ, that’s kind of our big thing, walking with them and accompanying them to accept the reality of who Jesus is in a deeper way.”

To that end, Crossroads 4 Christ offers weekly meetings at six chapters throughout the state. During the gatherings, leaders provide short 10-minute spiritual talks, allow time for attendees to share how God is working in their lives, and partner with parish priests to offer an hour of adoration in front of the Blessed Sacrament in a church.

Endres, now 32, has experienced the power of conversion in his own faith life and attributes it to other young Catholic evangelizers who were there to guide him.

Born in Munster, Texas, he attended the University of Texas at Austin, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in athletic training, and later earned a master’s degree in kinesiology, better known as sports physiology, at the University of Connecticut.

During his undergraduate years in Texas, he says he was stumbling in his Catholic faith. “I was kind of in a low spot with my faith. I went to Mass but I didn’t trust that God cared for me,” he recalls. Toward the end of his undergrad days, he says he was feeling burned out and took a step back, telling God, “All right, it’s not working. I’m going to give you a chance.”

At a retreat at the University of Texas, he met devout young Catholics who showed him a different, deeper dimension to living his Catholic faith.

“It was student run and there were a lot of talks led by students. They were just basically sharing their faith experiences and talking about a Catholic lifestyle in a way that I had never heard. I met people who changed my perspective and gave me reason to believe that a Catholic life was full, was happy and was joyful,” he says.

“Then I went to confession and to adoration for the first time ever, I was 23 or 24, and that was radical, just a breaking down of all these walls I had built,” Endres admits. “Then they had a Passion Play. During that play was when Jesus spoke in a way that showed he was actually there for me. So for the first time ever, my faith life became real. And I wanted to be Catholic.”

That retreat sparked a new direction. “I recognized, ‘If this is true and real, my life needs to change.’ So I began seeking out relationships with people who could teach me and show me the way,” Endres says. He began to make new friends who were Catholic, including FOCUS missionaries. “That was a paradigm shift for sure.”

Still in Texas at this time, Endres, who was considering graduate school at the University of Connecticut, opted to be a FOCUS missionary instead. Coincidentally, FOCUS happened to assign him to UConn, where he worked as a FOCUS campus missionary team director in Storrs from 2014 to 2016, evangelizing the faith to college students. From that experience, he says, he learned what it really takes to share the faith with others.

“I learned that fruitful evangelization is only possible by grounding ourselves in God’s grace, by coming to know and follow Jesus,” he explains. “To make disciples is his great commission to us, but we must make disciples who first know and love Jesus Christ. From this place, we can play our part in sending these disciples out into the world to bring the Gospel with them wherever they find themselves.”

After two years as a FOCUS missionary, Endres left the ministry to attend graduate school at UConn, immersing himself in his studies and two part-time jobs. Again, too busy for his faith, he says, he began to drift spiritually. He knew something was missing. “I was falling back into my old habits,” he admits.

Then Endres happened to cross paths with Alex Soucy and Travis Moran, who started Crossroads 4 Christ, and they invited him to join. “That’s when I became better friends with them. I saw that’s where God was leading me as it became bigger and more structured,” he says of Crossroads 4 Christ.

At first he was a Servant Team Leader in the original Columbia chapter, sharing his FOCUS skills with the organizers of Crossroads 4 Christ. Then in June 2019, as the organization grew, he was the first to realize they could not keep up with it just by volunteering during their off hours. He saw the need for full-time positions.

“My wife Mary and I, we discerned this is what we were called to do and committed to fundraising. Within a couple of weeks, Alex Soucy and Bonnie Srubas also said yes, so it was the three of us and Travis Moran,” he says, who created full-time positions for themselves and sought the funds to support the ministry.

Despite the personal fulfillment he has found in this young adult apostolate, Endres’ life has changed recently and new priorities have emerged. After two years working full-time for Crossroads 4 Christ and more than 10 years away from his family of origin, his last day with Crossroads 4 Christ is June 18. He is returning to his home state of Texas with his wife, child, and a second child on the way.

“It’s time to go back to raise a family and to be closer to my parents, who are aging,” he says. Still, Endres says he and his wife are not done evangelizing the faith. They’re exploring new possibilities for putting their missionary disciple skills to work in Texas. “We’re looking at different ways to continue working on mission for the Church.”

For more information on Crossroads 4 Christ chapters and weekly meetings, visit: crossroadsforchrist.org/chapters.

In case you missed it, click here to read more about Crossroads 4 Christ and its executive director Alex Soucy.