Mike Jordan Laskey is the Communications Director for the Jesuit Conference. You can read his writing at Millennial here. Editor Robert Christian interviewed him on his work, faith, and daily life.

So much of your writing—and all your communications work, really—seems built around stories. Have you always believed in the importance of narrative in articulating whatever message you are trying to convey? Were you always a storyteller? 

Can I answer this question with a story about a story? In my last job, I had to give a lot of talks to church groups about Catholic social teaching – from young kids all the way up the age spectrum. When you’re doing a lot of public speaking, you can start to sense when the audience is getting restless. You get stuff like seat-shifting and fingernail-examining. If I ever felt this happening during a talk, I would know it was time to tell a story. (And yes, to answer the last part of your question, I have always loved telling stories, especially spoken ones to a live audience.) I had a few standard go-to stories, including one about an experience I had with some folks near a homeless shelter in New York City.

Without fail, that story would always stop the fidgeting and win the listeners’ attention back. It was like a magic trick. I’m thinking as I type this about why stories work so well in this way. A good story has drama and stakes – you want to see how it ends. A good story fires up the listener’s imagination – they can put themselves into the story or identity with how a character is feeling. For these reasons (and others, certainly) a good story can be a tremendous teaching tool, as long as it comes with a “So what? What’s the point?” bit after the narrative. I mean, that’s the Jesus method of teaching: Here’s a story about a son who squandered his inheritance or a man beaten on the side of the road. And here are the big takeaways: God is all-merciful; love your neighbor with concrete actions.

What are some of the most memorable guests you’ve had on your podcast? Has anyone challenged your thinking or altered how you’ve thought about your faith or your life? 

The first-ever guest on the show once we launched it officially was the author Malcolm Gladwell, who had done a series on his own podcast about speaking like a Jesuit. It was awesome to talk to a thoughtful guy who is also an outsider – he’s not Jesuit-educated or even Catholic. Talking to Dr. Anthony Fauci in the middle of Covid was surreal. I spoke with two of my favorite musicians back to back: Craig Finn (from the band The Hold Steady) and John Darnielle (from the Mountain Goats). We’ve had incredible authors like Mary Karr and Marilynne Robinson.

One guest who changed how I thought about my faith and life was a Jesuit priest named Fr. Steve Kelly. Fr. Kelly is an anti-nuclear peace activist and has spent at least a decade of his life behind bars for disarmament actions with the Plowshares movement. I was prepared for Fr. Kelly to be a stereotypical activist – hard-edged, maybe a bit preachy and judgmental. Fr. Kelly is the exact opposite. He’s passionate, obviously, but he’s warm and gentle and unassuming. When I told him that I wouldn’t be joining him in any of his prison stays – my wife and I had three young kids at home – he was shocked I even mentioned the possibility. He sincerely believes that everyone has a distinct vocation to build the Kingdom of God on Earth, and the idea that my vocation would be precisely the same as his was nonsense. He made me feel like raising my kids to be peacemakers was just as important as his own bold activism. I felt empowered by his humility and his love of Christ.

What is the Jesuit Media Lab—and what are you hoping to accomplish with it? 

My job with the Jesuits includes hanging out on the internet, where our team is always finding creatives (writers, visual artists, podcasters, filmmakers, musicians, etc.) who drink from the well of what we call Ignatian spirituality, which is at the heart of the Jesuit mission. The founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius Loyola, developed this spirituality which places an emphasis on the imagination and the belief that God can be found in all things – which, through the almost-500 years of the Jesuits, has often included beauty and the arts.

We started the Jesuit Media Lab to gather, form, and unleash these creators. We work to build community among creators, who can often feel like they’re working alone without support. We bring in great teachers for online classes on stuff like writing, podcasting, and graphic design. And we give folks a chance to put what they’ve learned to use by publishing content on our platforms. If we can equip and empower Ignatian creators to share their gifts widely, we think that’s a great way to build up the Kingdom of God on Earth.

How does your faith shape your daily life beyond work?

My wife Gen and I have three young kids, and our desire to pass on the faith to them is a huge value for our family. We try to capitalize on the sensory explosion that is Catholicism – sacred art on the walls, shoes under the mantel for St. Nicholas Day, king cake for Epiphany, praying with sacred music, and so on. I know there are lots of people who do this way more fully than we do, but we love to see their curiosity and delight around all the stuff that makes up a Catholic year. (And once we decided to sit near the choir-with-drumset at our parish, our young son’s attention span like quintupled. He plays his own toy drums while singing church music to himself almost every day at home.)

You seem to know a million people and get along with people of all different backgrounds and beliefs. Yet your faith seems pretty countercultural. Do you think of it that way—and is there any tension between your faith and trying to live well in community with others that may not share all those same values?

I think a lot about the distinction between evangelizing and proselytizing. The latter is going up to people at, say, the bowling alley and asking them if they’ve accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. There’s no relationship there, no listening – it feels almost like spiritual violence. People I know who are great at evangelizing, on the other hand, listen first. They value quality time in person with others. They are fun and funny and accessible. They live in an irresistible way that draws people in, no matter others’ backgrounds. I bet most of us can think of Christians who live like that. After relationships are built, can we talk about faith? Sure, because there’s trust there. But if our family can try to live what we say we believe – agape practiced through hospitality, mutual support, honesty, curiosity about the world – we’ll be on the right track.

Why are you Catholic in 2024? 

Here are two answers.

Answer 1: Why are you named Robert in 2024? I mean, I guess some people change their name (or religion), but I can’t imagine doing that. As Mary Chapin Carpenter sings in her great song “The Calling,” “There was never a question of having a choice.” It’s who I am, even when I’m mad at something the institutional church does or on days I’m not entirely sure God exists. This might not sound very inspiring, and maybe even a bit nihilistic: I don’t have any choice or agency. But I find it freeing. My fundamental identity is settled. Now it’s just a lifetime of working out the details.

Answer 2: There are so many things to love about being Catholic. The Eucharist, and the fact you can wander into a Catholic Mass anywhere on Earth and have a good idea of what’s happening. The communal “here comes everyone, literally a billion people” vibe. The intellectual tradition – literature, science (the Big Bang theorist was a priest!), architecture, philosophy, theology. Beauty. Sacramental imagination that finds evidence for the divine everywhere. The saints. The feasts. The central belief that love is the reason something exists instead of nothing. It’s pretty great!