Parishioner Profile: Kelly Steichen

Kelly Steichen, you are not an unfamiliar face around this church and school.

I have been going to school here since I was two years old. I was in preschool, then elementary and middle school. I’ve been a parishioner here my entire life.

 

You attended Bishop Kelley, then OSU majoring in communication sciences and disorders. What was your passion while you were there?

Many different things. It started with music and service and leadership. I invest a lot of myself in those things and found a lot of my identity in leadership.

When the COVID pandemic stripped away those leadership positions, I found myself in a place where I looked into myself and asked myself, “Kelly, who are you really?” I answered myself, “You are more than just a leader, more that someone who is loved, you are a daughter of God.” In these part two years, my biggest passion has been everything surrounding the Catholic faith – leading Bible studies, discipling young woman, one on one teaching, igniting that fire.

My life has changed since then.

 

What changed?

For the next two years I’m going to be at the University of Kentucky as a college campus missionary. This is a very difficult job right after graduating college, but I will be doing a lot of the same things that I was doing as a senior in college: discipling younger women, leading Bible study. But I get to do this full-time! My entire job is loving students for the sake of bringing them closer to the heart of Christ.

 

How do you do that? The University of Kentucky doesn’t sound like an exclusively Catholic campus.

FOCUS is the Fellowship of Catholic University Students. This is the organization that I was hired through to be a missionary. They partner with 172 campuses across the nation. There is a team at each of the 172 campuses. I’m on a team of four.

We work out of the Newman centers, Catholic student centers, and basically what we are doing is to reach out to students. First, we build a friendship with them. Then we invite them into a friendship with Christ, a deeper life of prayer and the sacraments, and into the community of the Catholic Church.

I’m going to focus on the Greek students at the University of Kentucky. FOCUS hires me on specifically as a Greek missionary. I want to love on those girls because I know it’s a gift to be in a sorority but it comes with some challenges.

 

You’re an extrovert. How do you minister to introverts?

I’m actually more a little bit more of an introvert than people think. I really do need my alone time every single day.

Those large group settings are effective because focused large group events allow new people to experience Catholic community. What does it mean to be around fully alive Catholics? What does having fun with fully alive Catholics mean? That might not be a dance party.

For a new person, I might invite her to go for a walk. For the first three or four times we meet, we may not talk about Jesus. That’s okay because they might not be ready to receive that yet. It’s really just reading the person. I try to be in tune with the Holy Spirit. I pray, “Holy Spirit, please tell me when I am supposed to bring Your Name into this conversation.”

That is what I’m there for. That’s why I am going to be a missionary, but sometimes people just need to be loved. I don’t want them to think that I have an ulterior motive. I want to give them something greater than my own love.

 

How can parishioners at the Church of Saint Mary help you?

Something really beautiful that we get to do as focused missionaries is model the method of the Master. Jesus Christ Himself had a support team. When he traveled with his apostles, there was a group of men and women supplying for his needs. As well, He would ask people and tell them what He needed.

As a full-time missionary, I need a support team as well. Yes, I am fundraising for my team and finacing my own salary.

I would love to partner with people at the Church of Saint Mary to join my own support team in a specific way of monthly gifts because it is a two-year commitment. However if a one-time gift is preferable, that’s awesome too.

To support me, there’s a simple link: focus.org/missionaries/kelly-steichen. It’s a fun little page. You can click Support Kelly and see a bunch of different options. You can choose the amount and the frequency.