As the Augustine Institute grows, it remains focused on its founding mission

In April 2024, Augustine Institute announced its plans to move its operations to a new campus in the Archdiocese of St. Louis. The educational and evangelization apostolate has been based in Denver since its founding in 2005. The school explained that it will “begin transitioning its operations over the next few years” to the former Boeing Leadership Center in Florissant, Missouri, which is located outside of downtown St. Louis.

Tim Gray, the President of Augustine Institute, recently sat down to talk in detail about the purchase and move, the mission of Augustine Institute, evangelization and catechesis, and plans for future projects.

CWR: We’re sitting here at the stunning new campus in St. Louis, Missouri. Can you tell us about how you got here—that is, purchased this campus?

Tim Gray: It’s pretty hard to believe. We heard through alumni in the Archdiocese of St. Louis about this property being for sale, that it was a special property, and we ought to look at it. So we did, and it amazed us because it uniquely fit our needs; the need for our graduate school to have housing on campus, but also the education center that the facilit had that was state of the art and already equipped for distance education.

It also had a campus that could host events, training, retreats, and conferences. That was something that we felt would help our mission as well. So, with St. Louis being in a central location, being an extraordinarily beautiful and well-equipped campus, we thought that this would be something that would be a springboard for our mission and growth.

CWR: When the Augustine Institute was founded, it seems the primary mission was to start a graduate school of theology. Along the way, it has certainly become a fair amount more. How has that growth occurred, and what has been your response to it?

Tim Gray: We thought we could serve the Church by teaching and education—our mission is to renew the church through Catholic education. The graduate school is the heart of that. And then our teaching expanded to parish programming and other areas of education, like curriculum development and education through curriculum for Catholic schools. That came kind of organically as we did technology and video for our online distance education program. We then had these great assets that allowed us to do video catechesis.

We started with Symbolon, and that exploded. The growth for us was not what we originally planned, but it became organic and it really grew and expanded the reach of our graduate school. Now we could have faculty teaching on Formed.org and through educational platforms like the Lighthouse Talks and the other things that we do. That has worked out well for us.

CWR: How have you seen the impact of those non-graduate school programs on the Church across the United States?

Tim Gray: It grew far beyond what we even expected. When we did the first program, Symbolon, we were in over 3000 parishes by the first year. We were amazed how much people have a hunger for really good educational content, but also high-quality video, and we were able to bring those two things together. Formed, our digital platform, which hosts that kind of content, is in over half the parishes in the United States. We have over 2 million unique users a quarter on our platforms. We’re reaching millions of people, and that’s been exciting for us.

CWR: We have so many great tools for teaching and evangelization, but they’re not going to make a difference without being in the hands of master craftsmen. With your core mission being to teach teachers, how are you trying to strike the right balance between creating content and teaching teachers?

Tim Gray: What we see is that there are two things that come together. One is that we have to train people for ministry and that’s what the graduate school does; it’s intensive training to help them be successful. If you went to West Point and got training, when you get deployed, you would still need tools to be successful. You have training, but you still need tools. You’d need night vision goggles and a Humvee and all the other equipment.

What we want to do is train people for ministry in the church, but we also want to equip them with tools. Those tools are things like the Formed platform, which is for catechists and teachers in parishes. In Catholic schools, we have a curriculum called Word of Life. We want to give programs that are going to be powerful tools for people as well as training, and those two things create a synergy.

CWR: As you sit here at the very beginning of this new opportunity, how do you envision the future of the Augustine Institute and how it serves the Church?

Tim Gray: Yes. This is a watershed moment for us. To have a 286-acre campus that has four residence buildings where we can house people here. It’s going to allow us to bring in over 10,000 people a year to our retreats and conferences on campus. What we see is this is a new chapter, same story—it’s an educational apostolate that seeks to innovate Catholic education. But now we have a whole new platform that is a physical platform to complement our digital platforms. So now we think this is going to be transformative for the on-campus student experience, which we’re already seeing. It creates community and deeper opportunities for formation for our on-campus students.

But even our Distance Education students will be able to come here for intensive classes and we can host them here for retreats and for intensive classes. That’s going to be transformative for our Distance Ed students. It’s also going to allow us to bring in teachers who are using our Word of Life curriculum and catechists who use our parish tools and materials. They can come here for training, they can come here for retreats. This is going to help us engage with those who are using our materials and equip them even more powerfully than ever before.

CWR: Last year, many dioceses reported an increase in those completing the OCIA process. The Archdiocese here in St. Louis is reporting that Mass attendance has increased during the October counts two years in a row. The Eucharistic Revival is continuing and it seems to be having a real impact. We’ve heard for years about the “New Evangelization” of Pope St. John Paul II—and some have said maybe it wasn’t happening, or that at least unrealized—but we’re starting to see some of the fruit. Where do you see the New Evangelization starting to bear fruit?

Tim Gray: You mentioned, for example, the Eucharistic Congress and seeing the bishops and the priests and all the people who were there. Certainly, cultural religious practice and Church numbers are still in decline, but you’re seeing a resurgence that’s going to be able to go against the current, against the winds. The strength of that resurgence is being seen in things like the Eucharistic Congress. It’s being seen in young clergy who, though our number of clergy is down, but the ones that we have are much more devoted.

They’re not doing this because they’re following the culture or following what their family had expected of them. They’re doing this because they are on fire for Christ and they want to help renew the Church. When you look at the seminarians that we have, when you look at the young people that we see coming for their Masters at the Augustine Institute, these are people with deep convictions and a deep desire to renew the Church. That’s exciting, that kind of fervor.

One of the things that you’ll see now is there are more Bible studies, men’s groups, and women’s groups—these things did not exist 40 years ago. Even though there were more people at Church forty years ago, now what you’re seeing is the engagement, the intensity of the engagement of those who are coming to Church is much broader and deeper than it was a generation ago, even though the total numbers, the aggregate numbers are different.

CWR: The Catechism talks about the “right and duty” of lay people to evangelize and, that “their activity in ecclesial communities is so necessary that for the most part the apostle of pastors is not fully effective without it” (CCC 900).  Can you talk about the need to invest in lay leaders?

Tim Gray: That’s a great quote from the Catechism talking about how the pastoral mission of the priest cannot be lived without the laity. And I look at it as the clergy are like the officer corps, but you cannot fight a war with an officer corps. They’re going to get wiped out pretty fast. If there’s going to be a new evangelization, it cannot simply be led solely by the clergy. They need the enlisted troops. And that’s what the laity is.

And so, without the laity, the clergy—as the “officer corps”, so to speak—cannot function properly and they cannot fight properly and they cannot win. For us to reverse the tide and the culture war, we need to enlist the laity. They need to be educated. They need to be well-formed to not only sustain their faith but to spread it. And once we do that, that’s where you’re going to see the Church starting to revive more and more. We’re seeing that with our alumni and the schools that they’ve gone to that have turned around after they were dying and declining. They recapture their Catholic identity and now they’re growing and have waiting lists. You can see this with so many of our alumni in parishes that are being revived and where there’s a new dynamism in life.

As John Paul II foretold, it will be the age of the laity. And our mission is to educate the laity and form them for the service of the Church. That’s really at the heart of what we’re doing. What makes us unique is that we’re not providing a Franciscan spirituality or an Ignatian spirituality or a Dominican spirituality. We’re lay teachers and theologians who are giving a lay spirituality for the laity.

CWR: You’re preparing leaders to serve in the New Evangelization, so what are those essential characteristics of those leaders that you are focused on?

Tim Gray: I would say that there are several characteristics of somebody who gets formed by the Augustine Institute for the mission and life of the Church. One is prayer. We emphasize the importance of prayer life; we teach all our students prayer and Lectio Divina. It’s a key focus, having a relationship with God through the Word of God and being able to do that. That’s very important.

The second charism is we’re very biblically based. We return to the sources. And the source is the Word of God. We look at Catholic theology as a theology that comes out of the Word of God. That’s the basis. And there’s oftentimes a temptation to get into “theologian-ology” where you’re studying theologians and instead, we’re studying the Word of God, the source, that he speaks to us, and that enlivens. Vatican II said that Scripture is the soul of sacred theology, and we’re trying to put the soul back into theology to animate it.

And third, as a lay organization, we are trying to help people live out the life of holiness and the call to be children of God in the midst of the world. Whether it’s the Amen app that helps people pray, or it’s the Formed platform that helps parents show good content to their kids and themselves, we’re trying to equip the laity to live the faith deeply and to understand it more comprehensively.

CWR: You’re almost twenty years into this project. The Institute is now the largest Catholic graduate school in the United States, with hundreds of online students, and with the new campus, hoping to increase in-person enrollment. Where do you see the biggest impact right now in terms of alumni? Where are they making the biggest difference?

Tim Gray:  We’re seeing our alums have a big impact in Catholic schools and leading and teaching in Catholic schools. You know, right now there’s a lot of renewal going on in Catholic schools and trying to recapture Catholic identity. That’s the number one recognized weakness in Catholic schools. The weakness is not in pedagogy or in educational content or levels—it’s in Catholic identity. Our students are having an impact in bringing a strong Catholic identity and a strong sense of the tradition and resources of Catholic education and bringing that to the Catholic schools. That’s a big area of growth and impact.

And I think also in leadership pastorally. We train our students in the pastoral theology degree to do internships and practical training on how to bring good catechesis to parish life. And we’re seeing our alumni doing that in parishes, which is having a big impact. We’re excited about both those things.

CWR: You have four MA degrees offered right now: Theology, Pastoral Theology, Sacred Scripture, and Catholic Education. What’s next?

Tim Gray: The Scripture degree is new. Just recently, the Society of Biblical Literature hosted a conference for academic theologians. You have to get your papers approved and many scholars have trouble getting approved. Two of our students got their academic papers approved and presented them in front of scholars at that conference. We’re excited about this new MA in Scripture and that we’re going to be having students who are going to be professionally and academically very successful, getting their doctorates eventually and being teachers.

Our new Masters in Catholic education is a program that we’re really excited about. We’re starting a new program called Teach for Christ. We’ll bring teachers here for intensives in the summers, then they’ll go off to schools and study and teach at the same time. Down the road, we can see starting a PhD program.

CWR: Is there anything else you want people to know about the Augustine Institute and your future now that you’re on this new campus?

Tim Gray: I think that part of the new chapter for us is we’re looking forward to hosting special retreats and conferences here. You don’t have to get a master’s degree to be able to come here. We’re going to have retreats on marriage, prayer, and spirituality. Our donors gave this not just as a gift to us, but as a gift to the Church,

And while we’ll be having our own retreats and conferences here, we’re also going to partner with other Catholic organizations. Collaboration is one of our core values, so we’re excited to work with other Catholic organizations that want to use this great facility to host their own events.

(Note: This interview with lightly edited for length and clarity.)