John Michael Lucido

I got kicked out of college my freshman year. I moved back home to Dallas, defeated, certain I had wasted everything. And it was there, in that failure, that I opened a Bible and read words that cracked me open: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." I had spent my whole life chasing affirmation through athletics, academics, alcohol, and leadership, convinced that if I performed well enough, I would finally feel lovable. God met me in the wreckage and told me something different.

I got back into Texas A&M, returned to campus a different man, and reconnected with Emily, a woman who was living for the same thing I had just discovered: to know Jesus Christ and make him known. She had walked her own road, raised in a nondenominational home in Tyler, Texas, before discerning her way into full communion with the Catholic Church. We married in January 2019 and said yes together to a life on mission.

Eight years, four children, Eden, Judah, Lawrence, and Becket, and one cross-country move to Denver later, I now serve as Senior Director of Recruitment and Retention at FOCUS, building the systems and investing in the leaders who are forming the next generation of missionaries on college campuses across the country. Judah, our second, was born with Down Syndrome, and his life has only deepened our conviction that weakness is precisely where God does his best work.

I host the All IN Podcast, where I have conversations on faith, mission, and what it looks like to live all in for Christ in every vocation and season of life. Through my Substack Call Him Abba, I write on Catholic identity, masculine formation, and the spiritual life for men who are hungry for something deeper than what the world is offering them. As a speaker, I bring that same message to parishes, conferences, and Catholic communities across the country, calling men in particular to embrace the suffering and weakness that God wants to transform into mission. In my current role leading recruitment and retention at FOCUS, I work at the intersection of faith and leadership, helping build the culture, systems, and people that will carry the Church's mission forward for the next generation. All of it, the writing, the speaking, the organizational work, flows from the same conviction: when we stop running from our weakness and let God meet us there, we are filled with magnanimity, and we cry out, Send me, Lord.