Strong Catholic Dad 3.0: We've Learned and We're Better

We’ve been hard at work over the last year or so evaluating Strong Catholic Dad, trying to figure out what’s been effective, what hasn’t, and how we need to change in order to better accomplish our mission of helping every father become a strong Catholic dad. The ins and outs of that journey will be the subject of forthcoming blog posts, but for now, I’d like to announce some fairly major changes.

1. We’ve fundamentally altered the composition of the See for Yourself guides.
• We found that a lot of dads were having trouble carving out an hour every week to complete a guide, so we decided to trim them from 8-11 videos each down to 1-4. Now it’ll only take about 15 minutes to finish a guide, making it that much easier for dads to commit to consistency.
• By trimming the number of videos, we were able to include a new section in each guide called the To Do. These are usually fun opportunities for you and your kids to share stories about you and your family’s more impactful memories, which helps further the relationship-building aspect so foundational to the See for Yourself approach.
• We went through each guide and updated the questions with the goal of making them springboards for interaction. Some of the questions in earlier guides weren’t quite as engaging as we would have liked them to be, and that’s been fixed in this latest update.
• Overall, we made a concerted effort to improve the relationship-building aspect of the guides, which we came to realize is the main reason why they are so effective.
• There are currently 50+ of the updated guides live on the site, and more will be added on a weekly basis.
2. I have committed to consistently releasing Fuel for the Fire content.
• The mission of Strong Catholic Dad isn’t to get everyone to sign up for the See for Yourself guides, though we believe they really are a fantastic tool providing the missing link for dads to easily and consistently connect with their kids. The mission is to strengthen fathers to become strong Catholic dads.
• Over the last year it has become more and more clear that the Lord is calling me to focus more heavily on that broader mission of strengthening dads. This will take the form of me releasing at least one new Fuel for the Fire video or blog post per week, aimed at sharing successes, failures and tips about practically living out faith and fatherhood.
• The hope is that these Fuel for the Fire posts will help dads along their journey, whether or not they choose to utilize the See for Yourself approach.
3. We’ve upgraded the functionality of the website.
• My son John-Andrew has spent the last couple of months working hard to ensure that our website is the best it can be. The first step was upgrading to a newer, dedicated server which should result in a significantly faster site. No more waiting around for pages to load!
• We’ve upgraded the design of the guides, making navigating and using them a much easier process. We’ve also included the ability to preview any of the videos in a guide without having to mark the previous ones as complete.
• We’ve added extensively to the See for Yourself, Getting Started, and FAQ & Tips pages so that you can better appreciate the powerful ideas behind the See for Yourself approach, and be able to implement it more effectively in your family.
• We’ve increased the font sizes on the site, making it easier to navigate and read, especially on mobile.
• We’ve added unique thumbnails for each guide, making the guides a lot easier to differentiate. These are really cool!
4. We’ve re-launched our Facebook and Instagram pages.
• If you’re on one of those platforms, give us a follow!
5. We’ve committed to pray for you.
• I don’t know why we hadn’t done this consistently before, but we as a team have committed to pray every day for the entire Strong Catholic Dad community – everyone who uses the guides, follows the site, or comes across Strong Catholic Dad in any way.

I’ll be writing another post explaining the impetus behind these changes and some of what’s been going on behind the scenes at Strong Catholic Dad, but in the meantime, if you haven’t had a chance to use the guides yet, give them a shot!

If you’re not currently a paying subscriber (even if you have been in the past), you’ll automatically get a free 1-month trial if you sign up again. If you are currently a subscriber, thank you! You’ll be receiving some encouragement via email over the coming weeks.

Please pray for Strong Catholic Dad, and for every father on his own journey to become a strong Catholic dad. Know that you are all in my prayers.

God bless,

Michael O’Rourke

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