Jeff Cavins’ career took off early on, being plucked by Mother Angelica to host an EWTN show and founding The Great Adventure Bible Study program. Now in his mid-60s, his career is showing no signs of slowing.
Cavins, a member of St. Vincent de Paul in Brooklyn Park and a grandfather of three, is as busy as ever. He’s currently working on a big project for The Great Adventure, teaching at The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, participating in a daily reflection with Jonathan Roumie on the Catholic app Hallow, contributing to the hit podcast “The Catechism in a Year” with host Father Mike Schmitz and leading pilgrimages. This January will mark his 62nd trip to the Holy Land. “Retiring seems very foreign to me,” Cavins said. “It would mean that somebody would make me stop doing what I love.”
Q) What a wild ride you’ve been on! You’ve lived your own great adventure.
A) I know. It’s been one surprise after another. You couldn’t write it!
Someone asked me, “Why did all that happen to you?” And I said, “It’s because I have one extraordinary gift: I like to walk through open doors. If there’s an open door, I’ll enter!”
Q) Mother Angelica recognized your talent early on and even asked you to be her substitute when she was sick.
A) I was so humbled, and I had to ask her, “Why me?” She said, “I know you’re thoroughly Catholic, but you sound like a Protestant.” I tell people I’m bilingual: I speak Protestant and Catholic with no accent on either.
Q) She knew about your reversion to the Catholic Church after being a Protestant pastor and saw that what made you different was an advantage. Your story uniquely qualified you. How affirming.
A) That’s right. So many things came together to make my story. It’s true of anyone. Nobody else could be you and do what you’re doing. It’s this unique recipe that God uses.
Q) You’ve collaborated with many people but ultimately are self-employed. Looking back, can you see how God provided?
A) It’s always been enough. In the early days, when I was a pastor, I was only making about $300 a month, and I had to drive a school bus for St. Louis Park just to make ends meet so I could live in my mother-in-law’s basement. I went through a rough time when my friends were becoming doctors and making a lot more money. I learned to live on a shoestring budget.
When I put together the Bible Timeline, I was 25, and the truth is, I’m still doing what I was doing when I was 25. I’m still amazed at the story and get a kick out of sharing it with other people. Over all these years, I wasn’t a man looking for a job. I was a man with a mission looking for opportunities. Every opportunity that came up was always related to this.
Q) Now young adults seek your advice, writing and asking how they can be the next Jeff Cavins.
A) I write back and say: “No. 1, you don’t want to be me. You want to be you. And No. 2, you don’t want to do what I’m doing, you want to do what God’s calling you to do.” I tell them: “You need to fall in love with something. Pay follows passion. Find a niche that will make a difference. Try not to be a generalist. And go after it and do it as unto the Lord. You will find your place. The Scripture says: Your gift makes room for itself.”
Q) Aging gives you an opportunity to give back.
A) As I grow older, I don’t see it as a liability. I see it as a value. Because I’m not fighting the same fight I had when I was 30 or 40. Now is the time to be a leader and a model and to pay it back. The older you get, the more magnanimous you should be. The wisdom you’ve gained is not for you. It’s to give away.
Q) And the adventure continues! Now you have the top Apple podcast with your longtime friend Father Mike Schmitz. “The Bible in a Year” debuted in 2021 on Apple at the No. 1 spot and stayed there. Then “The Catechism in a Year” debuted this year at No. 1.
A) It blew our minds. But the main thing for us was to get out of the way and just let the Holy Spirit do what the Holy Spirit wants to do.
I do think it was the right time. People were broken. They were looking for something they could depend on. They had lost hope in politics and Hollywood. It was at the right time, and it clicked.
Q) I admire how active you stay in your 60s, always learning something new.
A) I used to be a triathlete. Now I take long walks with my wife and I bike.
You have to remain fresh in your content, and the only way to do that is to study and read and take notice of what’s happening around you. So, on my phone, I’m writing down two ideas every day. “That intrigues me! I could spend a whole day studying that!” And I’m trying to become proficient at the guitar. I’ve started and stopped several times. But recently I picked it up again and it’s different this time.
I’m not proficient yet. I’m happily pathetic. But I hope over the next couple of years that I would be able to play songs and the family could sing. It brings joy to my heart to think of learning something like that. It reminds me that life isn’t over, and there’s always something out there that can point to the Lord. And I can sing praise to the Lord with that.
Q) Another passion is motorcycles. You’ve led cross-country pilgrimages on motorcycle, which became a vehicle for evangelization.
A) We’ll ride 400 miles a day, and then we’ll stop at a church and speak and then have a barbeque. We have Bluetooth on our helmets, so every day we would all pray the rosary together three times. Everywhere we went, we were witnesses. I sat down on the curb of a hotel parking lot in South Dakota with a Native American girl who, at 16, was an alcoholic, and I told her how much the Lord loves her. At a gas station in Idaho, our group — a bunch of guys in leather chaps and coats, all black — got off our bikes and prayed over a lady who was in the fourth stage of breast cancer. That kind of stuff happened daily.
I bought my first motorcycle when I was 16. I saved up money working at the Chanhassen Dinner Theater, shoveling driveways and mowing laws. It was a new 250 Yamaha — I think it was $900. I bought it at the Burnsville Yamaha, right next to Cub on 13. I loved riding it. I was free as a bird!
Q) What do you know for sure?
A) I know for sure that God is faithful even when I’m not. And I’m sure that there is a heaven and that God wants to share his life with us there, for eternity, and he’s done everything he can to try to make that possible. And I’m very sure that everything I have desired on earth has been pointing to something I will receive in heaven. Everything that has ever caught my attention on earth was pointing to something beyond that, to Jesus. I know that for sure. There’s no doubt in my mind.
