Called to Excellence
By Mercedes Shirts
Nathan’s journey to establishing Seeking Excellence begins with his own conversion story. Born and raised Lutheran in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Nathan attended St. Margaret Mary Catholic School and converted to Catholicism in eighth grade.
“At age thirteen, moved by the Holy Spirit, I decided that I wanted to become Catholic,” Nathan recalls. “That was the identity I wanted to accept...who God said I was, who the Church said I was, so I became the first Catholic in my family.”
After struggling to live his faith wholeheartedly during high school, Nathan decided to attend Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Nathan’s college experience strengthened his faith and call to discipleship.
“I had a great conversion of heart (at Mount St. Mary’s) and discovered that I had a passion for evangelization and really loved public speaking…and helping people have their own personal breakthroughs,” Nathan explains.
In addition to forming his faith, Nathan recalls a pivotal moment at Mount St. Mary’s that would later serve as a catalyst for starting Seeking Excellence.
“Fall or spring of freshman year, I had Dr. Terese Rupp (as my professor) at Mount St. Mary's University for Western Civilization,” Nathan recalls. “The only thing I remember learning in that class is about the Renaissance man and...this concept of being good at everything. They were trained in the arts, they were good at music, they were skilled fighters, they were educated men, they were gentlemen, knowledgeable at politics. (I thought) that is how we should live our lives.”
Nathan’s vision for living a fulfilled and accomplished life continued to grow throughout his time in the military. As a freshman in college, he joined Army ROTC, and in 2015 he was commissioned as an Army Infantry Officer. After graduating from the U.S. Army Airborne School and completing infantry training, Nathan graduated from U.S. Army Ranger School. He then moved to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he served for three years in the 82nd Airborne Division, with one combat deployment to Afghanistan in 2017.
Though devoted to prayer and evangelizing others, Nathan experienced many challenges in living out his faith in the military. “My Army years were extremely challenging and difficult...there was not a lot of support around me...it was lonely, and hard, and tiring,” Nathan says. “My Army time was testing my grit and perseverance...It taught me a lot of hard-earned lessons both as a man and as a Catholic.”
Nathan separated from the military in 2019 and worked at Dynamic Catholic as a parish consultant for one year. He recently moved to Atchison, Kansas, where he currently works at Benedictine College as a resident director.
In transitioning jobs and moving, Nathan has always embraced the Army values of grit, resiliency and extreme ownership. These values, the concept of living like a Renaissance man and the desire to evangelize others set a strong foundation for establishing Seeking Excellence.
Nathan’s dream for Seeking Excellence started to become a reality when he led a group of Dynamic Catholic colleagues in Exodus-90, a 90-day spiritual exercise for men.
“One of the things I added on (to Exodus-90) was that every week I wrote a reflection and sent it out to people. I had 80 emails that I was sending these out to,” Nathan says.
Sharing his experience of Exodus-90 through blogging inspired Nathan to keep writing. In April of 2020, Nathan’s friend Bob Dougherty created a blogging website for Nathan to share his writing with others. The website also served as a platform for Holy Happy Hours, an online event hosted by Nathan in which he would discuss topics about life and faith with a priest and a female guest.
Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, Nathan wrote a three part blog series on faith and racism. “That got us a lot of traction and attention,” he says. Nathan explains that in July he was ready to take Seeking Excellence to the next level. He recruited a team, rebranded, and, in August, he relaunched the organization, creating a podcast and gaining nonprofit status.
In relaunching and further developing Seeking Excellence’s philosophy, Nathan felt called to invite people out of living a life of complacency and into living a life of extreme ownership rooted in the Catholic faith.
“People often hear the message that it’s okay to take a day off,” Nathan explains. “The Church cannot take a day off….Rest is important, rejuvenating is important, the sabbath is important, but you should read every day, you should pray every day, you should go to Mass every Sunday...These basic things that people make excuses for, I am trying to pull people out of that.”
Initially, Nathan and his team focused the mission of Seeking Excellence on helping others reach their full potential mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually, but he felt like the mission was incomplete.
“A lot of people talk about the four aspects of your person: emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual...but what I realized is that your life has more areas than that. That might be your person, but what are all these areas of life that we have to live.”
Nathan began to discover that people were leaving the Church because of neglect or hardship in some area of life. To combat this, Nathan and his team established the Seven Pillars of Excellence: mental, emotional, physical, professional, financial, social, and spiritual. Seeking Excellence focuses on forming people in these seven areas to help them grow in virtue and to live the life God desires for them.
These seven pillars are directed into creating three identities: disciple, ambassador and soldier for Christ (Matthew 28: 19-20). “If you are those three things well, you're going to live out the seven pillars well,” Nathan explains.
In addition to helping people achieve excellence in the seven pillars, Seeking Excellence also emphasizes the importance of taking extreme ownership for one’s life.
Nathan’s definition for extreme ownership is rooted in Saint Augustine of Hippo’s words to “Pray as if everything depended on God. Work as if everything depended on you.”
“Extreme ownership as a Catholic is hard because...we have the two extremes in the world where people are telling you to always take time off or people are telling you to go, go, go.” Nathan says. “In the world, and the Church, we hear God will take care of everything, everything happens for a reason. If I take extreme ownership of my prayer life and make sure that I am pursuing the two fundamental missions of our Church, to pursue personal holiness and to make disciples of all nations...The Lord’s will for my life will happen.”
As Seeking Excellence continues to grow, Nathan plans to implement a 12-month coaching program in the spring of 2021 that will provide one-on-one training in forming healthy habits and teaching people how to take extreme ownership of every area of their lives. The structure of this program is influenced by the Army’s model of leadership.
“(This program) gives purpose, direction and motivation,” Nathan explains. “People need to be challenged first, and then they need to be equipped with what they need for the journey. They need the wisdom, knowledge and practical application...We inspire them along the way with accountability and different check-ins that keep people inspired and motivated.”
In creating the model for coaching sessions, Nathan was inspired by Aristotle's words, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
“(Aristotle’s words) are exactly the foundation of what we believe, and what I want other people to experience, because it is very clear that people are lost, and hopeless, and disparaged, and confused and living without purpose. We want to change that,” Nathan says.
Eventually, Nathan would like to start a program that forms people to be leaders or coaches of Seeking Excellence chapters on college campuses. “We would love to have people that are committing to this lifestyle.”
As Seeking Excellence dives into transforming lives, Nathan emphasizes the importance of rooting their identity in the notion that true fulfillment comes from living a mission-focused life that glorifies God.
“Any other lifestyle that I have taken has never come close to giving me the peace, love, joy and fulfillment that I feel when I am really on top of my game and taking responsibility for the seven pillars of my life,” Nathan reflects. “When you are a disciple and the Lord sends you out into the world on your mission in your life, how beautiful it is that He is always with you.”
