In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, just south of Denver in Greenwood Village, Colorado, sits an institution with an outsized impact on Catholic life in America and beyond. The Augustine Institute doesn't have the centuries-old reputation of Catholic University or Notre Dame, but what it lacks in history, it makes up for in focused intensity and cultural relevance.
Founded in 2005, the Augustine Institute exists to serve the new evangelization through two interconnected missions: training Catholic leaders at the graduate level and producing high-quality Catholic media content that reaches millions. It's a combination that makes the Institute unique among Catholic educational institutions and increasingly important in a Church that needs both intellectual depth and cultural engagement.
The Genesis of the Augustine Institute
The Augustine Institute emerged from a conviction that the Catholic Church in America needed something it didn't quite have, a graduate school laser-focused on forming Catholics who could articulate, defend, and live the faith in the modern secular world.
The founders saw that many Catholics, even those with college degrees, lacked a deep understanding of their faith. They couldn't explain Church teaching beyond "because the Church says so." They struggled to connect ancient doctrine to contemporary life. And they had few resources to help them grow in their understanding.
At the same time, Catholic parishes and dioceses were crying out for well-formed lay leaders, catechists, youth ministers, and Catholic school teachers who could do more than just show up, who could truly form others in the faith. Seminaries were training priests, but who was training the lay leaders that parishes increasingly depended on?
The Augustine Institute set out to fill that gap. From the beginning, the vision was clear: graduate-level theological education specifically designed for laypeople seeking to serve the Church, whether professionally or as deeply formed volunteers. Not a watered-down version of seminary training, but rigorous theology taught with attention to how laypeople actually serve and minister.
This focus on the new evangelization, the re-evangelization of baptized Catholics who've drifted from the faith, shaped everything about the Institute's approach. The curriculum, the faculty, the culture, all oriented toward forming Catholics who could help others encounter Christ and grow in relationship with Him.
Graduate Programs: Training Leaders with Substance
The core of the Augustine Institute's mission is its graduate programs in theology and ministry. These aren't programs for people who want to study theology as an academic exercise, they're for people who want to serve.
The Institute offers both Master of Arts and Doctorate degrees with various concentrations: systematic theology, biblical theology, moral theology, catechetics and evangelization, liturgical and sacramental theology. Students can study on campus in Greenwood Village or through distance learning programs that serve Catholics nationwide who can't relocate.
What sets Augustine Institute programs apart is the integration of intellectual formation with spiritual formation and practical ministry training. Students don't just learn about Catholic theology, they learn how to communicate it, how to form others in it, how to live it in the messiness of real life.
The faculty includes impressive credentials, doctoral degrees from places like Rome's Pontifical Universities, combined with real ministry experience. Professors aren't just academics; they're people who've done youth ministry, parish catechesis, teaching, apologetics. They understand both the intellectual content and the practical challenges of sharing the faith in contemporary America.
This combination produces graduates who can operate at multiple levels. They can engage sophisticated theological arguments but also explain the faith to a confirmation class of bored teenagers. They can write academic papers but also craft parish bulletin inserts that actually get read. They can appreciate the subtleties of Thomistic metaphysics but also answer the average Catholic's questions about why the Church teaches what it does about marriage, sexuality, suffering, or social justice.
Explore other Catholic education institutions that are forming the next generation of Catholic leaders and teachers.
FORMED: Digital Platform for the New Evangelization
While the graduate programs form hundreds of Catholic leaders personally, the Institute's media arm, FORMED, reaches millions.
Launched in 2012, FORMED started as an innovative subscription platform designed to be "the Catholic Netflix." It offered parishes and individuals unlimited streaming access to quality Catholic content: documentaries, study programs, movies, audio talks, and ebooks. The idea was to give Catholics a one-stop digital library of faith formation resources.
FORMED was ambitious from the start, but it has grown beyond even the founders' initial vision. Today, it hosts thousands of hours of content, from beloved classics like Bishop Barron's Catholicism series to new productions created specifically for the platform. It includes content for every age, from toddlers to seniors, and for Catholics at every stage of faith formation.
But FORMED isn't just a distribution platform for existing content. The Augustine Institute has become a significant producer of Catholic media, creating new documentaries, studies, and programs that set the standard for quality Catholic content.
Productions like Symbolon, Altaration, and Opening the Word combine theological depth with visual storytelling that engages modern audiences. These aren't amateur productions, they're created with attention to cinematography, music, pacing, and design that respects viewers' expectations of quality while serving the mission of evangelization.
FORMED's parish subscription model creates a powerful dynamic. When a parish subscribes, every parishioner gets free access to the entire library. This means parish catechists, youth ministers, and small group leaders can all assign content from FORMED, knowing participants can access it easily. It turns individual formation into something more communal and systematic.
The impact is measurable. Thousands of parishes use FORMED content as the backbone of their faith formation programs. Millions of Catholics have encountered content they never would have found otherwise. And crucially, it provides Catholic families with wholesome, faith-affirming media in a culture dominated by content that ranges from banal to actively hostile to Christian values.
The Integration of Education and Media
What makes the Augustine Institute particularly powerful is how its graduate programs and media production work together synergistically.
Faculty and students at the Institute often contribute to FORMED content, appearing in programs, writing scripts, consulting on theological accuracy. This means FORMED benefits from real scholarly expertise, not just slick production.
Meanwhile, graduate students learn from participating in media production. They discover how to translate complex theology into accessible content. They understand the power and limitations of video, audio, and digital formats for communicating the faith. They see what actually engages audiences versus what falls flat.
This integration prepares students for a reality of ministry in the 21st century: effective Catholic leaders need media literacy and digital fluency, not just knowledge of theology and ministry. They need to understand how people actually consume content and information in the digital age.
The Institute has also pioneered "digital evangelization" as an explicit ministry area. Students can study not just theology but the specific skills and strategies of reaching people through digital media, how to create compelling content, build online communities, use social media effectively for evangelization.
This makes Augustine Institute graduates particularly valuable to dioceses and parishes trying to figure out how to reach Catholics and potential converts in a media-saturated world. They bring both theological formation and practical digital skills.
Addressing Real Needs in Real Time
One of the Augustine Institute's strengths is its ability to respond to emerging needs in the Church without the bureaucratic inertia that can slow larger, older institutions.
When parishes needed better marriage preparation programs, the Institute created Beloved, a comprehensive program that approaches marriage preparation as genuine catechesis and evangelization, not just a hoop to jump through.
When Catholics started asking questions about Amoris Laetitia and the family, the Institute produced theological resources and formed experts who could engage the questions pastorally and intellectually.
When COVID-19 hit and parishes scrambled to figure out digital ministry, FORMED became a crucial resource, and the Institute quickly produced content specifically addressing pandemic challenges.
This responsiveness stems from the Institute's relatively small size and focused mission. Without trying to be everything to everyone, it can identify specific needs in Catholic formation and evangelization and develop targeted responses.
The result is an institution that punches above its weight in terms of influence. Walk into Catholic parish offices or diocesan bureaucracy across the country, and you'll find Augustine Institute graduates working as directors of faith formation, youth ministers, catechetical leaders, and in other key positions. And you'll find FORMED subscriptions providing content for everything from RCIA to marriage prep to adult faith formation.
Catholic Education for a New Era
The Augustine Institute represents a particular vision of Catholic education for the new evangelization era. It's not trying to recreate the Catholic universities of the mid-20th century, when Catholic culture was strong and institutions could assume students arrived with solid faith formation.
Instead, it addresses the reality of where the Church actually is: in a missionary situation, needing to evangelize and catechize even baptized Catholics, operating in a culture that's largely post-Christian and sometimes actively hostile to Christianity.
This requires a different approach to education. Not less rigorous intellectually, if anything, more rigorous, because students need to be able to engage secular academic and cultural arguments. But also more intentionally formative, more practically focused, more aware of the real challenges people face in living and sharing the faith today.
The Institute's model of combining graduate education with media production also suggests something important about the future of Catholic education. Institutions that can both form leaders and reach masses through media will likely be increasingly important. The Church needs both, the deep personal formation that only comes through intensive study and mentoring, and the broad reach that digital media enables.
Discover more Catholic educational institutions through our directory, from schools to homeschool resources to specialized formation programs.
The Colorado Catholic Ecosystem
The Augustine Institute's location in Greenwood Village, just outside Denver, places it in one of the most vibrant Catholic communities in America. The Archdiocese of Denver, under Archbishop Samuel Aquila, has become known for its commitment to faithful Catholic teaching, strong vocations, and dynamic parish life.
This context matters. The Institute benefits from being in a diocese that supports and utilizes its work. Denver-area Catholics staff and attend the Institute, and local parishes serve as laboratories for testing new approaches to ministry and formation.
The presence of other Catholic institutions in Colorado, from FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) headquarters to Regis University to multiple seminaries, creates an ecosystem where Catholic leaders, educators, and institutions can collaborate and learn from each other.
For students attending in person, this means formation happens in a context of living Catholic culture, not isolated in an academic bubble. They see vigorous Catholic life in action, with full churches, strong youth ministries, and engaged laypeople.
Browse other Catholic businesses and institutions in Colorado to see the breadth of the state's Catholic community.
Supporting Catholic Education and Media
The Augustine Institute operates on a model that combines tuition revenue, FORMED subscriptions, and philanthropic support. When individuals, parishes, and dioceses choose to support the Institute's work, through graduate program tuition, FORMED subscriptions, or direct donations, they're investing in the formation of Catholic leaders and the production of Catholic media that will impact many more people than they might directly reach themselves.
This model of supporting Catholic education and media is increasingly important. The Church in America can't rely on government funding (nor should it want to, given the strings that often attach). It can't depend on the endowments that older institutions built up over centuries. It needs Catholics who understand that funding Catholic education and media is a form of stewardship and evangelization.
When your parish subscribes to FORMED, you're not just getting access to content, you're supporting the creation of new Catholic media and the formation of the people who create it. When you support someone pursuing graduate studies at the Augustine Institute, you're investing in a person who will spend decades serving the Church and forming others.
The 46,000+ Catholic businesses in the Discover Catholic Business directory include educational institutions like the Augustine Institute that are doing essential work for the Church's mission. Supporting them isn't just charity, it's strategic investment in the Church's future.
What We Can Learn from the Augustine Institute
The Augustine Institute's success offers lessons for Catholic institutions and leaders thinking about effective approaches to the new evangelization.
First, focus matters. The Institute doesn't try to be a full-service Catholic university offering everything from business degrees to athletic programs. It does a few things intensely well: graduate theological education and Catholic media production. This focus allows it to achieve excellence and impact beyond what its size might suggest.
Second, integration creates synergy. By connecting education and media, the Institute multiplies the impact of both. Students become better ministers through media training. Media becomes more substantial through academic involvement. Neither side would be as strong alone.
Third, responsiveness to real needs trumps preservation of traditional structures. The Institute wasn't created to duplicate existing institutions but to address needs those institutions weren't fully meeting. This requires freedom from "we've always done it this way" thinking.
Fourth, quality matters in media and education. Cutting corners on production quality or intellectual rigor might save money short-term but undermines long-term impact and credibility. The Institute's commitment to excellence in both academics and media production has been crucial to its influence.
Finally, the new evangelization requires new institutions willing to try new approaches. The Catholic Church doesn't need less tradition or less faithfulness to doctrine, it needs creative fidelity, finding new ways to transmit the unchanged faith to changed circumstances.
The Augustine Institute in Greenwood Village, Colorado, demonstrates what this can look like: deeply faithful to Catholic teaching, intellectually rigorous, practically focused, culturally engaged, and constantly innovating in how it forms leaders and reaches audiences. That's a model worth studying and supporting.
Sources:
- Augustine Institute, official website and mission statement
- Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte (At the Beginning of the New Millennium), 2001
- Archbishop Charles Chaput, Strangers in a Strange Land, Henry Holt and Co., 2017