New head of Evangelization, Communication ready for challenges

In July, when the Lawrenceville School’s Summer Scholars program ended, a new beginning opened up for one of its teachers, Adam Carlisle. With extensive experience in the education field, including nearly 15 years as an Advanced Placement instructor, Carlisle decided to leave teaching and serve the Church.

“My faith has always been important to me,” stated Carlisle. He has always had a personal relationship with God, and a prayer life.

“I have always tried to find ways to share my faith as best as I could even when I was working at a secular boarding school.”

Now, as the secretary for the diocesan Secretariat for Evangelization and Communication, Carlisle is in a position where, he said, he can “help build up the kingdom of God.” He added it is a position he should have pursued for the past 20 plus years, but instead took a massive ‘detour’ into a teaching and coaching career.

The son of Theresa Buonpane and Dale P. Carlisle, he was raised in Bernardsville, where his mother grew up and still lives. He graduated from Bernardsville High School in 1991.

Carlisle was baptized and raised in the Methodist Church. In his sophomore year of high school, however, his faith was to change. Carlisle had become friends with two evangelical Protestant boys who were involved in a car accident. One of them died. Recalling that time, Carlisle said it opened his eyes to the reality of life and death. It led him to become a more outspoken advocate for his faith.

Being a three-sport athlete in high school also changed Carlisle’s life. He played football and baseball and wanted to go professional. However, he broke his collarbone wrestling, which put an end to him ever playing organized sports again. “My whole life changed,” Carlisle said.

At the suggestion of his guidance counselor, in his junior year he turned to acting and singing. He became serious about school and as he noted, “pretty serious about my faith,” which led him to attend Houghton College, a Christian liberal arts college in upstate New York.

It was as an undergraduate studying history that started Carlisle on the road to the Catholic faith. St. John Henry Newman, who had a huge influence on him, once stated, “to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” Carlisle agreed. “In studying the early history of the Church I began to ask questions and when I started to answer those questions I started moving closer and closer to Rome. By the time I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in history from college, I was basically Catholic,” Carlisle said.

He then began postgraduate studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he converted to Catholicism. At Princeton University, Carlisle worked with Albert J. Raboteau, a renowned scholar whose life was dedicated to studying Christianity among enslaved Black people. With his professor, Carlisle conducted research on the “American Catholic Tribune,” the nation’s first Black Catholic newspaper.

In 1998, Carlisle was ready to pursue his next degree and learn more about his faith. He enrolled at The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. His classes were held at the university’s Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. He earned his Master of Theological Studies degree from Catholic University in 2000.

While in graduate school, through a professor at the John Paul II Institute, Carlisle secured a part-time position as an editorial assistant at “Communio,” a federation of theological journals founded in 1972 by then-Father and future Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, and many others. In his position, Carlisle edited, proofread, and formatted manuscripts for the journal.

Just before he graduated from Catholic University, Carlisle was recruited by Christianity.com, an ecumenical website for different religions to be the company’s Catholic editor. He was responsible for populating the Catholic channel and worked with authors throughout the country. However, six months later, like many .coms at the time, Christianity.com went out of business and he lost his job. He had moved to Virginia to work for the company and now needed to find another position.

Soon after leaving Christianity.com, Carlisle began teaching at Princess Anne High School in Virginia Beach. “From that time until last year, I was teaching in secondary school systems,” Carlisle said.

In 2001, he accepted a position at the Highlands School in Irving, Texas. It was a small, Catholic, co-educational school and a year after starting at the Highlands, he decided to enroll at the University of Dallas, a Catholic institution also in Irving. There he pursued part-time a Master of Arts in American Studies degree, which he received in 2004.

When Carlisle and his wife, Kathleen, moved to Texas, they had planned to stay for only five years, but with the birth of their daughter, Elizabeth, in 2004, they decided it was time to move back to where most of their family lived. Carlisle sought a position in a private school within two hours of New Jersey. After interviewing at a number of schools, he chose Wyoming Seminary College Preparatory School (Sem) in Kingston, Pennsylvania. He taught there for 15 years and said he achieved his greatest success there, especially with the school’s Mock Trial program, which, under Carlisle’s guidance, was among the top programs in the country.

Despite his success at Sem, Carlisle and his wife talked many times about returning to New Jersey. They had been married in 2000, and besides Elizabeth now had two sons, Stephen, who was born in 2006, and Patrick, who was born in 2008. Being close to family became a priority. The opportunity to do so came in 2019. One of Carlisle’s aunts called to tell him Delbarton School, a private all-male Catholic college-preparatory school in Morristown, was looking for a history teacher. He applied and was offered the position. 

At Delbarton, a Benedictine Catholic school for boys, Carlisle once again accomplished much. He coached the school’s nationally ranked Speech and Debate Program, started a mock trial team, led a successful Thanksgiving Food Drive, and served as a retreat leader on a KAIROS retreat for juniors.

At the end of this past July, however, Carlisle decided it was again time for a change. He said he wanted to return to teaching in a co-educational school with a diverse student population. At Sem, he explained, there were 23 countries represented and dozens of states. As he had done a number of times before, he contacted the Lawrenceville School to inquire if they were hiring. On its website, it states the school’s mission is to challenge a diverse community of promising young people to lead lives of learning, integrity, and high purpose. Its three-week Summer Scholars Program, held in July, is designed to introduce scholars to the school’s Harkness teaching method. Carlisle was accepted as a faculty member and said Lawrenceville was interested in hiring him to coach its mock trial team.

Providentially, when he found the job description for the Diocese of Metuchen’s Secretary for Evangelization and Communication, he said he realized, “That’s what I should have been doing. This is the type of job I should have applied for in 2000 when I graduated from Catholic University.”

He began his new career for the Church this past September. As secretary, Carlisle oversees the diocesan Office of Communications and Public Relations including “The Catholic Spirit,” the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, the Office of Evangelization, the Office of RCIA, and the Office of Pontifical Mission Societies.

“We have monumental challenges ahead of us,” Carlisle said. He mentioned the need to get Catholics back to Mass and finding ways to communicate the faith especially to young people. He said he was inspired by how Bishop James F. Checchio combined Evangelization and Communication.

“There is a symbiotic relationship between the offices,” he continued. “We need to be forward thinking and innovative on the Communications side, but also use those innovative techniques and new platforms, whether it be social media, YouTube, or podcasts to spread the Gospel message and, as Bishop Checchio said, ‘to light a fire in the heart of our world.’”