Hallow Founder Alex Jones shares challenges, success with Fort Worth Legatus chapter
courtesy photo/Hallow
FORT WORTH — The corporate world can be challenging, and occasionally even hostile, for high-level executives who want to live out their Catholic beliefs in the workplace. One organization that empowers and equips business leaders to integrate their faith and professional lives is Legatus.
On April 9, Alex Jones, founder of Hallow app — spoke to about 90 at the Fort Worth Legatus chapter’s monthly meeting. Drawn from his own faith journey, Jones’ message was simple, yet powerful: Keep getting back up. God is never done.
Raised Catholic in a close-knit family, Jones fell away from his faith in high school and considered himself an agnostic or atheist. After graduating from college, Jones discovered meditation and became fascinated with the contemplative and spiritual life. Because traveling to India to learn more proved expensive, he looked online and began exploring secular meditation apps daily.
“I used them every day and thought they were great,” he recalled. “Mostly it was just sit and focus on your breath for a while. It was structured. They were like a personal guide.”
Jones started having strange experiences and ideas during meditation, so he reached out to a priest and asked, “Is there some sort of intersection between meditation and Jesus?” The priest responded, “Yeah, it’s called prayer.” From that point, Jones began his journey into the contemplative and meditative life of the Catholic Church.
“It changed my life [and] brought me back to my faith relationship with the Lord. It was a two-sided thing that felt real and alive,” he said. “That is the beginning of Hallow, and it’s the beginning of my real relationship with Jesus.”
From personal to professional
Soon after, Jones’ newfound personal prayer life ignited a professional trajectory that led to the launch of Hallow in 2018. “The goal of Hallow is that you need Jesus, that you have a relationship with Jesus, that you speak to Jesus, that you listen to Him first, that you let Him into your heart,” he said. “And all He does, when you do that, is tell you how much He loves you.”
Wanting to build a software application that was high quality and comparable to today’s high-tech standards, Jones said his mission was clear. “We felt like God was calling us to try to reach out to those who were most fallen away,” he said.
Soliciting funds from investors to financially support Hallow was an uphill battle. After dozens of rejections, Jones began to have doubts and experienced a great deal of anxiety. “I was so stressed. It was this weight [that] if this thing didn't happen, it wouldn't exist, and I so desperately wanted it to exist,” he recalled.
So Jones did what he hoped his app would inspire others to do: he prayed.
He said to God, “I feel like You told me to do this thing. The weapons formed against me certainly seem to be prospering and it’s too heavy. It’s too much weight. I can’t do it.”
Jones ended his prayer with a promise, saying, “If the thing works, You will always get the credit. I will never trick myself into thinking that I’m some sort of successful entrepreneur, evangelist, or whatever. I know it’s You. I’m just this broken thing You put in this place.
“But at the same time, if it doesn’t work out, that’s on You; it’s not on me,” he added, drawing a laugh from the audience. Jones remembered feeling a weight being lifted from him immediately. “That is the story of my whole spiritual life, which is grasping something and then letting go.”
Answered prayer
Shortly after his prayer, the financial investor Jones most hoped to partner with offered to fund everything. Jones also received a few additional offers from other investors. “The Lord is waiting for us to give up — or surrender I guess is the more appropriate word,” he added. “But for me it’s give up, and then He comes through.”
Seven years later, with 32 million downloads across 150 countries and over one billion prayers prayed, Hallow is the #1 global prayer and meditation app. However, even amid Hallow’s growing success, Jones remains focused on his mission to promote prayer as a vehicle for love. “Prayer is useless if it does not lead to a life with deeper love,” he said. “And what is prayer? Prayer is just sitting and letting the Lord love you.”
When asked how Fort Worth Legatus can pray for him, Jones responded, “Pray [about] how we might reach out to those who have most fallen away [and for] all of us to come to a deeper relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and that we might build up His Bride on Earth, which is His Church.”
Katie Karl and her husband, Bob, have been members of Fort Worth Legatus for nearly three years. She observed Jones to be both humble and passionate about the Hallow ministry. “His openness to God for direction was sincere,” she recalled. “Alex did not give up when hardship or adversities arose. Instead, he consistently offers up the plans for Hallow to God and openly acknowledges that all glory belongs to God.”
Karl said she was inspired by Jones’ handling of his struggles and difficulties during the early stages of Hallow. “The process of working through them with faith and surrender[ing] to God’s will served as a reminder to us to do the same,” she said. “Offer these difficulties up to Christ, but also have an open heart and be prepared to listen to what Jesus has to say.”
A group for Catholic business professionals
Speakers like Jones inspire Legatus members to bring these messages to their employees in the workplace and to their parish. Michael Halloran, who will begin a two-year term as chapter president next year, said he hopes to “bring more like-minded Catholics together in a way that doesn’t just help each other, but can impact and help our diocese as well.
“[Legatus] is connecting some of the best minds in our diocese. Members are active at every level of leadership in their own parishes, church finance councils, school advisory boards, volunteering, the Advancement Foundation, and Catholic Charities,” he explained. “They have a heart for spreading the kingdom, and are trying to use their skills and abilities to do just that in almost every aspect of both parish and diocesan life.”
Legatus, which is Latin for “ambassador,” is an international group of Catholic executives and spouses with more than 5,500 members in 90 chapters across North America. The group was founded when Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino’s Pizza and Ave Maria University, had a powerful encounter with Pope John Paul II in 1987 and felt called to create opportunities for high-level executives to develop faith-inspired leadership through a community of peer support, spiritual formation, and tools needed to bring a Catholic worldview into the boardroom.
Halloran is the vice president of the Fort Worth chapter and a managing partner of Clearfork Wealth Management. He and his wife, Marna, have been members since 2019.
“We joined largely because I'm a relatively young executive, and I know that the business world can damage your relationship with Christ unless you find other like-minded and experienced people who share the same values and live their faith in their business dealings,” he said. “I also knew that, as an individual, I would need extra support and to draw on the wisdom of others.”
Primarily attracting C-level executives, Legatus “is very much aimed at people who have to make impactful business decisions,” Halloran said. “The purpose is to create fellowship among people who have similar experiences, similar needs, and can draw on each other.”
The Fort Worth chapter’s 90 members are invited to participate in a monthly meeting that includes confession, holy Mass, and Adoration or praying the Rosary at St. Patrick Cathedral. This is followed by a cocktail reception, dinner, and a speaker at the Fort Worth Club.
“It’s a guaranteed date night that I get to go on with my wife,” Halloran continued. “That exercise alone was a real shift for us because, like many other people who have young children and are busy in their careers, it can be really hard to spend time together and to do so in a way that is uplifting to our marriage.”
The mentoring aspect — personally, professionally, and spiritually — is another benefit. “One of the things I love, especially given just the wide range of ages, is I get to draw on the wisdom of men who have beautiful marriages, or even some that have had challenges and learned how to overcome them in a way that glorified Christ and strengthened their families,” Halloran reflected.
Chris Stark, Fort Worth chapter president and a member since 2017, said the diversity of members and parishes represented add to the unique quality of Legatus. “We’ve made real good friends with people from different churches and have great discussions about what’s happening around the diocese,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s about building relationships and friendships and trying to help [members] on their journey.”
Couples become interested in Legatus for a variety of reasons. “For some people, it’s the fellowship of the other members. I’ve developed some of the most wonderful friendships that I think I’ve ever had as a result of just that fellowship,” said Halloran. “For others, it can be the networking, the opportunity to source talent or help other people find employment within the group. For others, it’s the very high-quality speakers.”
Both Halloran and Stark said that many members participate in monthly men’s and women’s forums where smaller gatherings foster prayer, mentoring, and deeper connection.