There was no place doing this work the way it needed to be done.
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Everything I trained in pointed
to the same answer: virtue.
I’m a Catholic husband, father of three, graduate of Franciscan University, former collegiate athlete, certified high-performance coach, virtue coach, and trained and practiced as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.
My years as a therapist gave me invaluable training in human behavior, relationships, emotional dynamics, evidence-based techniques, and helping people understand the patterns keeping them stuck. I don’t reject that formation — I bring the best of it with me. But over time, I became convinced that psychology alone couldn’t provide the complete framework I was looking for.
weren’t sick — they were unformed.
They loved God, desired holiness, and wanted to lead their families well, but they had never been taught how virtue is actually formed.
That realization led me deeper into Thomistic psychology and high-performance coaching. In St. Thomas Aquinas, I found a comprehensive understanding of the human person — body and soul, intellect, will, and passions — ordered toward authentic freedom and ultimately God. In performance coaching, I found the systematic pursuit of excellence: assessment, deliberate practice, habit formation, accountability, and measurable growth.
I founded Serviam Institute to bring these worlds together.
We combine the insight and relational expertise of my clinical background, the practical rigor of high-performance coaching, and the timeless wisdom of Catholic and Thomistic psychology to help men overcome vice, cultivate virtue, and become the husbands, fathers, leaders, and saints God created them to be.
understand themselves. It’s to form them.
Three decades of forming men,
before it had a name.
John Sablan is a Catholic coach, speaker, author and evangelist who integrates Thomistic psychology with leadership and life experience to inspire personal, spiritual and vocational transformation. A husband of over 30 years, father of three and grandfather of eight, he draws on his own family life and ministry to guide other men in marriage, fatherhood and faith-filled leadership.
He holds a BS in Computer Information Systems, an MBA and a graduate certificate in theology from the Augustine Institute. After eight years of formation in the permanent diaconate he discerned out and continued his theological and pastoral work through coaching and evangelization. He has trained under Fr. Chad Ripperger in Thomistic psychology, focused on virtue formation grounded in the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, and is a life professed Third Order Dominican.
He is the founder of World Ablaze Inc., an apostolate for evangelization, discipleship and building up the domestic church.
His media and ministry work includes hosting the Real Men series on Shalom World TV, co-creating the What’s Holding You Back? series for men, contributing to That Man Is You by Paradisus Dei, and authoring Christ Like: After God’s Own Heart.
The problem we believe God called us to solve
Most Catholic men are not badly catechized so much as unformed. They know the faith, attend Mass, go to confession — and remain governed by anger, lust or sloth they were never trained to fight. The Church has always taught that we need the sacraments and we need virtue. Almost nobody is teaching men how to build the virtues.
St. Michael gave, against the refusal.
That is the whole of our work: to form men who can govern themselves, lead their homes, and become who God is calling them to be.
about where you actually stand.
Ascend through virtue.
Verso l’alto.