On Monday 13 June and Tuesday 14 June 2016, the parish of St Benedict's Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, ran a 2 day conference to share their experiences of successful parish renewal. Using #DR16 will get you an overview of the conference via Twitter or Facebook.
 
I wasn't able to attend in person, but I was able to participate through the Livestream video of the plenary sessions which were uploaded to the internet. http://livestream.com/accounts/6379109
 
Here follows a rough transcript of that Plenary Part 4 and then my own response to it. Why bother? Not everyone likes getting their information via video, and going through the process of taking notes and typing them up enables the message to get internalized more and shared with others, and it also forces me to go looking for the background information and links to round things out. And there's no guarantee how long the Livestream option will be available for either.
 
This session could have been entitled 'Teamwork'
 
It was given by Patrick Lencioni via pre-taped video. He is founder and president of The Table Group, a firm dedicated to helping leaders improve their organizations’ health since 1997.He's also a co-founder of Amazing Parish.
 
Teamwork is critical in a parish.
 
In parishes there are 5 common misconceptions:
•That the pastor must be involved with and do everything. The truth is that parishes are dynamic and complex, and that each pastor needs a team to help him.
•That parish leaders should not push back at each other. The truth is that we do need to push back, but to do so with passion and love.
•That no one should ever leave a parish. The truth is that someone will always opt out. We cannot try to please everyone.
•That a parish must do everything. The truth is that you cannot do everything. A parish that won't stop doing everything will not be able to do the most important things well.
•That if I work in a parish that I don't have to work on Sundays. The truth is that Sunday is when all our customers are there, and we need to be there.
 
Teamwork
A pastor is the leader of the team and of the parish. Each pastor needs a team: a small group that shares the responsibility of the parish with him. It does not consist of every person on staff. It will have some employees and some volunteers. A pastor's leadership team is not the same as a parish council.
 
The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team.
 
Trust.
It is the foundation of a team. Lack of trust makes a team ineffective. Trust requires vulnerability of team members. The type of trust I am talking about is not predictive trust, the kind that is built up over time, but vulnerability trust. It requires that we be genuinely vulnerable with each other, so that we can say to each other, 'I messed up', 'I'm sorry'. This type of trust is counter cultural. It is critical that people get vulnerable with each other so that honest feedback can be given. Jesus was vulnerable to each other and He was God! If we keep trying to protect ourselves, that's when we allow dangerous things to enter our team.
 
Learning to trust is the most important thing to do as a team. This is an easy 15-20 minute personal history exercise that helps build trust: Go around the team, and tell each other where you grew up, where you came in the family order, and what was the most difficult challenge of your childhood. So many of us have never had these conversations with each other. It is a way of seeking like St Francis to understand each other more than to be understood. Knowing this background helps us to attribute how they are and how they do things to their backgrounds and not to bad motives.
 
Next you need some kind of tool eg Myers Briggs, Working Styles, DISC, StrengthsFinder to help people understand their personality type and to help understand how God made them. Everyone should know what the strengths, weaknesses and charisms of their pastor are eg ENTJ, ISPF. Knowing that gives you permission to say, 'Hey, Father, I think you might be steamrollering us a bit, slow down please.' Or if he is an ENFP like me, his prayer is 'O Lord, please help me focus on the things I need to do….Oh look..a bird!!' (I get easily distracted.) When you know these things it becomes safe, helpful, and your duty to call them out on stuff – and that's a very liberating thing.
 
Conflict. Trust.
Fear of conflict is the biggest barrier to church groups everywhere.
Conflict is a good thing on a team, it permits passionate disagreement in pursuit of the truth and for the best possible answer. Truth is what we are after. When we avoid conflict, we push it below the surface and out into the hallway and parking lot – and that's when conflict around an issue ferments into conflict around a person unless it is dealt with properly. Our desire for peace and harmony almost always turns into bad things behind the scenes. Our intentions are good, but destructive if we misunderstand the benefits of conflict. When there is trust between members, conflict is a good thing.
 
Commitment. Conflict. Trust.
When the time comes and you've got to make a decision, if there has been conflict, then everyone will buy into and commit to the decision. That's because everyone has had their say and has felt heard. If they don't weigh in, they won't buy in. If there has been healthy conflict, then there will be no hesitation in supporting the decision that gets made by the leader.
 
Accountability. Commitment. Conflict. Trust.
A healthy team holds each other accountable. It is the loving thing to do, to confront someone and ask them to take another approach to a situation. Too many say to themselves 'I will leave it to the pastor to sort out'. But the pastor should not be the primary source of accountability in the leadership team of a parish. You need to turn to each other and hold each other accountable. The thing is, if you wait and get the pastor involved, he often doesn't tell the person 'in trouble' who the source of the complaint was. 'Hey, I've heard … and …. isn't going so well'; 'Who told you?' : 'I don't want to say' is the kind of dialogue that breeds politics, mistrust and resentment. It is more powerful to say to someone, 'As a brother and sister in Christ, hey I think you can do better.' We owe it to Christ and to the Church to do the best that we can.
 
If the first three are in place (Trust, Conflict, Commitment) then it is actually rather easy and natural to hold each other accountable. I'm not good at doing this, because I want them to like me. I used to think it was because I cared about them and I didn't want to hold them accountable because I would make them feel bad. Actually it is because I don't want them to think that I am mean. So really I was refraining for myself and not for them. If you love someone, you have to hold them accountable for their sake. You have to be able to say, 'we are going to have this difficult conversation because it is the right thing to do' even if they might temporarily be upset with me. Accountability is critical. It is the biggest problem we find on teams.
 
Results. Accountability. Commitment. Conflict. Trust.
When people are held accountable they will focus on actually accomplishing something eg revenue, profits, customer satisfaction. In a parish the result is always to bring more people to Christ for their salvation. There is nothing more important to hold people accountable for doing a good job around.
 
Results are the result of the entire parish, not just the music, children's liturgy, finance or admin. It has to be everything. When we come together as a team we have to take our individual ministry hats off and say that everything that happens in this parish is part of my purview as a leader. We are not to be in silos, dividing up responsibilities – that's what a golf team does. We need to be more like a basketball team that shares the load and enters into each other's responsibilities out of love.
 
This is what a great team does.
They are vulnerable with each other so that they have the courage to engage each other in conflict. That conflict allows them to make a commitment, a real, true commitment. That allows them to have the courage to hold each other accountable and be committed to that, and allows them to ensure that the entire parish will be successful – not just their own ministry or area.
 
These are the 5 functional things that a good team does OR the 5 dysfunctional things (if you take the opposite) as a team.
 
I really hope and pray that everyone at this conference and the others that you meet learn to do this well. They are all biblical. Certainly the apostles had conflict with each other, and they committed to decisions about the Church. They sharpened each other as iron sharpens iron, and as a result brought people to Christ. Of course, only the Holy Spirit can help us do this, but we have to co-operate with Him in all this.
 
I encourage you to go into a period of prayer, to pray for the courage to do this and for the insight to understand where you need to work on this as a team. Ask the Holy Spirit to lead you to be the team that God wants you to be. Thank you for your service to the Church. God bless you.
 
Fr James Mallon then spoke:
 
Aquinas said that grace builds on nature. We act like human beings whether we are at home, at work, at church or at play – wherever we are. There is something to be learned from the business world because grace builds on nature – it doesn't replace nature. We need to begin and end with prayer, and pray without losing heart – but simply praying more is not going to prevent the dysfunction that prevents God from working in and through us. So anthropological insights teach us that we can lean into these insights and learn from them. And then we cry out to God for His grace, enlightenment and strength.
 
Everyone gathered here has gathered as leaders of parishes. I'm very glad that there are pastors here with teams of people – however you define that team presently. Over the last year or two when we have had requests to go and speak, and I have to choose between speaking to priests only or to priests with teams I am choosing priests with teams because we have to somehow breakout of this idea of doing it as a priest by himself. Why? Because we need that experience of working with a team.
 
Tomorrow Ron Huntley and I will talk about our experience of implementing this teaching. But I can tell you, that since we have been working out of this model with a leadership team, that as a pastor I am making better decisions than I ever made when it was just me making them. We are making decisions better than I ever did.
 
And when we move into a missionary model of church, you see we are striking off into a different direction. I like to use this image of a cabin and a wooden shack filled with wood, and the job of the person is to go from the cabin to the wood stack and back through the snow, bringing the needed wood. The easiest way to get through the snow is to walk in the footsteps of the previous person's snow tracks. I see that as a model for the maintenance church. You could flip out and replace priests every 4 or 5 years, and he would step into the tracks of the guy before him and continue going back and forth to get wood. 40-50 years ago this model worked. But if we are to be a missionary church we need to turn around and see those woods over there, that's where we are going – and the truth is – we don't know how to do it.
 
In his talk, Rick spoke about his shock that priests are not trained in leadership. Let me tell you how much training in leadership I got. I loved the seminary. We got great theological training, but we got zero training in leadership. Zero. And we trained for a model of church 'in Jerusalem' and we were 'in Babylon'. We have to have the courage to say, 'I don't know what I am doing any more and honestly I am terrified.' I feel trapped because I feel I shouldn't say that, because we are supposed to have all the answers. It is not just our priests. In leadership it is our job to set and shape the culture of any organization. If we want to be healthy – as a church then we need to be healthy. If we want a church based on community, trust and vulnerability, we need to live lives where there is trust and vulnerability. It begins with us.
 
In this time of prayer we ask the Lord again, we ask His grace to build you a solid foundation of nature. Once again we are going to take some time in prayer and call on the Holy Spirit. You might think : hey they call on the Holy Spirit a lot around here. Yes we do. If you've read the book, one of our stated values is the experience of the Holy Spirit – and we meant it. We actually do strive to do this all the time; to call on the Holy Spirit to help us.
 
I invite us to stand together, and close our eyes. We have all had moments when we know we haven't been at our best, when instead of bringing health to our team, parish etc we became toxic. Did you know that in Gallup's estimation an actively disengaged parishioner is the opposite of an engaged parishioner? It takes 4 engaged parishioners to neutralize the acidity of an actively disengaged parishioner. 4 healthy to neutralize the effects of 1 toxic person. And sometimes we can be toxic. I have been toxic. In our disagreements as staff and teams if we don't deal with conflict on issues it becomes conflict about people. Conflict without trust is politics. If that happens, then the evil one can use that conflict without trust to his advantage. If you are here as a team with disagreements, resentments, unspoken things, no trust, we ask the Lord to help you to resolve them and to shine His light. We ask Him to liberate and free us of these things and help us to see. As someone said, the problem with blind spots is that you don't know that you've got them We've all got them. Let us cry out to God. Lord we want this. Lord we believe that You can truly bring us to a place of health. Reveal to us the areas where we need repentance, a need for forgiveness, a need to lower the walls and choose trust, to choose to be vulnerable. Let us pray this song together:
 
All who are weak. All who are weary. All who are tired. All who are thirsty. All who have failed. All who are broken. Come to the Rock. Come to the Fountain. Come to the Lord. All who have sailed the river of darkness, Come to the sea, Come to be set free. All who have climbed the mountains of heartache, Reach to the stars. If you lead me Lord I will follow. Where you lead me Lord I will go. Heal me Lord, I will follow. Where you lead me Lord, I will go.
 
Lord we come to You tonight and confess, sometimes we can indeed be toxic, resentful, suspicious, jealous, we can be fearful of one another. We can harbour hurts and unforgiveness. We ask that You wash us clean and that You forgive us. That You free us from all the destructive things that prevent us from being the church that we are called to be. We ask You to come and heal us and to set us free. We lift up to Him the times that we have not been instruments of health but of toxicity. We turn to You and bring to you our fear of vulnerability. We often wear masks over our broken and woundedness, and we hunger for love. We hide and mask our weakness and our uncertainties. As Your priests we can be guilty of this – and yet be so alone in our leadership. We ask for the grace to be vulnerable within us, and ask that He would break anything that prevents us from being so. In the Acts of the Apostles, at the Council of Jerusalem, after no small dissention, they agreed. They hammered things out and engaged in conflict over issues. Lord convict us of any one person we need to forgive and any one to whom we need to go and ask for forgiveness. Bring to mind our need for reconciliation with one another. We ask for the healing grace of God, and for forgiveness and reconciliation in our teams. Go and find 2 other people and share with one another something the Lord has spoken to you tonight.
 
…………………………………………………………..
 
My own response
 
Oh I want to be part of a team like that, don't you? On our own we can accomplish so little. Together we can accomplish so much. However I still have plenty of bruises left from the last significant team I was part of, where so often I felt ignored and not listened to. Maybe if I hadn't been the only Deliberative in the group, and the others had understood the positive aspects of that signature theme, it might have been very, very different.
 
So often we only find out the context of someone's life from the eulogy at his/her funeral (as long as the eulogy contains some relevant content). Sadly it is often only then, listening to their eulogy that so many aspects of their life and behaviour begin to make sense. Thus I think Patrick Lencioni's idea about learning about each other's formative years is pure gold.
 
How good it is to hear that conflict is a good thing and not a bad thing in a healthy team. To be surrounded by 'yes men' is a very bad thing for a leader, even though superficially it simplifies their lives.
 
As a result of this talk I had to go and confront a situation, which on the face of it was very poor example to others. I found out that there were good reasons behind the seemingly strange behaviour. Now I don't get aggravated each time I see that situation re-occur.
 
I've been on the receiving end of the 'someone's got a problem with you doing xyz, so fix it, but I'm not going to tell you who'. You spend all your time wondering who it was and narrowing down a list of suspects, all of which destroys peace of mind and the wide net of suspicion destroys trust. You feel judged, not loved.
 
I've also been in meetings where some people are only there for their own agenda and the perceived needs of their own ministry role and have no interest in anything unrelated to that agenda. It is like trying to herd cats, and it means that lots of other issues don't get the attention they need and deserve. Having a mindset for the benefit of all is crucial.
 
I really liked Fr Mallon's analogy of the regular trek to wood stack and the uncharted expedition to the woods.
 
This is a very hard paradigm shift for priests, going from solo leader to leader with team accountability. They need our support and encouragement – and especially our prayers. Be sure that the parishioners who care about the parish as much as you do are just as frustrated and debilitated by your solo leadership as you are.
 
How refreshing it is to see the Holy Spirit made a constant active partner in the life and mission of the parish! So often we say that God's in control, but then turn around and run a meeting without any prayer content, or with a short notional prayer for appearance' sake. How much I would like to see more reliance and calling on the Holy Spirit and less responses that make me feel like I'm an alien from outer space when I suggest it.

On Monday 13 June and Tuesday 14 June 2016, the parish of St Benedict's Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, ran a 2 day conference to share their experiences of successful parish renewal. Using #DR16 will get you an overview of the conference via Twitter or Facebook.
 
I wasn't able to attend in person, but I was able to participate through the Livestream video of the plenary sessions which were uploaded to the internet. http://livestream.com/accounts/6379109
 
Here follows a rough transcript of that Plenary Part 3 and then my own response to it. Why bother? Not everyone likes getting their information via video, and going through the process of taking notes and typing them up enables the message to get internalized more and shared with others, and it also forces me to go looking for the background information and links to round things out. And there's no guarantee how long the Livestream option will be available for either.
 
This session could have been entitled 'Stewardship'
 
It was introduced by Fr Mallon with the quip; 'If you want to get Catholics to shut up, begin the Sign of the Cross. It works every time.' #DR16 was the No.1 trend on Twitter in Canada that day.
 
This was followed by some praise and worship songs with good lyrics:
'Open up the heavens, we want to see You. Lord unveil our eyes. Open up the floodgates, a mighty river, flowing from Your Heart, filling every part of our praise.'
'Our God is able. He will never fail us. He has done great things. In His Name we overcome. He defeated the grave.'
 
Rick Fersch then spoke to us, currently the Director of Evangelization and Stewardship for the Archdiocese of Seattle and formerly the CEO of Eddie Bauer (a clothing / outdoor adventure supplies store, Kathmandu would be an Australian equivalent)
 
My three aims for this talk are to
•Fan the flame of renewal
•Inspire and empower transformation in your parishes
•Give you the tools for growth/engagement
 
The Archdiocese of Seattle has 174 parishes and missions, and somewhere between 750k and 1 million Catholics. It is traditional in Seattle to begin a talk with a prayer and a joke.
 
St Thomas Merton's Prayer of Abandonment
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and that I think I am following Your will does not mean I am actually doing so.
But I believe the desire to please You does in fact please You.
And I hope I have that desire in all I am doing.
I hope I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know if I do this You will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for You will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.
 
The joke was about how a wife knew that her husband had come home drunk. Plenty of evidence there was, but the most damning were the band-aids on the hallway mirror where he had tried to dress the broken-glass wounds on his rear end.
 
I am an intense kind of person, and I find that adding a bit of humour and laughter helps. I retired from Eddie Bauer in Jan 2012, after 16 years of Catholic education and a degree in sociology from Villanova Uni in 1971. I've been serving the church full time for the last 13 years. I'm 44 years married with 4 children and 5 grandchildren.
 
Is it just me? Peculiarities in the Church
•The concept that organizational charts, reviews and job descriptions are not inseparably linked (and not done either!)
•The concept that there is no need for timely decision making ; tomorrow, even next year, that will be fine enough
•Is the Church the earthly home for passive-aggressive individuals? (met with lots of laughing and nodding)
•Although it seems to have 'always been done this way', is it possible that another way may work better?
•Do you still get weird looks when you question something that doesn't make sense (or worse…silence?)?
•How about the concept of succession planning? All right…now I've pushed the envelope too far!
 
We all know that these are temporal issues. So don’t let them mask, overpower or sabotage the ministry to which you have been called.
 
What is my ministry?
On December 7, 2000 I had a serious stroke, which put me in Intensive Care at the hospital. I was surrounded by my wife Patti and the 4 kids, but I could not move, I could not talk, and yet I was totally aware of what was going on. Patti told me, 'You have to live, you have to hold our first grandchild.' The priest showed up to anoint me. That was the turning point, the miracle that saved me. Through it all I knew that I had to listen to God, and that He had a 'Step 2' for me. I did indeed hold our first grandchild, 2 years after the stroke.
 
God's life game plan for Richard T Fersch
1988 Eddie Bauer. What a great place to work, it was on fire, and I loved working there. We saw lots of growth, and I learned a lot about customer service and hospitality. We were ranked in the top 40 companies to work for.
1996 United Way. This was my way to give back to the community. I joined the board and learned how to ask for money – and discovered that I'm good at it.
2000 Sacrament of the Sick
2002 Archbishop Brunett of Seattle. He called me.
 
What can the Church learn from business?
Healthy things grow. Unhealthy things don't.
Between 1988 and 2002, Eddie Bauer's measures of success (sales etc) grew between 10 and 100 times.
While we measure sales, it is an outcome and not a cause. Only a cause is actionable.
The solution is to focus on the cause – usually a bad/unwanted product, maybe the weather (which usually masks the real cause, and we really shouldn't empower something we don't control.)
Identifying a cause allows you to acknowledge it, to accept responsibility, to identify a specific action plan, to execute a solution, and then to measure it again.
 
Let's look at the figures for the Church in Western Washington 2003-2016
Households 2013 131k; 2016 145k
Mass Attendance 2013 179k; 2016 145k
Income on plate 2013 72m; 2016 94.5m
 
Is it the case that we have less people giving more?
The sacraments are being received by less people.
 
These three things are the traditional ways of measuring the health of a parish.
Registered households (those who sign up)
Mass attendance (those who show up)
Ordinary income (those who cough up)
All three are outcomes, they are not causes.
Therefore they are not actionable.
 
What is the cause? Why is that the case?
Gallup's concept of engagement.
Gallup would propose the cause for a lack of healthy growth in Church is a lack of member engagement – a lack of commitment to community – a lack of a sense of belonging.
 
(Ed. Here's the link to the Gallup Member Engagement Survey : http://shop.gallup.com/faith/gallup-member-engagement-survey.html )
 
From Chris Stefanick's 'Real Life Catholic' http://reallifecatholic.com/
'The unchurched person usually doesn't feel welcome at church. It is up to us to help him or her lower their defenses so the Word of God can pierce their heart. If we provide a boring and unwelcome weekend experience, the unchurched believe the church has nothing relevant to say to them. Worst – they come to believe God is irrelevant.'
 
Engagement is how a parishioner feels about their parish.
•Engaged parishioners have a deep and strong emotional connection to their parish and are more fully involved in all aspects of the mission of the church.
•There is a direct correlation between engagement and an increase in the defined outcomes of a parish's spiritual health (inviting, serving, giving, life satisfaction).
•Research reveals that spiritual commitment is an ultimate result of active engagement – leading us to a new paradigm : Belonging leads to Believing.
 
'People will forget what you said and did – but people will never forget how you made them feel' Maya Angelou
 
The use of prayer partners at St Benedict's is building member engagement. I was very happy to hear when I asked someone 'Are we sitting in your pew?' to receive the answer 'We don't own pews at St Benedict's'. Think about how we treat people on Christmas Eve. It is more like, 'Where have you been for the last 51 weeks? I've earned the right to sit here, you haven't'. This is where we really need to be hospitable, and not just think we are.
 
In the church there is a critical need for measurement to assess our current 'status' and thus create workable and measurable action plans.
What is needed is a new approach – an approach leading to this new paradigm. An approach that is sustainable, scalable and transferable.
If you were asked how you parish is doing on hospitality, from 0 to 10, how would you know what to answer? If you can't measure it, then how can you manage it?
 
Engagement is not an end in itself. Rather it is a way to purify the 'soil', enabling a healthy church to bear fruit, the fruit of disciples ready for mission.
 
Summary
Increasing engagement is not the end – it is a means to help achieve the end.
Increasing engagement among parishioners is the KEY to increasing the spiritual health of the parish!
 
The Archdiocese of Seattle launched an initiative 8 years ago called ' Engagement – Empowering Stewardship as a Way of Life'. It has three parts: Leadership, Member Engagement and Strengths.
 
This grew out of an earlier initiative by Archbishop Murphy called 'Stewardship' which ran from 1992-2002. There were booklets, ministry fairs, etc. The take up rate was the same as similar programs you have done in your own dioceses, a lot of effort for not a lot of result.
 
In 2009 we began a new plan.
We could see that the Catholic Leadership Institute (CLI) was doing good stuff with its 'Good Leaders, Good Shepherds' and 'Tending the Talents' programs; and that Gallup was doing good stuff with the ME25, Q12, and Clifton Strengths Finder; but they weren't using the same language.
 
So we asked them to work together, and very generously they agreed, and a pilot program was prepared.
Bear in mind that our solution may not be your solution for your situation, and that we are happy to share details of what works for us in the hopes that you may find what will work for you.
 
Sower : Leadership and developing leaders
CLI provides leadership training for parish priests, and 'Tending the Talents' training for parish staff.
We noticed a lack of training for our priests in leadership. How can we get stuff done without leadership to make it happen? Good Leaders, Good Shepherds is a 2 year program. When the priest graduates we send his parish staff on the Tending the Talents program. It is practical, it works, and everyone is thrilled with the results.
 
Seed : Strengths and Talents
How well do we understand our hearts? How well do we know our gifts?
Once you accept the gifts you have, the gifts that only you have, a whole new responsibility t own, embrace and use those gifts emerges. Using them is the way we give our gifts back to God. Gallup has proved empirically just how unique we all are with our strengths. Some 4000-5000 people in the Archdiocese have gone through the StrengthsFinder process. What we need to do now is convert those talents and strengths into ministry, and give purpose to them. At the moment we are working on launching the Catholic Strengths Institute to help everyone connect their strengths with ministry pathways.
(Ed. The website for this still seems to be in pre-production mode : so keep an eye on it for a change in status : http://catholicstrengthsinstitute.tryradiuswebtools.com/ )
 
Seed : discovering talent
If we are to cultivate and share our unique gifts of talents we must first understand and embrace these gifts. When we do, we receive a 'personal awakening' of who we are called to be. The results are:
•Deeper understanding and respect of self
•Deeper understanding and respect of others
•Deeper relationship with God
 
A quote from St Catherine of Siena (Dialog 7)
God said to me, 'I could well have made human beings in such a way that they each had everything; but I preferred to give different gifts to different people, so that they would need each other.'
 
Soil : Member Engagement
We have been using member engagement surveys with great results. Some parishes have done the surveys multiple times. You cannot measure if you are not measuring.
 
'Therefore go and make disciples of all nations'
The ultimate goal of parishes is to develop Disciples of Christ – Catholics who are fully spiritually committed to the mission of the Church. This is the ultimate result of increasing engagement among parishioners.
 
In the hands of a leader committed to using the ME25 to its fullest extent, the ME25 becomes a powerful tool for helping to move your parish from maintenance to mission.
 
Please engrave this definition of insanity in your brain :
insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
 
So what next?
•Will it be business as usual when you go home after the conference?
•Will you grasp and embrace a part of the new paradigm you were seeking when you signed up for this conference?
Be not afraid. Be bold. There are resources to help you on this journey. Take a step. Make a difference. The choice is yours.
Don't be overwhelmed. Remember the story of the boy finding an elderly man along the beach throwing starfish back into the sea. The boy questioned the pointlessness of it all, but the elderly man replied, 'I might not fix it all, but I certainly made a difference to the life of this star fish.'
 
Fr Mallon then introduced Gemma to us, after agreeing that 'Making a difference is what it is all about'.
​
5 years ago Gemma would come to the occasional Sunday Mass, sit in the pew, and think about other stuff. At that time a relationship with God was not at the centre of her life. The same was true for her mum and dad, sister, brother and grandfather. Spiritually her dad was the least likely to go to church. Her grandfather had struggles with alcohol addiction. One Sunday Gemma got shocked out of her daydreams by seeing the priest pull out an iPhone. It awoke her curiosity. She told her family, 'you have to meet this guy, he's crazy' (it was Fr Mallon, of course). He was talking about Alpha.
 
Her Mum wanted grandfather to go and do Alpha. During the prayer session at Alpha, grandfather had an amazing encounter with Jesus, experiencing within himself the light vs dark battle. After that prayer session he felt cleansed, saved, and his desire to drink was gone. The family was stunned at the change, especially mum and dad. So we went to Friday night family Alpha, the kids had their sessions upstairs and the adults downstairs. The sense of community and belonging we experienced there kept us coming back. We all encountered God in our own way. My sister and I felt called to do church activities, like bible studies and youth groups. My mum started praying every morning. My dad is now with us in the pews every week, as is my brother. My mum and I did the trip to HTB and encountered the Holy Spirit in a real and personal way, along with 5000 other people.
 
Then we moved to Toronto. On our final weekend the parish prayed over us and commissioned us to go out and use this chance to bring what we had experienced to Toronto. In Toronto we joined a parish and started a daytime and youth Alpha, but we encountered difficulties. The priest was not strongly supporting us, and was not involved. We realized we could not take it much further. So we switched parishes and found a priest who was hungry for something to help his parish. He got on board, promoted it, became a table leader, and invited his friends.
 
Gemma, aged 17, is now the Alpha coordinator in that parish, organizing the food, tables and dealing with the emails. Her sister had her big turning point at a Steubenville conference. In many ways Alpha is being run a bit like a family business. 'Jesus has made a huge difference to our family life. He has given us purpose, and a happiness in service. It is good to know that as a teenage I can be in the world but not of it.
 
This part of the session closed with prayer for Gemma and her family.
 
…………………………………………………
 
My own response
 
That's a lot to take in, isn't it?! But it is the pathway forwards, and we need to tell people about it.
 
Why are Catholics so passive-aggressive? Maybe because the direct route to getting things done so often gets blocked and we've had to become experts at getting things done by back channels.
 
It is encouraging to see that if God wants you somewhere, that He has the ways and means to get you there, like he did with getting Rick out of Eddie Bauer and into service for Him with the Archdiocese of Seattle.
 
The contrast between the high rates of growth for Eddie Bauer and the stagnant/almost recessive growth for the Archdiocese was staggering. The former is the kind of growth and health God would like to see in our parishes. To keep on the same path that got us to this lack of health, that's no longer an option.
 
It is going to take a while to process the implications of belonging leading to believing. We are so used to expecting things to be the other way round. It means that we have to be consciously choosing to draw people into our community of faith. It means that we need independent assessment on how welcoming our parishes actually are, maybe something similar to the mystery shoppers that retailers use.
 
Thinking about engagement…A few months back our parish had its first episcopal visitation in its history, and there was a meeting with parishioners and the bishop. He asked those present to name what it was about the parish that draws you here. Many of the answers hinged on engagement parishioners had with the community of faith present in the parish, and named the people who drew them into involvement (often a parish priest or a switched-on parishioner who called them into some kind of service or ministry). Those present at the meeting were already engaged, otherwise they would not have given up their time to be there. The ability of some gifted individuals to notice potential talent, and to give people gentle nudges in the right direction for using that potential talent, is what is needed. If we can locate those gifted individuals and help them harness and intentionally use those gifts in God's service, that would be a big step forward to increasing engagement in the parish. People with StrengthsFinder combinations of Developer and Individualization are most likely to be those gifted individuals.
 
I went investigating Clifton StrengthsFinder after an intriguing mention or two of it in Divine Renovation. There are 2 ways to do the StrengthsFinder questionnaire. Do it online for $15 US or around $20 AUS through this link, it is supposed to give you access to an e-book, but the process is long and convoluted. A better way is to get the book with the access code in the back, the Catholic Edition of 'Living Your Strengths' Because postage costs are a nightmare, order more than one copy – you are going to want others to do it too. If you have the money, get friends together and buy a full starter kit, which comes with workbooks and a seven session discovery process.
 
My top 5 signature themes are Intellection, Input, Connectedness, Deliberative and Learner. That meshes perfectly with my top 3 transferable skills, problem solving, using my brain and research. I'm still searching for a way to leverage those strengths to serve the mission of the Church as part of a team, and suspect that until enough leaders find value in StrengthsFinder and learn to build balanced teams I'll still be a square peg in a round hole and getting lots of those weird looks and silences that Rick spoke about.
 
I'm really interested in the work Rick is doing in matching combinations of strengths to ministry opportunities. (See, it's a problem that needs solving! :) The Living Your Strengths has lists of ideas for how to use your strengths in Christian service, but they only go so far. But it should be possible to work out which combinations of strengths are suited for particular ministries. For example, someone high in empathy and harmony is the perfect fit for a hospital chaplaincy role or pastoral care work with the sick.
 
Gemma's story needs to be shared widely. It breaks my heart that so often us lowly parishioners try and get something good going, and it falls flat because there is no active support from the parish leadership. Passive support, which is basically permission to run with something and rooms to do it in, just isn't enough and frequently it is a recipe for failure. Waiting to see if something is going to be a success before getting behind it might feel like the prudent thing to do, but it sure doesn't feel like the loving thing to do from the perspective of those who are risking it all. However if people see that the parish priest is giving something his full support, they do get behind it. It feels like they all watch him to see what he thinks before joining in or not. So much stands or falls depending on the parish priest, no wonder Our Lady is so insistent in her messages that we must pray for our priests.
 
Those Catholic Leadership Institute courses look like they are worth investigating. I hope they start getting students from my side of the globe soon. I really like that it there's some for parish priests and some for parish staff.
 
The National Church Life Survey is probably the Australian equivalent to the ME25. It certainly asks the engagement questions. It would be worthwhile comparing them properly.

On Monday 13 June and Tuesday 14 June 2016, the parish of St Benedict's Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, ran a 2 day conference to share their experiences of successful parish renewal. Using #DR16 will get you an overview of the conference via Twitter or Facebook.
 
I wasn't able to attend in person, but I was able to participate through the Livestream video of the plenary sessions which were uploaded to the internet. http://livestream.com/accounts/6379109
 
Here follows a rough transcript of that Plenary Part 2 and then my own response to it. Why bother? Not everyone likes getting their information via video, and going through the process of taking notes and typing them up enables the message to take deeper root – and there's no guarantee how long the Livestream option will be available for.
 
This session could have been entitled 'The Marriage Course'
 
It began with a few words from Archbishop Anthony Mancini, the leader of the archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth in which the parish of St Benedict's resides.
 
'Thinking about the testimonies we heard at the end of the last session, it reminded me of how at the Easter Vigil we all light our little candles from the Paschal Candle by passing on the flame to each other until the whole church is filled with candlelight. That's what missionary disciples, like those we heard from, do : pass the flame of faith from heart to heart, one by one.
 
Thanks to Fr James for what he is doing in this parish, and for what he told us about compassion. The gut is where we feel compassion, but it is also where we feel anxiety, fear and nervousness – which is what I am feeling now.
 
There are not many places where 600 people gather to learn what is behind the Divine Renovation book. It is a book. Just like the Gospel comes to us as a book. They both stay as a book unless you get in touch with the experience behind the book.
 
All of us are facing the challenge of making our Church able to speak to our world in ways that will touch the hearts of people. What do we do? What can we do? The answers won't just be found in the written word, but in the lived community that birthed the book.
 
It is mind-boggling for a bishop to be here. However, the point is not for us to be in this building – but to get the hell out of this building. We have Holy Doors for people to come in, but we also need to use them to go out as missionary disciples.
 
So welcome to Halifax-Yarmouth, Enjoy your visit, and may God bless your efforts here and when you return home to your parishes.'
 
We were then introduced to Nicky and Sila Lee, the Anglican founders of The Marriage Course. You can find out more about them through Twitter : https://twitter.com/nickyandsilalee and more about The Marriage Course http://www.themarriagecourses.org/try/the-marriage-course/ and The Marriage Preparation Course http://www.themarriagecourses.org/try/the-marriage-preparation-course/ . And there's a book too: https://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Book-Nicky-Lee/dp/1934564656
 
To begin their session a short video was shown that gave some background information. In 1985 they began writing the course, which started in 1986. By 2001 it was being used internationally. In 2010 it went to China. In 2011 the parenting courses began. In 2011-12 a Spanish version was released. In 2012 a version for rural Africa was prepared. In 2013 it became available in Arabic. In 2014 it received Vatican endorsement.
 
We are excited and honoured to be family together here. Fr James has visited us in London many times. The two of us met when we were 17 and 18 while we were on holiday. We are from non-church-going families. There was belief in God, but it wasn't acted up. Only on Christmas Day would we normally go to church. While at university Nicky heard about the possibility of a personal relationship with God. He was intrigued. After a couple of months of listening to talks on Christianity he came to the point of saying 'I think this is all true'. On February 14 he got Sila to come and listen to the talks too, and that day they gave their lives together to Christ. Their conversion happened about the same time as Nicky Gumbel's. From that day Jesus gave us a new freedom and depth in our friendship and love together. 2.5 years later we were married.
 
How did the marriage course begin? In 1985 we were on staff at Holy Trinity, Brompton (HTB) and were asked to take on marriage preparation in the parish. The 5 week marriage preparation course we wrote came out of our own experience, and we aimed it at a very practical level. Later on we wrote the marriage course.
 
The first course started with 3 couples. We were soon asked, 'Could my friend come too…even though they are not church-goers?' It was heartening that outsiders wanted to come and learn. We found that those that came wanted more, so the parenting children course and the parenting teens course were written.
 
Where did the vision come from? God broke our hearts for the sake of family life, and gave us a passion for marriage at the heart of family life. Some 50% of marriages break up, and it doesn't have to be like that. We have huge hope for change in couple relationships. One couple who came to the marriage course (as we found out later) had been married for 3 years, separated for the last 6 months, and had an 18 month old child. The course helped them find their way back to each other. There are 100s and 1000s of couples like that out there.
 
Conversation is the most important part of the course, the private conversation between spouses within a 'date night' atmosphere. We have seen marriages changed, redeemed, transformed and saved.
 
In some ways the marriage course functions as a pre-evangelization course. We see a lot of couples doing the course and then doing Alpha – but there are a good number who do Alpha and then do the marriage course.
 
(At this point the video tape stopped as they began to talk about how the marriage course got to China.
 
The video tape restarted with the story of how Vatican endorsement came about.)
 
It was a friendship with a 70 year old parish priest from northern Italy. He had connections with the Italian Bishops Council for Marriage, and had a passion for couples to not only be the objects of evangelization but the subjects of evangelization. In his parish the marriage course was first run in people's homes. From the success of those courses came an invitation to do a seminar at the World Meeting of Families.
 
Our vision is to turn the tide on the breakdown of marriage and family life. The only way for it to happen is through the local church.
 
Do you have any words for us gathered here today? Read 'Divine Renovation' . This is the work of the Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit, come and fill Your people and then release them for Your purpose of creating missionary disciples. If you are married, each week make time for a date night with your spouse.
 
Things then moved into a time of prayer ministry.
 
It is the Holy Spirit who ignites the passion of His call in us, and Who seeks to clarify a vision with us. Send Your fire into our hearts. People lose hope through hurt. God will work healing, especially among those let down, not appreciated and overlooked. Maybe there is someone you need to forgive. Can you be weak enough in your heart to say that you need Me?
 
……………………………………………………………………
 
My own response
 
Yes, I need healing for all three of those hurts. I wouldn't be alone there.
 
I know of far too many people who gave of themselves generously in Christian service over long periods of time for whom that service ended in bitter tears at a time not of their choosing, or who were given no support in the difficult transition from full time lay ministry to regular life, or who got burnt out due to lack of support and lack of pastoral care. They need healing too, and we lose too many good people because there is no obvious pathway to seek that healing. Could the Rachel's Vineyard weekends that bring healing to those suffering from abortions be a model for how to assist the healing process for those wounded in ministry?
 
It is good to hear that there is a marriage course out there, that seems easy to set up, and that works.
 
It sounds like all you need is a meeting space, equipment to project video from a DVD onto a large screen, tables set up nicely (tablecloth, candles etc) with two chairs per table, a couple to act as facilitators and a few people who love to cook preparing some food.
 
I'm thinking that the school hall of the local parish primary school might be the best location. Firstly because it wouldn't require anyone to step outside their comfort zone and go to church, and secondly because (sad to say) many of the parents of the primary school aged children are at risk of separation and divorce. They are also most likely to know of couples who need a little help in their relationships.

The good Lord didn't arrange for me to go physically with our World Youth Day pilgrims, so the next best thing was to follow as many of them as I could through social media.

For this purpose, I knew I had to get on to Instagram and get fluent in it fast. Snapchat however, was a bridge too far. Maybe for WYD Panama in 2019 I will consider it.

Instagram turned out to be a good decision. Far too many of the blogs that started petered out, and most of the Twitter feeds didn't feature the pilgrim groups I was most interested in.

The downside is that most of the content on Instagram doesn't make it into internet search engines, so I can't share the best bits with you visually. All I can do is tell you which hashtags and handles to go looking for.

The following blogs were amazing:

https://ntpilgrims.wordpress.com/ 
The Northern Territory pilgrims did a very good job of sharing their pilgrimage in photos, video and text, until the WYD opening Mass.

cairnswyd16.weebly.com/
The Cairns pilgrims took it in turns to write about their experiences and provided lots of photos.

​http://mnnews.today/world-youth-day-2016/
The Maitland Newcastle pilgrims did an excellent job in not only writing and sharing photos, but getting quotes from each other about each day's experiences.

​http://brokenbaypilgrim.blogspot.com.au/
This blog was particularly good until his group got to Krakow, then it stopped. Here's hoping he will do the rest now that he is back home, but seminary studies may prevent that. 

Hashtags

Finding the right hashtags to follow was an art in itself.

#parrawyd via Instagram showed heartwarming pictures of the work the pilgrims did in the Philippines before heading off to Poland.

#AussiePilgrims and #AussiePilgrim were being used by more than just World Youth Day pilgrims, but it was a good place to find them in order to start following them.

#MNpilgrims for Maitland Newcastle pilgrims was well used

#WYD2016 was global and #WYD_en was for English speaking pilgrims. 

#dbbwyd was for the diocese of Broken Bay, and they used a series of pre-arranged suffixes that worked very well. For example the pilgrims going through the Holy Land used #dbbwyd_holyland, for Italy #dbbwyd_italy, for Greece #dbbwyd_greece and for those going direct to Poland, #dbbwyd_poland. those who  and there were daily themes like #dbbwyd_friends and #dbbwyd_miracles. By using those daily theme hashtags (see below) you can still journey with the pilgrims well after the event. 

Final Musings

The mainstream media largely ignored World Youth Day Krakow. But just like when Jesus was on His way into Jerusalem for His final Passover and when people told Him to stop His followers ringing out their Hosannas and He replied, 'If these keep silent, the stones will cry out' Luke 19:40 - the various social media channels got the news out - and probably got it out more effectively than the mainstream media. 

Many of the sights and sounds of WYD Krakow brought back vivid memories for me from WYD Sydney, and I'm very grateful for that.

​Seeing so many happy young people exploring and living out their faith was a wonderful gift, as were the photographs of the beautiful churches where they celebrated Mass and venerated the lives of the Saints who lived and ministered in those places.

World Youth Day gives us the clearest glimpse of what the unity in diversity of heaven will be like, and the power of the merciful Love that makes it all possible. Thanks be to God for such a gift, and for St John Paul II who was inspired to initiate it.

​Extraordinary seeds of grace have been planted in individual souls, and in the diocesan relationships forged through pilgrimage. Now it is up to us to intercede that these seeds of grace grow and fulfill God's complete purpose for them.

Our Lady of Mercy, pray for us
St John Paul II, pray for us
St Faustina, pray for us 
St Maximillian Kolbe, pray for us
St Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, pray for us

Have you ever wondered how daunting it must be for someone - who hasn't been inside a church for quite a while - to consider returning to the Catholic faith of their childhood?

Firstly it takes listening to that nagging feeling that something is missing. Secondly it takes a bit of courage and humility to acknowledge that the God stuff matters and it may have been an error of judgment to have drifted away. Thirdly there's that fear of having forgotten more than you remember about how the Mass works. And the biggie.... knowing that at some point you will have to face going to Confession.

Thankfully there are now good programs around to make the journey back to your Catholic roots easier. The Catholics Returning Home program is one of them.  

Next week there will be programs starting at St Patrick's East Gosford on Mondays at 7.30pm in the Jordan Room adjacent to the church (first session 8 August), and at St John the Baptist, Woy Woy on Wednesdays at 7.30pm in the Leo Mahon Room inside the church building (first session 10 August). Other local parishes were supposed to start next week, but priestly absences due to World Youth Day and overseas study may have delayed that. 

​The brochure (below) has more detail about the content of the program:

The first 2 sessions are introductory and contain sharing each other's faith journey's (mandatory for team members, optional for everyone else) and getting to know each other.

The 3rd session talks about the changes the Catholic church has gone through over the last 50 years or so. The 4th session explains the different parts of the Mass. The 5th session is all you need to know about Confession (Sacrament of Penance). 

Each session will have time for discussion, and will finish up with a prayer.

East Gosford has run many of these programs. Woy Woy will be running its program for the first time. May God richly bless them both and all who participate in them.

St Patrick, pray for us.
​St John the Baptist, pray for us.