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A request for prayers

27/11/2014

It is with extreme reluctance that I interrupt the notes from Proclaim 2014, but the need for prayer is so huge.

Last week we learned that our assistant priest would be moving to take up a leadership role in another parish, and that a replacement for him at our parish has not yet been made.

This week we learned that our parish priest has decided to retire at the end of January, being closer to age 75 than to age 70, and that even the local Catholic primary school will also have a new principal and deputy principal for next year.

Our new bishop, Peter Comensoli, will be installed at Waitara Cathedral on 12 December. Which gives him between 2-3 weeks to find priests for our parish before he goes on annual leave during January.

It is a rather dire situation to be in, and we trust in God to provide for us. There is a lot at stake. We could face a reduction in weekend Masses, the twinning of our parish with another one, the loss of daily Mass, the loss of timeslots to avail ourselves of the Sacrament of penance, and all manner of other things as well as all the upheavals change brings.

Please pray that the good God provides us His excellent and bountiful solutions to our situation. You might like to join us in the prayer downloadable below and to offer some of your Advent penance for these intentions. We also bear in mind that changes like these tend to have domino effects onto other parishes in our diocese, and that prayer to obtain God's most perfect solution for all of us is greatly needed.

prayernewparishpriestspdf.pdf
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St John the Baptist, patron of our parish, pray for us
Our Lady, Star of the Sea, patroness of our diocese, pray for us
Our Lady, Help of Christians, patroness of our country, pray for us

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Proclaim 2014: Second half of 23 August Keynote Speech

10/11/2014

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Saturday Keynote Speech Part 2: Moving Members from Consumers to Contributors

Fr Michael White and Tom Corcoran, the writers of 'Rebuilt' and 'Tools for Rebuilding' continue their keynote speech on Saturday of the Proclaim 2014 Conference:

To work out how to move members from consumers to contributors you have to 1) work out how you want them to move and 2) work out whether you are communicating that properly.

We ask our people to take these 5 steps:

Pray. Have a regular daily personal prayer time.

Join a small group. To be spiritually encouraged by each other's faith.

Serve. Serve in a ministry towards insiders (weekends at church) and in a ministry towards outsiders (nursing homes, homeless, poor, schools).

Give. Give financial support to the work of kingdom building in the parish.

Invest and invite. Evangelise by investing time in relationships on the fringe of the parish and then inviting them to come to church.

Take stock of what you are communicating to the people in the pews about what you want them to do. Do they know what you want them to do?

How do get people to move?

Pray. You need the power of God. The bigger the project, the bigger the ask, the more prayer you need. Often we will do a 40 hours of prayer before launching anything new.

By example. We have to move ourselves and do these 5 things too. How are you doing on these 5 things? We cannot ask anyone to do things that we are not willing to do ourselves.

You have to ask them to move. This is a huge deal if you haven't done it before. Often the way we ask is very important. Asking out of neediness ('please, please help') just doesn't work. But people will respond if you give them a vision. Show them the purpose. Tell them if you do this (x,y,z) then you will make an impact like this (a,b,c). Every opportunity you get, share all the good letters of appreciation with your members and remind them that if they join in they can make this kind of difference in people's lives too. There are seasons for asking. Some times of the year are better for asking than others. Work out what they are and use them. There are also seasons for theme asking, eg a series of weeks dedicated to asking people to join small groups, give more generously etc. Work out when they should be, eg not during grand final season when people want to get home and watch the game. When it comes to asking, preaching is air cover to the ground war.

Make movement accessible. Put rungs on the ladder and make it easy for people to try out new ministries. Be consistent. Point out how easy the minimum requirements are eg. To be part of the parking helper ministry – can you wave your arm? Yes, that's mostly all it takes. Ask for what is achievable, eg asking for a 10% tithe would be baulked at, but asking 'can you give at 1% to start with, and work on increasing it a bit at your next pay rise?' is far more likely to get a response. Invite people to try out new ministries as a helper for a single session. Then if they find something that interests them, invite them to give it a go for a 4-6 week period as a helper.

Set people up for success. Don't get them to serve alone, but as part of a team. Give them the training and the equipment they need. Reward them for stepping out of their comfort zone.

Celebrate movement. Make a fuss of those who give it a go. Every breathing person needs encouragement. Send them a note of appreciation. Thank them personally for giving it a go.

Persevere. Change takes time; Time that is measured not in days but in years.

Do beta testing. Roll out new things to only part of the parish (eg Sunday night Mass) and see how it goes. Then iron out any problems, and fine tune things, before extending the new thing to the whole parish. If it flops then you have minimised failure, if it works then you have set things up to succeed parish wide.

Question and Answer session

Changing the music. We started trying new things out at the Sunday night youth Mass. It was an easy place to start. However it may not always be the best place to start. Go to where no one else cares, where no one else is invested, and start there.

We use the 'one church one message' method throughout the year. But in summer time only there is a brief homily with a longer message after Mass. Since it is after Mass the usual regulations don't apply, and lay people can give that message. Yes, the bishop knows and his response has been 'let's see how it goes'. It gives the parish priest a bit of a break.

Any advice for those who have a resistant parish priest? Build a relationship with him. Start serving first, 'How can I help?'. Do anything he asks, and do it humbly. Don't think 'he'll never get there'. Take the opportunities to talk to him when God provides them. Win yourself a hearing.

'One church one message' has to be totally consistent across all preaching and parish ministries. For example if the message this week is daily prayer, then it would be preached on in the homily, be an influence on the music chosen, be the theme for children's ministry and youth ministry that week, be the subject of that week's small group discussions, and all those in the host team (car park helpers, greeters, those on the information desk etc) would be encouraged to talk about that topic should a conversation get beyond a greeting. Normally the problem is that a parish has scattered vision. Having too many choices paralyses people into non action.

What is your future plan for your podcasts? Currently we are only doing the groundwork now, and using the podcasts to introduce staff members. You should get Fr Michael on there too. We'll think about that.

Do you have a parish pastoral plan? When you started did you have a plan? No. We’ve been in the parish for 15 years. The first 5 years we had no idea what we were doing; only that it wasn't working. The next 5 years we spend learning and seeking help and trying stuff out. It has only been the last 5 years that we have started getting into momentum. Planning is important, but we often plan and then don’t do.

The fallout from the changes you made was clearly painful. How did you cope with that personally? It is very difficult to not take it personally. Yes, they will criticize and complain – expect it. Sometimes we will react badly to that. But it is all part of the deal. We want to make people happy. You want to make everyone happy – and you are not making people happy right now – but these people aren't in your face, they are at home doing other stuff and watching TV.

Final message

It is hard to be encouraged when day to day difficulties arise – but you have to have heart and enthusiasm.

We read in the Book of Esther about the heart break of the Jews in exile. But worse was coming, someone was plotting genocide. To combat this God raises up a simple Jewish girl as Queen and gives her a vision through the advice of a trusted friend. 'If you remain silent at this time and do nothing, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place, but both you and your family line (parish) will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to the throne for just such a time as this.'

You are where you are today, prominent or obscure; you are in a position of influence, able to contribute. He has placed you exactly where you are for such a time as this.

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The next blog-post will be about a panel response to all of the conference input, informed by the conference feedback slips.

Some of the workshops have been made available as podcasts via www.xt3.com

To access them visit http://www.xt3.com/library/view.php?id=17454

Some of the talks and workshops are now available from http://www.proclaimconference.com.au/resources.

Several video clips, transcripts, handouts and slide presentations are downloadable.

These Notes are only one person's version of what they heard, and they are not a literal transcript.

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Proclaim 2014: First half of 23 August Keynote Speech

8/11/2014

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Saturday Keynote Speech Part 1 : Moving Members from Consumers to Contributors

Fr Michael White and Tom Corcoran, the writers of 'Rebuilt' and 'Tools for Rebuilding' gave the keynote speech on Saturday of the Conference with the title 'Moving Members from Consumers to Contributors'.

Not everything that has worked in our parish will work or be transferable to your own situation and setting. There are still many questions for which we do not have the answers yet. Our parish in North Baltimore is a work in progress.

Many of you have read our book, 'Rebuilt'. Publishing a successful book has been a very interesting experience. That book has opened up the doors to many speaking engagements, even in Las Vegas. Let us tell you that travel gets old very quickly.

Recently we were in Chicago and very much looking forward to going home. While we were waiting in the airport lounge we noticed a big buzz and lots of agitation going on. Our flight had been delayed. First by 2 hours, then by 4 hours and then indefinitely delayed. So many flights had been delayed and cancelled that quite a lot of panic developed in the airport. Our options were limited, we could stay and wait until the next flight to Baltimore became possible, or we could try to get to Baltimore via Cleveland. The lady in front of us at the airline counter was quite frantic about getting the Cleveland option. Eventually we did get home by the direct route. But the lesson we learned was this – it is very, very easy to lose direction and purpose over temporary setbacks.

So let's have a brief refresher on the basics. Acts 2:42 'These remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.' This is what the first Christian community did, and they were extraordinarily fruitful in introducing people to Christ and in helping develop them in discipleship. The mission hasn't changed. This too is our task, our work, fuelled by the new evangelisation (we don't know what that term means, but we are learning).

The difficulty comes with the details. In any project, the devil is in the details. So here we can get mixed up. To build you need to start somewhere, and the building site is your parish; your neighbourhood. Parish is where you join the kingdom building effort. And as you know, any building site looks messy and awkward.

Your parish consists of those not just in your congregation, not just those in the pews. It consists of it of everyone who lives within your parish boundaries. So we need to learn about them, the people in the parish who are not in relationship with the parish. What is their culture? What they think about God, faith, religion? - If they think about any of these things at all.

We decided to learn about them. What we learnt surprised us. The majority of those in our parish do not go to church, were baptised Catholic and are not interested in the things of God at all. Learning why they left, and about what might them back, is critical to building the kingdom.

We read in the Gospels that Jesus took His 12 disciples on a road trip. They went to Caesarea Philippi, an ancient town that was like Las Vegas on steroids. It had a temple with a deep grotto that was dedicated to the Greek god 'Pan'. It was a wildly hedonistic place. The locals called this temple with its grotto the Gates of Hades. It is actually the source of the River Jordan. The interesting thing is that Jesus brought His disciples here not to preach or to teach but to ask them two questions:

'Who do people say that the Son of Man is?' The disciples had many answers for this question because there was plenty of confusion about who Jesus is.

'But who do you say I am?' Peter gets this question right, and that's the first time that happens. He says 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.'

What happens then is that Jesus makes a very big announcement. As big as the giving of the Law to Moses, as big as the promise that a descendant of David would be the Messiah, as big as the angel's news to Mary that she would become the Mother of God. That big. 'You are Peter and upon this rock I will build My church.'

Jesus could have used 'temple' or 'synagogue', but He didn't. He used a word previously not found in the New Testament – 'church'. This is the biggest news ever. This is God's plan for the rest of human history. 'And the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven'. Matt 16:18-20.

The Greek word for church is ecclesia. It was a word used to describe assemblies, gatherings of people in a neighbourhood coming together for a purpose. A bit like a town hall meeting with a deliberate purpose which impacts upon everyone in the neighbourhood. Jesus Christ promised to build an ecclesia, not a kirk, not a building. He wasn't interested in buildings. An ecclesia is a movement. And a movement has gotta move – it has to grow, too. The ecclesia of Jesus is a dynamic gathering, a powerful movement, with world changing consequences.

The problem is that church people get in the way. We like to control and contain this movement. We like things neat and orderly. Ecclesia is messy. Building projects are messy. Building projects are unpredictable. They are works in progress. Church people want things neat, predictable and finished. Tension between the movement of the kingdom and the inertia of church people is not ancient history – it happens everywhere.

Building the kingdom is not easy and no one will thank you for it initially – do it anyway.

Throw away your usual agenda, and ask…..

Are we making a reasonable difference in our community or are we simply serving our members?
Are we mobilised for mission or insisting on business as usual?
Are we here to preserve a broken system or building where God is blessing?
Are we simply meeting or are we moving and doing something with meaning?

People have one of four types of relationship with your parish

People committed to not coming
Consumers in your parish who come out of guilt, to get something, who come out of obligation, who come to feed their needs, who come for something for a family member. It is all about them. It is OK for them to come in that way.
Contributors. Those who are helping your parish to move and who are supporters.
Committed. Those sold out to build the kingdom of God.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The next issue will give the second part of the keynote speech and some of the Q and A discussion which followed it.

Some of the workshops have been made available as podcasts via www.xt3.com

To access them visit http://www.xt3.com/library/view.php?id=17454

Some of the talks and workshops are now available from http://www.proclaimconference.com.au/resources.

Several video clips, transcripts, handouts and slide presentations are downloadable.

These Notes are only one person's version of what they heard, and they are not a literal transcript.

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A request for prayers

Proclaim 2014: Second half of 23 August Keynote Speech

Proclaim 2014: First half of 23 August Keynote Speech

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