It has been a while since I have been able to get fingers to keyboard, and there have been many reasons for that. What writing I was able to do went on Instagram @pcav3473 because with a mobile phone you can write 'in transit' whereas it is often close to midnight before computer time becomes available.

So I will try and distill some of the global prophetic word from the last few months, seeking the golden threads of the themes that unite them. However I will add a note of caution, because it is sometimes difficult to get past the current buzz words, which are recycled frequently (consciously and unconsciously), to get to the actual message.

Many people are in a time of transition from one phase of their lives into a completely new phase. Images of the birthing process, whereby all you can do between womb and the outside of the womb is to submit to the uncomfortable tension, pressure and inability to move with as much patience as possible, have been useful. Another image was that of all the delays, detours and frustrations that happen when new roadworks are under construction, and then how wonderful it is when the new roadways are completed. But, calling on another image, the end of the transition process is not simultaneous, some have already been released and others are still waiting in no man's land for it to feel like God has remembered them.

The old ways of doing things will not work in this new phase. What could that look like? Paradigm shifts of outward missionary focus (the vast majority of the miracles of Jesus did not take place in the synagogue or temple, but out on the streets, in homes and marketplaces); of ministry leadership happening through talent-balanced, vision-unified senior leadership teams; of ministry multiplication through the intentional identification and raising up of new leaders (setting aside quality time to co-operate with God in making your good people rise to new heights of excellence); of pioneering people willing to put the seemingly crazy new ministry ideas from God into action.

In nature we can see that some growth happens as 'more of the same' and then there are metamorphoses that take dramatic new changes of direction: caterpillar to butterfly type stuff. It is the latter type of change that appears to be on God's agenda in this season of grace.

One thing that is keeping me going is seeing that this has begun to happen in the lives of some of the people I follow through social media, big breakthroughs, extraordinary opportunities arising where there had been none beforehand. However as I ponder the two most visible of these people, in success one of them seems to have forgotten God's part in all of it, while the other has kept grounded and focused on keeping relationship with God first and foremost.

Some letting go will be part of the process. In the early years of the ministry of John Wimber he was bringing in all kinds of unchurched people from the entertainment industry into his parish, and one day he saw a well-respected woman of his congregation weeping. He asked her why she was crying, and she replied that the parish had changed so much it didn't feel like it used to anymore, it was no longer a comfortable, reliable place that never changed. To his credit John wept with her over the loss she was feeling, but also explained why he had to respond to God's call to bring in the lost.

We also need to really seek God about how He wants us to pray about things. If we pray for delay to be broken and God has a specific plan which requires that delay, or of we pray that a storm goes away rather than that the storm accomplishes God's purposes, we might be praying against the establishment of His kingdom on earth rather than in co-operation with Him. Our prayers need to be, 'God I don't understand, but may Your will be done in and through this situation that seems so contrary to all we have been praying for'.

The battles we face in our era have two parts to them, the on the ground leg work side and the on the knees prayer/intercession side. Make sure in each circumstance that you are on the side of the battle that He wants you on. For example in the various battles for public opinion to be brought to the side of the Gospel, instead of fighting social media with social media, consider that perhaps the real battle is spiritual and more will be won in prayer than in another post of words and images. Both are needed. A single image that emerges from extended prayer can carry an anointing to change a multitude of hearts. Sometimes we need to be with Joshua on the battlefield, sometimes we need to be with Moses and Aaron praying from a vantage point overlooking the battlefield. If He calls you up higher, answer that call.
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Above all, trust in Him and don't fret. He knows what He is about, and how to achieve the greatest good.

The Gospel for the weekend of 8/9 September 2018, 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, is taken from the end of Chapter 7 of St Mark. It tells the story of a group of people bringing a man, who is both deaf and unable to speak clearly, to Jesus. In response Jesus takes the man well away from the crowd, to where he can have a very personal encounter with Jesus. As part of this encounter Jesus sighs as He commands 'Be Opened'.

This is a much longer and detailed reflection on this Gospel passage than was possible via Instagram. (@pcav3473)

Jesus is back on home turf in the ten towns of Galilee after an absence. Are the people who bring the man to Jesus hostile or friendly towards Him? Either is possible, but the more we understand what it meant to be deaf and unable to speak clearly in Jewish culture, the more the balance swings towards friendly.

Being deaf is a very isolating experience at the best of times, but it was even worse for someone living in a culture based on oral tradition. To participate fully in the religious life of a Jew you had to be able to hear: in particular to hear the sound of the shofar, the blowing of the ram's horn that is part of several important feast days, and used to sound warnings. You also had to be able to speak: in particular to recite the Shemar at the prescribed times of the day, (viz, 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord …). Some rabbinical teachings said it was enough to try to recite it accurately, others said it didn't count unless it was recited perfectly.

There were special laws that decreed that those both unable to hear and unable to speak clearly were to be treated as minors, ie without legal status. Think about how much haggling was part and parcel of most business transactions and you can begin to understand why. Thus unless you were able to find a sympathetic advocate who took the time to question you in the approved manner, a person deaf and unable to speak clearly was unable to buy and retain property and unable to marry.

Even if this man had somehow been able to learn who Jesus claimed to be, having no legal status he would have been unable to request healing from Jesus. That is why people had to bring him to Jesus and he could not approach Jesus on his own. To do that for the deaf man, in the absence of any obvious axe to grind eg healing on the Sabbath, would require a significant level of compassion. Hence the likelihood of friendly.

Due to these known difficulties of life for a deaf person, it is no longer a surprise that Jesus does not hesitate to come to this man's assistance.

What is interesting is that Jesus takes him somewhere private. It feels like there is more to it than just needing to be away from eyes that might class these actions of Jesus (putting fingers in his ears, and spittle on his tongue) as weird. There is a layer of intimacy and personal encounter that feels just as essential as the weird stuff.

Here's the kicker.
What if this story doesn't only relate to the earthly realm, but also relates to the supernatural realm?

The citizens of the supernatural realm are able to hear God in that realm and to speak forth from that hearing for Kingdom of God purposes. These are people we would class as having prophetic gifting (prophecy, visions, dreams, word of knowledge, discernment of spirits etc). God regularly shows them His mind, His heart, His plans, His secrets. They co-operate by speaking forth these things according to God's timing and thereby bringing the active power of God to bear in the earthly realm. For example, in the passage from Ezekiel 37:1-14 about the dry bones, God commands that the prophet speak to the bones in His name.

What if access to the supernatural realm was supposed to be normal, as normal as hearing and speaking in the earthly realm is?

We know that Moses desired that everyone prophesy and be filled with the Holy Spirit (Num 11:29). We know that God promised through the prophet Joel (Joel 3:1-5) that a time would come that everyone would prophesy, dream and have visions. On the day of Pentecost St Peter declared that this promise from Joel was now a reality. Could this sigh of Jesus be an expression of His longing that this be true for everyone?

The adage 'sheep make sheep, and shepherds make shepherds' has had fresh resonance recently. Sheep making sheep is the laity going out into their daily tasks and evangelising and making new disciples of Jesus. Shepherds making shepherds is the role of leaders to not be bottlenecks but to notice those with leadership potential and to call them forth and train them to be good leaders and to surpass their mentors.

Consider the normal way people come into a living relationship with the Holy Spirit. It is person to person, a person (or persons) infilled by the Holy Spirit praying over someone who hasn't yet been filled with the Holy Spirit. But there could be around 5-10% of people for whom God acts sovereignly, infilling them with the Holy Spirit without any active human co-operation. Consider Ananias praying over the future St Paul vs the Holy Spirit coming down on Cornelius and his household while St Peter was still speaking.

Is it possible that prophetic gifting is transmitted in a similar way? For sure there are still sovereign acts of God, a la Amos and his prophetic call, and young Samuel under Eli the priests's care. But what if the usual way is for someone with prophetic gifting to pray over someone without prophetic gifting? What if the usual way is how it is described in this Mark 7:31-37 passage?

Those of us deaf to the ways of the supernatural realm have no legal standing there. We are helpless unless a group of people with prophetic gifting have enough compassion to bring us one by one to the Lord Jesus in prayer, asking Him for citizenship for us. Then knowing His ways, taking each one to places of prayer and quiet where that profound personal encounter with Jesus can happen in His timing. Extended times of personal prayer with Jesus precede the activation of those prophetic gifts and flow from those prophetic gifts.

Why is this so important?
Because in order to come into alignment with God's will, we need to have some certainty of God's will, and that comes from the prophetic gifting. Otherwise we are like deaf people trying to lip read what God is trying to communicate to us, and unable to release the kingdom power that flows from that alignment. Even the best of lip-readers only catch around 30-45% of the message through lip-reading alone.

If this is God's usual way of doing things, then it makes sense for those young in prophetic gifting to have those mature and experienced in prophetic gifting contactable during the journey to maturity in those gifts.
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But it begins with groups of those with prophetic gifting having deep compassion for those unable to function as citizens of the supernatural realm and praying for them, one by one.

This part of the #DR18 Conference took place in an auditorium on the nearby university campus in Halifax, Canada.

This is a broad brush transcription. Thankfully (as at 9 Aug 2018) this video from #DR18 is still available on Livestream via North Broadcast Group; however it takes around 12 minutes for the sound recording quality to settle down and the session to start.

Fr Simon Lobo is the current pastor of St Benedict's Parish, Halifax, having taken over from Fr James Mallon. Fr Simon is the author of 'Divine Renovation Apprentice' and a member of the religious order called the Companions of the Cross. Fr Simon can be found on Twitter @frsimoncc and you can watch him tell his vocation story https://companionscross.org/priests/fr-simon-lobo and how he came to be the pastor of St Benedict's Parish https://www.companionscross.org/latest-news/fr-simon-lobo-cc-appointed-pastor-st-benedict-parish

Ron Huntley has been the director of evangelisation at St Benedict's Parish, Halifax, and a member of the Senior Leadership Team. He is currently coaching parish leadership teams through the Divine Renovation Association and Network, and speaking internationally. Ron can be found on Twitter @ron_huntley and on Instagram @rmhunts and you can find his Divine Renovation coaching material at https://www.divinerenovation.tv/authors/ron-huntley or read a bit about his presentations at Proclaim 2018 in Brisbane July 2018 http://catholicleader.com.au/news/canadian-parish-coach-says-stop-catechising-start-evangelising-at-proclaim

Jen Ferrier: Welcome! St Benedict's Parish (SBP) changed my life. I used to sit in the last pew in order to sneak out early because I didn't want to be asked by the priest to do anything. My heart changed through attending Alpha in 2013. Many contributed to this work in my heart. Since then I have run Alpha at SBP for 5 years as co-ordinator evangelisation. God doesn't ask us to go it alone. The title of this session is 'Parish leadership is a team sport'.

Fr Simon Lobo: Welcome! Thank you for being here. It is a joy to be here with you, and I acknowledge the sacrifice to come and the investment needed to come. In seminary we did lots of courses on philosophy and theology, practical stuff on confessions and Mass, and about half a course on homiletics. There are 3 big areas we are called to serve in – priest, prophet and king. The laity is also called to serve in these areas through baptism. A priest has a special call to the kingly role of governance and leadership. In seminary we did a lot on 1 (priest), a little on 2 (prophet) and nil on 3 (king).

I had no concept of leadership. My parents didn't have any either. You don't know what you don't know. I had no sense of leadership.

Ron Huntley: Leadership is one of my favourite topics. Business can be just as toxic as church. Jesus gave us example of how to lead well. At SBP we talk about leadership all the time.

But what's the definition of leadership?

Leadership at St Benedict's Parish is answering the call to influence, inspire and equip individuals and teams to form disciples who joyfully live out the mission of Jesus Christ.

We have learned from many people, books, resources etc but we still mess up a bit.

Think about your parish. Leadership at ……. parish is ………………

On a scale of 1 to 5, how well is your church doing leadership? Mostly 2's. How many want a 5? How many believe that a 5 is possible? Vision is one of the things that gets us from a 2 to a 5.

Vision

Fr Simon Lobo: Vision, it's so central to leadership. I have a friend, a father of a family, who is an engineer who started his own business as a consultant. Gradually he worked out that he could only bill for a limited number of hours a week. He came to the conclusion 'that there had to be something beyond me' and 'I need to think bigger than myself'. So he invited and inspired others to join him, and he hired people from families in the church. It worked. They are all successful because this engineer could see beyond.

Priests in parishes can be the bottleneck. I was the glass ceiling, the bottleneck, in campus ministry. Growth was good at the start, but then it slowed down when it reached the limit of what I could handle.

'Vision is a picture of the future that produces passion' – Bill Hybels

Think to the horizon, way off to the distance. On the Camino Way there is a place called Finisterre, 'Earth's End', where Christopher Columbus looked out over the horizon some 500 years ago and said, 'I wonder if there's something out there, let's go for it'.

Part of getting people from here to there is helping people to see that we can't stay here, and saying, let's go there.

I was kind of forced into this a year ago, when I was asked to give a vision talk at our vision summit to 100 key leaders of the parish. What do I say? I'm a practical, feet on the ground kind of guy. I had to give myself permission to dream and to think big. I thought I had to cook up a vision within myself, but I realised that God has a vision for the parish. So I went to Him, before the Blessed Sacrament, and said, 'God I don't have a vision, I need a vision, help me'. Then the thought came, there have been 7 years of SBP history, what would 7 years in the future (2024) look like? At the moment there are about 50 people this past year who have had a significant conversion to Jesus Christ, that's about one a week. What if by 2024 that could be one person a day? And things flowed from there.

Think of a graph where the vertical axis is skills and the horizontal axis is time in leadership – or increasing responsibility in leadership. The need for technical skills decreases as time/responsibility in leadership increases. The need for casting vision skills increases as time/responsibility in leadership increases. The need for emotional intelligence skills or the ability to work with people and deal with difficult people is low in junior leadership, extremely high in middle leadership and medium in senior leadership.

This is why we need to keep growing in the ability to cast vision.

Describe a vision for your parish, or ministry, a picture with passion. What gets you excited?

Some of the answers from the auditorium were:
• People expect God to show up with miracles every week
• A full church for daily Masses, and all three campuses full of activity (outreach, bible studies, prayer groups)
• An apostolic community with an outwards focus
• A vibrant church with lively Christians, where the best of them are known in town and regionally as the best musicians, are regularly asked for articles in newspapers and are influencing politicians for the good behind the curtain
• Helping the family grow closer to Christ
• We are a university town, a place where the young people seek us out and find relevance, where we can show them the 'porta caeli' the gateway to heaven.

Ron Huntley: In the 2016 series of America's Got Talent there was a dad who did well, whose regular job was in nursing. He was asked why he entered the show. He said that when you are in survival mode you stop dreaming. I wanted to show my kids that if I can live my dream, maybe they can too.

A small vision doesn't get us from 2 to 5. I need to be a part of something amazing, otherwise I'll stay at sports. Great vision attracts and keeps great people. You can't do the vision without great people.

What we do is not easy. We don’t know how to do anything easy. This is not just for priests and pastors, but for ministry leaders too. I need your vision to be huge, exciting, compelling, dangerous. Start dreaming ridiculously God-sized dreams. What would happen if…?

57 people came to Christ this year. His vision: that in 7 years that becomes 1 a day. I want to be a part of that. How, I don’t know, but I want to be a part of that.

Fr Simon Lobo: It seems possible, but it also seems bold. We will figure it out on the way. We want healed, redeemed people who have experienced Jesus.

Ron Huntley: The vision statement is a signpost – it does not exhaust the vision. The vision is bigger than that.

Structure

Structure matters. Consider the local parishes within your area, would I be right in saying that not one of them has a structure set up for mission? If everything goes through the pastor, that is ridiculously ineffective. Fr James Mallon is naturally a delegator. Our goal is to do the very thing God is calling us to do.

It may even start with structure. Are we set up for mission? If your structure doesn't move with your mission, you will soon be on the verge of collapse. It was a crisis like that which forced us to re-evaluate our structure and leadership. Structure has to be fluid and out ahead of our mission, evaluating its fitness for our mission every few months.

Most places have people who have been in the same ministry for a very long time. Are their gifts still suited to this ministry? Do they still have passion and vision for this ministry? Is that vision in alignment with the overall vision for the parish? If so they should continue. If not we need to help them find something new where this will be true for them.

If I get in the way of the vision, I will step down. If I am part of the problem, I need to know – in order to move, to change, or to get out of the way. We can't let ego get in the way of the mission of the church.

When I took over pastoral ministry, we divided it this way, if it has a heartbeat I deal with it, and if it doesn't have a heartbeat then Rob deals with it.

Jesus invested disproportionate time with Peter, James and John. They were like His Senior Leadership Team (SLT). The rest of the apostles, the other 9, they were like His staff. The 72 disciples, they were like ministry leaders.

Things must percolate from the bottom up, not from the top down. We don't use the word 'report', we use the word 'support'. Jesus washed their feet – this is what leadership looks like in the kingdom of God. There is nothing I won't do for you. How can I support you? There is no room for ego. This is using authority to love and to serve.

Do you know who you need to support? Or are called to support? It is about how many others you are raising up. Your job is to unleash people. It is critical that we get this right.

Recently I had been having trouble finding time to connect with a friend, but I kept on trying. This friend told me I was only going to get let off the hook if I was doing what great leaders do. What do great leaders do? They invest their 1 unit of energy in places that get them 5 units of return.

Remember the parable of the talents? Three people were given 1, 2 and 5 talents, and they came back with 1, 4 and 10 talents. And the one talent was given to the guy who had 10 talents. Leadership is about unleashing people and about allowing all the other gifts to flourish. As leaders we are not to be bottlenecks but bottle openers.

We must think about leadership differently.

What gets in the way? Entitlement, ego, turf, toxic personal relationships, pride, competition, burn out, lack of self-awareness etc. We need to aim the sling, and so straight after it.

Each of us has 3.5 blind-spots. A weakness is different to a blind-spot. Weaknesses are things I know I am bad at. A blind-spot is something I think I am good at, but I'm actually bad at. Ages ago I worked in a small business for Ken, he was the boss and I asked him to be a reference for me when I applied for other jobs. So my potential new employers called him up and asked Ken what I needed to grow in. He's impatient. When I found out I initially felt hurt because Ken is my friend, but do you know what? He said that because it is true, and I had no idea it was true. It is so important that we figure this stuff out.

The senior leadership team (SLT) enables us to invest in each other, and to learn to trust enough, for us to get to that place where we can deal with this stuff.

Think about a time when you were on a team, and everything just flowed. On that team there was someone who made you the best you could be. Who was that person? You need them or someone like them on your team, who is like you in vision, but who is unlike you in skill set. Your SLT needs 4-5 people at the most, and is very different to a staff team. The idea is that is becomes a safe place to call each other out and call each other on.

Fr Simon Lobo: You probably have good people in your parish, who would love and support you and come along side you. Blind-spots: ask people who are close to you what they are, and give them permission to tell you. It is a dangerous thing to do, but people who really care about you want you to be better. Ron has done this for me. I can start to micro manage and not even be aware of it. What I think is efficient and focussed can go too far, far enough to suck the fun out of a meeting. But he said it in a loving way, 'You are a fun guy, but you don't often lead fun'.

Most people will lie to a priest's face. They will not be honest unless you build a relationship with them, and then ask them to be honest with you, and don’t punish them for it afterwards. It is helpful to see me through someone else's eyes. It is still hard for lay people to tell the truth to us, unless we actually submit ourselves to them.

Meetings

An excellent resource for this topic is Patrick Lencioni's book, 'Death by Meeting'.

People will happily sit through a 2 hour movie where they are passive and not based in reality – but put them in a 2 hour meeting and it's 'get me out of there as fast as possible'. The reason is because they are passive and not engaged. The key to a good story is conflict and tension, that's what gives excitement to the story, and to meetings.

Our Senior Leadership Team meetings have healthy conflict, and a nerf gun to add fun. It is a safe place. With Ron, Fr James, Rob and Kate in these meetings, we actually mine for conflict. If we are discussing a topic, and you are being quiet, I want to know what is going on. If you are disagreeing with the proposals tell us, tell us now. Don’t wait until afterwards. It doesn't have to get personal. It can get close to the edge, but we check in with each other later, 'How are you doing?' etc. We have different processing speeds.

Meetings are so essential. Patrick Lencioni says to avoid meetings would be like a mechanic saying that he loved being a mechanic, but if he could only get out of the time in the garage working on cars it would be great.

For leaders, priests and lay people, our leadership, our workshops happen so often in the context of meetings. I've had to have a change of heart on this, and to grow in awareness that I can't just slough these off, these are really important. We are in the business of relationships. And when we don’t meet with other people what happens very easily is that people who love Jesus and who care about the mission of the church, if they don’t meet regularly, there can be drift. Drift allows space for two visions to open up, and where there are 2 visions, there is division. Division and false assumptions can happen unless we take time investing in each other for the sake of the kingdom. It is that important.

There are several different kinds of meetings.

Since we have 160 people in hospitality ministry, there are going to have to be lots of meetings, small, medium and large, to keep that ministry going, thriving and unified.

There are different purposes for different meetings. Due to our desire to be practical we have prepared a handout that contains samples of what some of our meetings look like. Looking at the structure of those meetings helps people visualise what we are talking about. I don't want to encourage boring meetings.

Generic team meeting. We have a tendency to go straight to the how to deal with the urgent. While those urgent things have to dealt with, we have to make sure that we make room for the important.

Our Ministry Leadership Team meetings go for 2 hours. They start with prayer. We put all the topics on the white board. Then we each share a high and a low from our life/ministry around the table. Sometimes if there is a low low we stop and say, let's pray for each other. We then do some kind of development eg focus on a leadership principle, do book studies (eg the book, Made to Stick for improving communication), we prioritise the list and work through the list in order of importance, and then we end with an extended time of prayer and worship or reflect on the upcoming Sunday readings.

Clergy team meetings are a bit shorter.

One on one meetings. Ron has challenged me on this. What do you mean by them? Who are the key people I need to connect with and support? These are the people who will give the 5/10 fold return on time spent with them.

The format for them is to start with prayer, and then a topic list, followed by time for personal sharings about the joys and burdens of life and ministry. Then there is time for crucial conversations eg Hey, I caught you doing something amazing and I want you to know why or to address something that felt a bit harsh. There is stuff you can do one on one that you can't do with an audience. Then we talk about the stuff on the lists. We ask 2 questions, 'What are your top priorities for this week?' and 'How can I support you?'. We invest in people in an intentional way to free people up to be great.

The Senior Leadership Team meets weekly for 3-4 hours.

Ministry Leadership Teams meet weekly for 2 hours: that's the Pastoral Leadership team, the Operations team, the Clergy team and the Communications team.

One on one meetings happen weekly.

Once a month we have an all staff meeting (15-25 people), with prayer and personal sharing.

Ron Huntley: You can't do all this without stopping some other stuff. Priest vs pastor requires a paradigm shift from executing ministry to raising up other leaders to minister. Even with our staff we had to help them change from doers of ministry to leaders of ministry, and we had to form and shape them differently. And it was not easy, because you were probably hired because of what you are good at. But if you are good at it, you are going to have to stop doing as much and you are going to have to raise up other people around you, and that is a different skill set.

When I was director of evangelisation (a.k.a. pastoral ministries), the pastoral leadership team included the leaders of the Alpha team, the Kids team, the Youth team, the Discipleship Groups team and the Sacraments and Liturgy teams.

Having one parish over multiple sites (or campuses) requires thinking differently.

People are not used to being supported, they are used to being told what to do. When leading from the bottom up we need to create places where relationships matter. We need to invest in each other, so that we can dream again and move towards our mission. That's a completely different paradigm shift, so you need to speak into that for a while before you start creating – or finding ways to create – natural teams.

If you have 2 church sites in your parish, who is the natural leader in church A (and in church B) with the natural capacity to influence, inspire and raise others up? You have to invest in them. You have to re-address your structure and then get creative because you only have so many hours a week. So you have to figure out , 'How am I going to do this in a way that's sustainable for me?'

You have to look for the people who are really good at leading. Most of our best leaders didn't see themselves as leaders. They had humility, people respected them, and they respected and loved others, but they didn't see themselves as leaders, yet people would follow them and look up to them. These are the people I am talking about. You have to figure out who your Peter, James and John are, and how we are going to structure this around those people so that we can do great things. Not who has got what job title.
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With multiple sites there is a tendency to want to get an equal amount of people from each site. And what ends up happening is that you end up creating these councils (parish, finance etc). What happens is that people come in with an agenda of their location to advance and protect. What we need to start with is vision. Where does God want us to go? And then, who are the people who have bought into that vision? Because at Senior Leadership Team if people are fighting over the division of resources between sites, that's not going to work. As Fr James Mallon says, if you have more than one vision, then you have division. You need people who are bought in whole heartedly, not people who are Yes men; people who will challenge you, but they need to be people who have bought into the vision of where we are heading on this journey.

What does success look like? I know what you want, but before you tell me what you want, what do you think success looks like? Ask your staff, what do you think you get paid to do? It's a really good question. Ask them, 'What does success look like?'

John 15: I am the vine, you are the branches. The fruit bearing branches he prunes to make them bear more fruit. It begs the question, 'What does fruit look like?' So often we define ourselves by the branches, busy-ness or our programs, by how much time we have, by how much time we don’t have. 'I'm really busy'. So? Are you fruitful? I don’t really care how busy you are. Are you fruitful? How do you know? What does fruit look like? What's working? What's not working? How has it grown?

Tell me your vision of what fruitfulness looks like, and it had better be compelling. If it is, let's get behind it and structure it for success. We spend a lot of time in the Divine Renovation Network helping people figure that out, because there's no cookie cutter approach since you are working with real people and real skills and real gifts, and that looks different depending on your leaders.

Most of the people on staff weren't staff before, and we didn't always have a staff of 15. And it grew. The more successful we were, the more we were able to grow. Most of the people who came on as staff, came on staff from within the fruits of the ministry. (talking to Fr Simon) Think of all your hires lately – they have all been in the Game Plan.

Fr Simon Lobo: 8 years ago we had 5 or 6 people on staff, and that was already a bigger staff than some parishes. It has grown. Jen is an example of that, someone who came to us through Alpha and eventually got hired to help lead Alpha.

Ron Huntley: Alpha as a course is mediocre. Alpha as a culture is unbeatable, because it becomes the tool by which you evangelise, show hospitality, grow people and ministry, and develop a leadership pipeline. That's a huge secret of Alpha. Please don’t tell anybody.

It is a leadership pipeline if done well. Think about it. When's the last time you had dinner 11 weeks in a row with someone? It doesn't happen. So what if after those 11 weeks you really get to know them? And you see in them, this is someone of capacity. So you ask them, 'Would you like to be on team?' They say, 'No, I'm not a team member.' Then you say, 'No really, you're wonderful, you bond with people, they love you, you love them, just be a helper, you don't even have to say anything.' 'Oh, I could do that'. And then they come back and we have dinner for another 11 weeks – but this time in ministry with us. Then their confidence grows and we say, 'You were fantastic, you seemed to really get this, it looked like you had a lot of fun, didn't you? Listen, I'm wondering if you would be a co-host. Like, I'm going to be here as host. But sometimes I can't be here, so would you be willing to facilitate the conversation? I'll help you, I'll teach you how to do it.' Then another 11 weeks we have dinner together. And then we say, 'Hey, you look like you really enjoyed that too, having so much fun. Would you be willing to come back as a host? So over a 2 year period we are investing in these people. We are seeing what they are made of - and that is how we grow leaders.

We identify and grow leaders through Alpha because we meet with them over and over again, and then we serve in ministry with them, and that's why it's such an amazing tool when done properly.

It is easier to give someone a fish than to teach them how to fish, because that takes time. And sometimes you teach them to fish and then they don't want to do it anymore and leave. It is painful to have all that time and energy lost, but it is the right thing to do.

Alpha is what gives us the framework with which to do that. It has taught us how to identify and raise up others. It is really important because in the Divine Renovation Network we have people too busy for meetings because they are in too much ministry. If you are too busy doing ministry, how are you going to lead? And if you have never raised anybody up before because you've been too busy doing it, that's OK, but we are going to change that, because you have to change that.

The pastoral leadership team, I was responsible for supporting them. I would meet with them 2 hours every week as a team. And we would do the High Lows, and we'd do praise and worship and continue to grow in surrendering our lives to Christ, and then we would talk about what happened at the last SLT meeting (so that people are engaged to know exactly what was going on), then we would unpack some leadership principles that were relevant to all of us and then leave. So no minutes necessary.

Then I'd have my one on one meetings with people, every week for an hour. How are things going? What are you working on that you are excited about? Give me some wins. What are you procrastinating on? We need to know what people are good at and what people are bad at – both. What do you need to be doing in the next 3 weeks to be successful? What's it going to look like? What are you putting off? Why are you putting it off? Interesting. So you need to have a conversation with that person. So let me coach you on that, and we'll role play it to help you. When are you going to have that conversation? Hold them accountable. All that is happening in the one on one meetings, so I'm taking notes, but I wouldn't call them minutes.
So the next time I sit down with that person, I'll say 'How did you go with that meeting?' 'I didn't have it.' 'Why not?' 'I chickened out.' 'OK, remember why you need to have it. You're having it this week. I'm going to pray for you and I'm going to text you half an hour before that meeting because I need to hold your feet to the fire because I care about you and that's an important meeting.' 'Yes, it is.' 'OK, terrific.' So we don't need any minutes for that.

When we have our Senior Leadership Team meetings we make a whole list of things on the board about things we need to talk about, we prioritise them, and then we rip through as many as we can. We usually don't always get through them all. But we get through the most important ones first. So prioritise.

And then everything we talk about, we need to say 'who is doing what by when' because most organisations have an issue with executing not with strategizing – because there is no accountability.

We don’t talk about things just for fun, we do that at the pub. There we solve all the world's problems and we walk away feeling good about ourselves, and nothing gets done. That's not what we do at SLT meetings. Everything we talk about we determine who is doing what by when, and then next week when we meet again we say, 'Hey, Fr Simon, you were going to talk to Deacon ………., did you get a chance to do that?' 'Yes, I did.' 'What happened?' 'O cool, that's awesome; dealt with; perfect.' 'No, I didn't.' 'Why not?' 'He was away, and I couldn't.' 'Are you going to do it this week?' 'Yes, I am.' 'Terrific.' And it goes back up on the accountability items.

A lot of this stuff is broken down in the Divine Renovation Association, we talk about this stuff on the podcasts and things like that.

Fr Simon, what do you do as regards minutes and structure for clergy?

Fr Simon Lobo: Similar. It's probably not necessary to take minutes. But in a finance council meeting somebody is the secretary to take minutes for that kind of a meeting. Typically we don't. What we do though, our primary way of recording what happens is we do a lot of white boarding. We have white boards in pretty much every single meeting room. And as we are writing we might have a column of items that we are trying to get through – action items – that are assigned to different people, 'who is doing what by when, and how we are going to follow up'. And then we'll take a photo of the white board and email it around to everybody, so everybody can see that.

We have also tried having Google spreadsheets that we share with everybody with a running list of action items – that's another way to do it. That's a perennial issue, of 'How do you execute?'

Volunteers. Leadership Summits are another great tool that we use. Another meeting, you could say. We do them 3 times a year. It is a morning, a Saturday morning, say from 9am to 12 noon and it is action packed. It is so much fun. We get about a 100 of our not just people in ministry, but our ministry leaders, people who are leading people in ministry – and the vast majority of them are not on staff. Pretty much none of them are on staff, but our staff come to this as well.

We spend the morning firstly in prayer, then we have a fun ice-breaker, and then a key vision talk to re-connect us to the Why. Why are we doing this? Why are any of us, whether you are a lector, or on a hospitality team, or part of the grief ministry, or in Alpha, why are we doing this? And usually it is the pastor who gives this talk, because whether I like it or not, my voice matters on this. It goes back to the very beginning, vision casting, back to the why we are doing this and where we are going. And then we have a break and some snacks and then have some kind of an exercise, like a practical leadership exercise to get people growing in their leadership skills. It could be on the theme of 'How do you apprentice people?' or 'How do you develop a leadership pipeline?' where you are moving people along from one step to the next, or it could be a fun exercise to grow in self-knowledge.

Back in September we looked at Patrick Lencioni's book 'The Ideal Team Player', talking about the 3 virtues of an ideal team player – somebody who is humble, hungry and smart. By which he means people smart or emotional intelligence. Could this be a helpful schematic when you are thinking of the kind of people that we want to have involved in our ministry or leading our ministry?

Then we end with an extended time of worship and often a bit of prayer where we pray with one another as leaders to pray into whatever the needs are.

That's a really fun way, and people are actually delighted to give up their Saturday morning to come to it because it is just so rich and it is a way of investing in all of those key people who can then have a 5 fold return as they invest in their own ministries.

Culture

Ron Huntley: And that really helps us to change our culture of leadership. Changing your culture is really important. Peter Drucker, business author and speaker, said culture eats strategy for breakfast. So I sometimes see people taking our best practices and programs and applying them in their church, getting very little result and saying that doesn't work. You missed the point! You don't understand our culture. If you don't understand our culture and you take our best practices and programs and try to implement them you will probably not do very well.

And you will probably keep getting the results you've always gotten because you don't understand culture. Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

But there's another part to that I learned last year: bad leadership eats culture for lunch.

So we have a great culture at St Benedict's Parish and that story I shared earlier with Fr Simon and I, with a lot of passion and very good intent, started telling people who were already in a structure and supported.

We weren't sure whether all of that was going to come crumbling down because of his leadership. We didn't know. Because we didn't know him as a leader, and it could have.

How many of you have been a pastor or have seen a church in your diocese that was just booming and they changed the pastor and everything went to pot? Bad leadership eats culture for lunch.

So leadership matters, disproportionately unfortunately.
Leadership matters disproportionately.
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There are 2 things we believe we have to invest in disproportionately – evangelisation and leadership. Because if we do those things really well, everything else gets backfilled. So we are really intentional about creating a culture of leadership at St Benedict's Parish.

So how is culture created? 2 ways: by what we reward and what we tolerate. How many of you have people at your church who are toxic and yet serving in ministry? So you are tolerating their attitudes? (Nodding) Yeah. And what does that do? It creates a culture. And if I'm at your church and I see people behave like morons in leadership and you haven't done anything about it – I don't trust you. I don't trust your leadership. You don’t have what it takes to create a safe place for people to thrive. I can't follow you. Why would I follow you? We all know that it is as obvious as heck that this person is toxic and you're not doing anything about it. I can't trust your leadership.

That's why we can't tolerate bad attitudes and bad behaviour and bullying and all those other things that happen even in the church. We can't tolerate it. Because if we do, it defines our culture and we get the very church we deserve, and that's problematic.

The other thing I see, often times we don't celebrate enough. And I'm constantly challenging people in the Divine Renovation Network to catch people doing things well and celebrating it.

The other day in Senior Leadership Team, we had 2 new pastor priests with us interning and I was my zealous self and not very patient and one of the new priests asked a question, and boy did I ever respond in ways that let them know that was a really bad idea. And I didn't really notice I did it, and I kept going. And the next day Fr Simon said, 'Ron, can I talk to you for a couple of minutes?' 'Yeah, sure, what's up?' 'Remember in the Senior Leadership Team the other day?' 'Yes, it was a good meeting.' 'But remember when Fr ……. brought up this point?' 'Yeah?' 'Remember how you responded? I thought you were a little heavy handed, and I couldn't help but think that if I was new, and in a team like that, I would have felt really uncomfortable.' I said, 'Oh my gosh, what have I done? I can't believe I did that. I totally did that. Thank you so much for telling me.' I left his office and went straight up to the other priest's office and I sat down and said, 'I need to ask for your forgiveness' and I told him what I did. He didn't even remember. 'Oh yeah, Oh gosh, I never thought about that again.' 'Well, that wasn't nice, that wasn't kind, and I need to ask for your forgiveness. I am so sorry I did that and I'm going to work really hard to try not to do that again.' He said, 'You didn't have to apologise, but I'm really glad you did, because it just shows me that you guys really do want to be honest, be sincere and own your mistakes. Thanks a lot, it meant a lot.'

So guess what we started doing? We started telling people about that story. We started celebrating that story. Why? Because it is the exact culture we want to build.

We want to reward the story by telling others. That's why I'm telling you right now. I'm telling you that story because I want to reward his courage to have that conversation with me. He loved me that much that he wasn't going to let me be a moron, - even though I am from time to time – he's not going to let me do that. It's going to happen, but he's not going to let me continue to do it and have that impact effect other people. He loves me too much for that. He loves our mission too much for that. He loves our values too much to do that – and so he would risk having that conversation with me and making me aware of one of my blind-spots, so that I could own it. And that's worth celebrating. That's why we tell the story.

What stories do you tell? What are you rewarding in your church? Think about that. What would it look like if as a staff you decided we are going to send out one email a day, as random encouragement to somebody who has gone above and beyond, and blind copy the other people on staff, so that we can start to create a culture of celebrating cool things?

One of the things I used to do is that as people were ending their Alpha time – because we boot everybody off eventually, because it is not a club, it is something you move through so we develop you and we send you out into other ministries. Alpha is not a club. It is not a place where people get stuck. It's a place where people move through or it is not going to transform your church at all. And so as people are transferring out I would often send a note to Fr James and I would say, 'Hey Fr James, I want you to know how great Jen is on the team, she goes above and beyond, she's great at leading people, she's great at calling people and setting them up. She takes no credit for their success and their impact, and as a result she is raising people up all over our church. She is finishing her time at Alpha and I just want you to know how much I appreciate her and how blessed we are to have her at our church.' And I would carbon copy (c.c.) that person.

What do you think that feels like for them? To know that somebody notices that they're going above and beyond so much that they are writing to our pastor, and heaping praise on them to the pastor, and just happened to c.c. them. What do you think that does in terms of celebrating and creating a culture? Unstoppable.

What else do we do Fr Simon in terms of the culture end?

Fr Simon Lobo: It is time to wrap up. There's a great book called 'Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when the stakes are high' by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzler. I was getting a bit misty on the side as you shared that Ron. It's so beautiful to be able to have relationships with people that you can be that honest, right? Because we desire health, that's how badly we desire to be healthy.

All of us have bad days. I love your expression Ron, 'It is one thing for a leader to have a bad day, it is not OK for a leader to have a bad week, and if they have a bad month – watch out.'

Because everything rises and falls on leadership and the impact that we have as church leaders, whether as ordained or lay people, it's so huge, so significant, and let's use our leadership for good.

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​Below is a printer-friendly version of this broad brush transcription. It runs to 12 x A4 pages.

This part of the #DR18 Conference took place in an auditorium on the nearby university campus in Halifax, Canada.

This is a broad brush transcription. Thankfully (as at 23 Jul 2018) this video is still available on Livestream via North Broadcast Group; however the first 35 minutes are full of sound recording problems. When the sound does get settled, the wait is more than worthwhile.There's far more detail on the recording.

For a brief introduction to Carey Nieuwhof read https://careynieuwhof.com/about-me/

You can also find him on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/cnieuwhof/ , on Twitter @cnieuwhof and on Instragram @careynieuwhof .

When I was young I had a dream to drive on an autobahn. A few years ago I was in Germany and I shared this dream with my host, who graciously let me drive. I got up to 120 km/hr, then 150 km/hr and even 190km/hr – at which point I turned to my host and found him in panic. I was driving down this autobahn in a 12 year old Ford Focus station wagon, on roads for which Audi's and BMW's were designed. Do you find yourself with autobahn dreams and Ford Focus station wagon capabilities?

For the purposes of this talk I'm going to give you a bit of my back story, which we definitely won't have time for at tonight's session. My story is a story of church growth in a non-denominational context. Beforehand I was a lawyer, and met my wife in law school. In the middle of law school I experienced a call to ministry. Being in ministry creates a perfect storm.
When I was a lawyer my identity was clear. I was a lawyer by day, and a Christian too, although trying to work out how to do both at the same time. I had friends from school, and friends from the neighbourhood. What I did, what I believed, and my community of friends were largely distinct from each other.

A perfect storm is where three weather systems converge to create a weather event only seen about once every 100 years, wrecking crazy devastation to land and buildings.

The call to ministry required the relocation of our home. Now what I believe was also what I did, -a professional Christian - and where I worked was also where my community of friends was. My three streams of identity converged. Because I thought that more hours equalled more faithfulness, my family suffered.

When we visited friends from church my wife would ask, are we visiting them as friends or as pastors? I still can't answer that question. Our life was now lived in a fish bowl. Whenever I had a bad day this situation became acute, because you can't exactly say, 'I hate my parish', when all your potential listeners are parishioners.

On one hand the church was going really well, and growing rapidly. On the other hand everything else was deteriorating.

Around this time I met Reggie Joiner, one of the founding pastors from North Point Community Church in Atlanta Georgia, who our church had been consulting with. He said, come and meet my boss, a.k.a. Andy Stanley the senior pastor. This led to an invitation to speak at their 2006 conference on leadership. To speak in front of some 2500 people for me was like being invited to play in the Super Bowl. It was an incredible moment, the talk went really well.

But when I got home, I 'fell off the cliff' and depression hit. Things were great on the outside, but had fallen apart on the inside. I had burnt out. I tried to sleep more, to rest more, but nothing made me feel better. I had been cheating sleep for years, and my emotionally my tank was drained. However my relationship with God was fine.

Several weeks in to this experience and I had to admit that it was not going away anytime soon, and in fact instead of getting better it was getting worse. I had to talk to the elder board at the church because this was something I was not going to snap out of – something was broken. They suggested I take a sabbatical, but I knew if I did that I would never return, and I also knew that God's call on my life had not expired.

The healing process took months. It was tough going through the motions, but on the inside still falling apart. Very slowly, some energy and enthusiasm crept back. After 5 months I was at 60%, and after 12 months I was at 80%, but it really took 3-5 years to get back to a 'new normal'. It was pointless to aim for the old normal, because that got me to burn out. I became committed to finding a new normal that would work.

Then people started asking, 'Cary, how are you getting everything done?' You see, this new normal was a whole other gear. Encouraged by these questions I started writing down the principles I had found during this 5 year process of recovery. It resulted in a course called 'The High Impact Leader' https://thehighimpactleader.com/open-now

What is your number 1 time management challenge?
Many people find that it is an inability to focus and complete a task. Mobile phones with their beeps cause many interruptions. I keep my phone on 'Do Not Disturb' mode in my pocket. Research done on the brain says that it takes 5-20 minutes to re-focus after an interruption. Opportunities are a church-word for distraction.

The secret to high impact people is that they 'do what they are best at, when they are at their best'. Rarely do these things line up naturally, you have to be intentional about it.

There are 5 steps to getting there.

Step 1. Abandon balance.
The people you admire most are not balanced people. eg Elon Musk, Steve Jobs. They have an obsession, they are passionate people. Maybe you found someone like that in a coach or a teacher who was willing to go the extra mile because they saw something in you. These kind of people change the world. Embrace passion. Choose to embrace what you are doing with passion. The book, 'The Myth of Balance' by Frank Bealer is very good on this. To achieve balance people work on doing fewer things or less of everything – that's OK if you want life to be a retreat rather than an advance. I want to do and be my best. Have you noticed that a rested you is a kinder you?

Step 2. Stop just managing time.
It gives diminishing results because time is a fixed asset. Every leader gets the same amount of time every day, be they president, prime minister or you and me. There's a difference between being efficient and being effective. Stop saying, 'I don't have the time'. The reality is, you do have the time – that's uncomfortable isn't it? I have the time for it, I just need to make the time. Admit you didn't make the time to do x, y and z. Most of the time you have to say No. Make time for the relationships that matter. Start admitting, 'I had the time, but I didn't do this, I mismanaged my time'.

Step 3. Start managing your energy.
Not all hours are created equal. How many of you are morning people? How many of you are night owls? There are zones throughout our day when our energy is high, when our energy is moderate, and when it is low. There will be 3-5 hours each day when you are at your best and everything is working and flowing. Someone who really knew told me that even software engineers in Silicon Valley only produce 3 really good hours every day. So watch your own personal rhythms and patterns. There's no right answer, only your answer.
Not all tasks are created equal either. Of any ten job description tasks there will be some you love and some you hate. For some it is 'Wow, I can't believe someone pays me to do this'; for others it is, 'I can't believe I have to do this'.
For me, after getting up around 4-5am, I am at my best between 6am and 10am, I have moderate energy in the afternoon, and my low energy times are 4-6pm and 7-9pm.
So work out what energises you the most. It will be something you are gifted at, something that other people value and something that God consistently uses for results.
For me, communication has been my key gift. So I set aside my best hours, at least 3 days a week, for communication (writing, blogging, message preparation etc).
Since our brains lose charge a bit like our mobile phones, move to doing what you do best when you are at your best. I tend to do my emails late in the afternoon, or exercise, or both, during my low energy times.

Step 4. Stop Reacting.
No one will ever ask you to complete your top priorities, they will only ask you to complete theirs. It's just true. Each ask is asking for their priorities to become top. To combat this you need to decide – ahead of time – who you will and won't meet with. Most of us spend 80%- of our time on stuff that produces 20% of results. It would be better to spend 80% of our time on what will produce 80% of our results.
Monday is usually fire brigade day to fix all of the weekend's problems; the microphones that didn't work, the musician who turned up late and unrehearsed etc. What happens? 1) Your people time gets spent on low productivity and low reward situations. 2) The people who are yielding 80% of your results get none of your time.
So spend your time with the high yield people who are not the problem. By doing this you will get them from 'good to great' and from 'great to amazing'. Let the 20% go, it obviously isn't working out for them, encourage them to serve in a different ministry or with someone else. These people drain your day. After you have spoken to your top performers, how do you feel? You feel great and energised.

Step 5. Decide how to spend your time before others decide for you.
Schedule time to do what you are best at when you are at your best. Work on a fixed calendar. Is your August 2020 planned out? Mine is. Life is a series of repeated events. Mondays and Wednesdays are writing days. Tuesday and half of Thursday are meeting days, between 9am and 3pm; this forces efficiency. Meetings are the enemy of work.
I had to cancel many breakfast meetings, because that was my best time, although once in a while I will schedule some on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Saturdays are for the wife and kids, it has family written on it. That way if someone asks you if you are free on Saturday (so you can do something for them) you can say quite honestly that you have a prior commitment. Friday night is date night and Sunday night is rest and relax.

Leaders who achieve the highest level of impact do their best when they are at their best.

Question and Answer session

How do you lead when you are not in charge? Read the book with that title by Clay Scroggins on this topic. Most bosses like to hear the Why behind the What. Even if in your work week 20 hours are already proscribed, you still have control over the rest of them. Focus on what you can control, not on what you can't control.

Balance. If you are making great choices, take sleep really seriously.

Was your burn out like a dark night of the soul? It took lots of very deep prayer and counselling etc to get through it. I have only recently learned to give thanks to God or my burn out.

How do you schedule team meetings if not everyone is a morning person? It isn't a perfect world. We ended up getting biorhythm studies done on all our team members. Office work hours were based on a factory model where the production line stopped if everyone wasn't there. Give your staff as much freedom as you can. Try to schedule meetings in everyone's mid-energy zones. If that doesn't provide the solution, meet in the middle between your high energy zones and theirs.

Where are you doing it, your work? Where I can work without distractions. Know yourself; where do you thrive? For me it was setting up a home office. Multi-tasking equals no-tasking, especially for men.

What about that bottom 20%? They do need care, but whose care do they need? Does it have to be yours? If you don't lead the top tier, they will go somewhere else.

What about funerals? Some pastors have a gift for bringing people closer to God at funerals and weddings, I don't. So funerals are not a strategic use of my time. I only ever do them for important people in my life. But then again, most of my congregation is young. If your congregation has 200 people or less, you can probably manage funerals ok. If you have more than 200 people, you either have to outsource it or staff around it. Think about who else could do it. Does it have to be you?

You can't respond to all pastoral requests. You need a system. Small groups that keep looking after each other are one way to get ordinary pastoral care to people. When you look at the big names in mega-church land it is never a one man show, it is a team of people with a leader. Where you get the true one man show is in the small churches with less than 200 people.
You can find out more about how to set up a system at https://www.breaking200course.com/enrollment-is-open and learn about Breaking 200 Without Breaking You.

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Below is a printer-friendly version of this broad brush transcription. It is 4 x A4 pages long.

Share it around, discuss it with friends and co-workers, and do at least one of these things to improve your impact for the sake of the kingdom of God.

In recent weeks our family has experienced the death and funeral of Betty Olive Cavanagh nee Hunt, 9 Feb 1931 - 20 Jun 2018. Having promised many people that I would make her obituary available online, that is what I hope to do in this blog-post, as well as add in some photographs, some extra written material, and downloadable links to her funeral booklet, prayer card and a video-clip of her speaking about her life. 

Here is the obituary as printed in her funeral booklet. The family decided to print it rather than speak it, because a) we wanted to do her life justice b) many people find it hard to hear all that is said in a spoken eulogy and c) people can read it (and re-read it) at their own pace.

Obituary
​Betty Olive Cavanagh 9 Feb 1931 – 20 Jun 2018

Betty entered our world as the eldest daughter of Joseph Bede Hunt and Enid Noble in 1931. Her father at the time of her birth was a shunter with the NSW Railways. Bede's father was a blacksmith at Moorilda near Bathurst and Enid's father was an engine driver at Cowra.
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When Betty was born, her parents were living at Enfield near the railway marshalling yards, very close to Enid's parents who were also by that stage living at Enfield. Bede then got a move to Bathurst, and for some reason Betty remained in the care of her maternal grandparents and maternal aunts and uncles. Perhaps the reason was that they didn't want to be parted from her, and all of us can relate to that! Perhaps there were concerns about the rates of tuberculosis in Bathurst. 

Siblings Elaine and Bill followed, but they always lived with their parents. Bede received moves to Cootamundra, Narrandera and Belmont, and eventually back to Enfield, where the family made their home at Lidcombe.

At school with the nuns Betty was happy. With the Children of Mary sodality she received good spiritual formation and a devotion to St Maria Goretti.

Betty left school at age 15 and began work as a mail delivery person at Hodgson & Co. at Ashfield. From there she moved into admin, working firstly on a half-ledger and later on a full ledger, being promoted regularly until she was looking after the ledger accounts for a single commercial traveller and entrusted with face to face over the counter interactions with customers.
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It was in this 'front of house' role that she was noticed by Robert Cavanagh (a.k.a. Toby) as he came in to deliver the mail. She was not interested, but he had seen how special she was and he was persistent. Upon discovering that she liked to go swimming, he made sure that he tagged along the next time she went to the pool with her relatives. Their first official date was soon after 'chicken in a basket' was a menu option and they had that and went to a movie, had a memorable day together and from then on the relationship blossomed. Toby won over Betty's
siblings and her Noble relatives, but her mother was a different story. Enid wanted someone with more prospects for her daughter. 

Love found a way, and they were married on 2 Jun 1956, and after their honeymoon they lived with Toby's Mum and siblings at Summer Hill. Their son Paul arrived around 9 months later, and their daughter Maria around 5 years after that.
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It was in 1961 that Toby and Betty came to live in Umina Beach, and Toby began operating the first Woolworths store in the area. 50 years later Betty was given the honour of cutting the ribbon to open the new Woolworths store at Umina Beach.

Back in 1961 they attended Sunday Mass at the cinema at Ettalong until the Sacred Heart Church at Umina was opened in 1964.

In the mid-late 1960s Toby was working at the (then new) shopping centre at Grace Bros, Top Ryde until he was head-hunted by Jim Dickson to run and hopefully eventually own the mixed business in West Street, Umina. Such were the desires of this young family until ill health and the discovery of digestive tract cancer reduced his life span, coming to a close on St Valentine's Day 1969 after multiple surgeries and an extended stay in Hornsby hospital. This left Betty a widow with 2 growing children dependent on her, and the loss of their dream of building their own home.

She did not know how she was going to cope with the responsibilities that now rested solely on her shoulders. Benefactors like Dr Frank O'Brien assisted with the expenses of school fees, and the family stayed in rented accommodation until the owners wanted to sell the property, and then they moved into a holiday cottage at Umina Beach owned by Bede and Enid, where Enid's sister Madge was living at the time. Enid expected and received regular rent payments.

Somehow she survived the acquisition by her children of all sorts of pets including Labradors and guinea pigs, but never cats – felines and Betty shared a mutual dislike. She survived the challenges of children with broken bones, appendicitis and eye operations. She survived their teenage years with associated romantic heartaches and watching a business venture crumble as the great recession of mid-late 1980's hit. How? By lots of prayer, the support of extended family, and offering up of each new difficulty as an act of mortification for the Holy Souls in Purgatory.
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Sometime between 1968 and 1969, when Fr Michael McCarthy was around, she got roped into becoming the sacristan at Sacred Heart Umina, setting up vestments and vessels for regular Masses and funerals and doing copious amounts of ironing of sacred linens. He bailed her up against one of the walls of the school and said that the couple who had been setting up for Mass (presumably at the cinema) were getting on in years, and she was much younger. Even after the Sacred Heart Umina property was sold in 2007, she continued to assist in the preparations for Saturday morning and Saturday vigil Mass, and to take home linen corporals and purifiers to wash and iron right up to the weekend before her palliative radiation treatment started. This meant that she served at Sacred Heart, Umina Beach from soon after it opened until it closed. 

She narrowly survived the calcification of a stent intended to temporarily fix an issue with the bladder back in 1993, losing one kidney in the process that was probably malfunctioning all through her life. Maybe it was this scare that made her so obedient to following her doctors' instructions, or maybe she just loved to imitate the obedience of Jesus.

Truthfulness was another virtue – but only supplied when the answer to the questions people asked her required it. Working out the right question to ask, now that was the hard part.
​
The evidence of the power of her prayers with God is impressive. God decided to answer the lengthy prayers of a mother concerned about the happiness of her son at the same time as He decided to answer the lengthy prayers of a lassie
seeking a good and holy husband in a way that a sequel to the Book of Tobit could be written. Then when the family wanted to put on a special celebration for her 75th birthday, she didn't want that at all, she prayed, and lo and behold a spot opened up for her to have a gall bladder operation requiring that her birthday be spent in hospital – a story to rival St Scholastica's. You noticed that stubborn streak did you? Good.

Her happiest days in later life came with the arrival of her two grandsons, and the affection between them was profound and mutual. Going on pilgrimage to Rome, the Holy Land and Medjugorje with them during the Holy Year of 2000 was another highlight. Further joys came with regular get-togethers with her siblings and their spouses, and when her brother Bill and his wife Cecilia moved to Ettalong around 2009.

Betty supported her children Paul and Maria with her prayers, presence and practical help when they both went through surgery and further treatment to remove cancer – thankfully not at the same time, but a few years apart.

Because she knew the One in whom she trusted, her first recourse when any need presented itself to her was to take it to prayer. If there was a situation she wasn't happy with, she didn't add her opinions to the mix, instead she took them all in prayer to the One she knew could fix any situation. This made her an
unparalleled mother-in-law. This same quality made her the confidante of many, even of complete strangers who would sit next to her on the bench while she waited for the rest of the family to complete their grocery shopping.

Her other special ministry was liturgical in nature. Daily missal in hand and with clear voice she would take her part in saying the Entrance and Communion antiphons at Mass and in making sure the Lamb of God prayers were begun at the right time. She was the go-to-gal for anyone unsure of which set of Proper prayers or set of readings was the correct one for that day's Mass. With unfailing patience she got everyone who turned to her for help onto the right page. Each morning she took part in the Morning Prayer of the Church, and frequently joined in the
communal recitation of the Rosary after daily Mass.

We thought she would be with us for much longer since her father lived till 94 and her mother to 101, but after 49 years of widowhood God decided that it was time to prepare her for the longed for reunion with her dear ones in heaven. This took the form of an aggressively growing oral cancer, paired with the double whammy of advanced age and lone kidney.

It took these difficult final weeks when her strength was fading to uncover just how good and patient a listener she must have been for her many friends over the years because a pattern became apparent that most of them had the 'gift of the gab'.

Her lifetime of 'offering it up for the holy souls' and understanding of the value of 'acts of mortification' bore fruit in the way she gently accepted the increasing bad news about her health and squarely faced all the medical tests and treatments recommended, as well as her increasingly larger dependence on nursing assistance. 

Keeping records neatly was something she excelled at. In her diary she would note down the time of day and priest for each Mass she attended – even the 'Mass For You At Home' broadcasts early on Sunday mornings, and times of phone calls and medical appointments, all in her trademark capital letters. Cousins and nieces and nephews were never forgotten, she kept in contact with them and never missed sending a birthday card. She enjoyed reading, especially about the lives of holy people, and doing puzzles, always solving the ones at the back of her TV Week magazine.

Up until 31 May 2018, the diocesan patronal feast day of Our Lady, Star of the Sea, she was at morning Mass every day, but from then on the decline in her health began in earnest. 

She loved to pray the ‘Stay with me’ prayer of St Padre Pio, and this was answered in a wonderful way in her last days, as her last three Holy Communions were given with 1/4 of a host, the last 1/4 consumed by her son Paul a few hours after she very gently breathed her last, as she wished, at home in her sleep.

May God grant her a merciful judgment and an extraordinary reward. Amen.

................................................................................................
Her friend, Beverley, wanted to say something at Betty's funeral, so I promised her that I would put it online instead:

A voice rings out in the Church. It is the voice of Betty Cavanagh. She is saying the Entrance Antiphon Prayer as Father is walking in to our Church for Morning Mass. We join her but only a few have a missal. Betty also says the Lamb of God prayer after the Lord's Prayer and I join her in the Communion Antiphon. She is my mentor and my friend. For ten years she has been guiding me along God's path. There is so much she knows about the Church Year and often she would turn around to see if I had the right page. Her seat, in front of me is empty now, and I miss her, especially our hug.
My dear friend, au revoir.
Beverley.

​..............................................................................................

​The homily at her funeral, which I have no hope of doing justice too, was given by a former parish priest, Dr John Hill, and he spoke about how only the strong are able to be meek, and how only the strong are able to forgive, and how those that the world doesn't give a second glance to are most precious in the eyes of God - because their whole intent is on pleasing Him.

..............................................................................................

Some year's back, the parish priest at the time devised a form for parishioners to fill in so that the parish had a record of their wishes for readings, hymns, internment, funeral options etc, and the back page had a biographical section.

Betty filled out the front page, and the back page, but could never decide which readings and hymns she wanted.

We found that back page after her death, and include it here because it is in her own handwriting and in her own words:

So what did we end up choosing for her funeral readings and hymns? and Why?

The first reading from the prophet Micah, about the simple things needed for us to please God, had been a family favourite and reminded us of the direct simplicity of Betty's relationship with God.

The psalm, Psalm 94(95), is the one Betty prayed every morning in the Prayers of the Church, a.k.a. the Divine Office.

The second reading from St Paul's letter to the Philippians was for the feast day of St Romauld, 19 June, and was read for Betty at her last Holy Communion, when it felt so completely apt for that moment.

The Gospel from St Luke is about the holy people in the Temple who waited for the Messiah, particularly the woman who was widowed young and spent the rest of her days serving God.

Hymn-wise, 'Gentle woman, quiet light' is as good a description of Betty as it is of Our Lady, as she definitely tried to live out her consecration to the Mother of Jesus each day, and that became the opening hymn.

Betty loved the hymn Panis Angelicus, especially when Lyn Dwyer sang it, so that was an obvious choice for Holy Communion, and was followed by a favourite of many, Soul of my Saviour, as the post-Communion hymn.

Betty liked that at Nina's funeral on 30 May 2018, a good friend of hers, they had the Salve Regina (Latin version of the Hail Holy Queen) as the last hymn, and we liked it too. It is also the anthem to Our Lady that closes Night Prayer for people around the world, and what the priests of our diocese sing as their final farewell to one of their own.

Here's a copy of the funeral booklet, if you would like to read them in full:​

And if you would like to hear Betty talking about her life in the interview her grandson did with her back on 7 May 2018 soon after the medical news confirmed that the cancer was stage 4 and inoperable, it takes about 18 minutes: 

After all that, there's a chance you might like to have a prayer card to put in your bible, missal, prayer book etc, to remember her by. So here's a downloadable version:  

Late last night the news embargo was lifted, and we learned that our bishop of 3.5 years, Bishop Peter A. Comensoli, has been appointed as the new archbishop of Melbourne.

Those who have been around for a while realise that there is no cause for either rejoicing or commiseration at such news, until the calibre of the replacement is known - and that can take up to 2 years after his appointment.

What we do need, beyond doubt, is prayer. Soaking, daily, communal and collective prayer, begging God for the grace of a new bishop that will fulfill God's whole purpose for his appointment and be the right person at the right time to lead our diocese into an immense harvest of souls for the kingdom of God.

So here's the prayer:

Eternal God and Father,
our Good Shepherd and Redeeming Lord,
in Your abundant Mercy give to Your Church
in this diocese of Broken Bay
a shepherd after Your own heart
who will walk securely in Your ways,
and who will with wise and loving care
watch over the welfare of Your people.
Do not look upon our sins, upon our apathy
nor upon our lack of response to Your call,
but look upon our great need for a bishop
whose greatest desire is the salvation of souls
and who wants the whole diocese to collaborate with him
in bringing souls back to You
and Your boundless Mercy.
Grant that he may be for us a fearless teacher
of the truth, a tireless preacher of the Gospel,
and wholeheartedly committed to doing
Your holy Will and only Your holy Will.
May he be a true father, good example,
inspiration and encouraging support to the priests, deacons and religious of our diocese.
So may Your Church in our diocese be built up in love
and Your holy name glorified;
we humbly ask all this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
​
Our Lady, Star of the Sea, Help of Christians, pray for us.
 
And below there is the PDF, print and share version:

Whether you are part of the Broken Bay diocese or not,
​please join us in praying for this most important intention.
Thank you

The last month and a half has been taken up with the death of my holy mother-in-law, her funeral and her burial. It has been a very privileged time watching the unfolding of God's perfect plan for her final weeks. But that's the topic of a future blog-post, if He gives me time to put it together.

For now I just want to highlight some very good resource material for those of who have received a terminal diagnosis, their loved ones, and the special teams of nurses and doctors and chaplains who care for people in the end stages of their lives.

Firstly, Dr Kathryn Mannix's book, 'With the end in mind' is a collection of stories from her years as part of various palliative care teams in the U.K. In particular, 'Sabine's story' is the best, most succinct description of what a normal death looks like that I have ever come across. After reading it all of my experiences in nursing homes over the past 20 years suddenly had context and a place in that narrative description.

Here's the extract from her book that contains the important part of Sabine's story. Needless to say, the whole book is well worth reading.

The link to the Amazon page for this book : 
​www.amazon.com/End-Mind-Dying-Wisdom-Denial/dp/0316504483

The next book is 'Heaven's Homecoming' by Fr Douglas McKay. In it he tells stories from the nursing home where he was chaplain about the unique ways God prepared each person for death, and how amazingly God answered each person's wishes for the circumstances under which that great and longed for meeting would take place.

It is a book you can read and re-read again and get more out of it at each reading. I confess that I didn't want this book to end, so I only let myself read one story at each sitting.

The link to the Amazon page for this book:
www.amazon.com/Heavens-Homecoming-Father-Douglas-McKay/dp/1467503436 

In between the clinician's view and the chaplain's view, is the view of the nurses, and that's where this third book fits in: 'An Army in Heaven' by Kelley Jankowski. There's plenty of 'good and normal', 'special and holy' and 'downright spooky' within its pages.

All three views are important, in order to get the full picture.

The link to the Amazon page for this book:
www.amazon.com/Army-Heaven-Kelley-Jankowski/dp/1682131823  ​

But even that is not the full story, and you will find that in the account of the near death experience of Baroness Von Trapp (the one the movie 'The Sound of Music' was based on) in the PDF below (3 x double sided A4).

​The booklet also contains many useful prayers for those facing death themselves, and for their loved ones who are keeping vigil with them for the Lords arrival.  

The psalms tell us that 'precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His faithful'. That's a truth we can rely on, and these books and booklets highlight just how true this is.

Reading them can take away your fear of death, help you start important conversations with your loved ones, and help you see more clearly the active hand of God in the lives of those around you who are currently in their 'end story'.

​This particular Pentecost has had a huge build up, and expectations are running high. Please God, this will be the breakthrough we have all been longing for, the long promised tsunami of grace.

So what should our final preparations be?

Firstly a recognition that this is God's work; not ours. The primary witness to the resurrection of Jesus is the Holy Spirit. The rest of us are secondary witnesses. Without Him we can do nothing.

Secondly a willingness to let the Holy Spirit surprise us; an openness to Him working in unexpected ways that might initially make us feel uncomfortable.

Thirdly, and most importantly, total surrender to Him. What does this consist of? What does it look like? Putting all your hopes and dreams and plans in God's care, and being happy if none of them come to pass - as long as God's will is done in us and through us. At the beginning of the rite of ordination to the priesthood, the candidates come forward, and lay down prostrate on the floor to symbolise that they are giving themselves completely to God for His purposes, and the renunciation of everything of their own will in favour of His.
​
Our model and our hope in these final preparations is the mother of Jesus. With her assistance what is most difficult becomes easier, and whatever obstacles there are decrease and dissolve. May her intercession obtain for us the grace of complete co-operation with the Holy Spirit. Amen.

​There are a lot of 'high expectation' prophetic words flowing around online in Protestant and non-denominational circles at the moment. Gauging what is happening in prophetic word from Catholic circles is very difficult, because it doesn't get shared online unless there has been some heavy duty discernment. However the more I read, and ponder and pray, a possible interpretation emerges that has implications for both sets of circles.

Of course, I could be completely wrong, and maybe something even more wonderful is afoot behind the scenes.

Some of the recurring themes are increase, acceleration, breakthrough, harvest, letting go of the old and taking hold of the new, surrender and humility as the path to these treasures, an army prepared for battle, the opening of doors and deep wells, an invitation to more, an invitation to intimacy and lingering with God, hunger for God, sudden divine appointments and sudden divine alignments, new mantles of gifting and of authority, huge release of resources, growth coming from unexpected directions.

What if you looked at all of these themes through the lens of the journey home to the Catholic church?

Under this lens the need for acceleration makes sense. Why? The process of the journey home to the Catholic Church is normally slow and gradual stretching over 5, 10, and in many cases 20 years or more. With special grace that process can be accelerated.

The same can be said for the initial process of conversion to Jesus, it is usually slow and gradual too. Sudden conversions like what St Paul experienced are infrequent. But since the messages are for those who are already Christian, maybe God does want to accelerate the process of the journey home to the Catholic Church.
​
Part of that process is the stirring of the heart to want more of God, and to be dissatisfied with anything less. I'm going to quote from Nate Johnson here, because he describes it well:
I want to be honest...I haven't been satisfied for a long while now, and I could pretty much say I have been like this my whole life. Always peering around the corner, curiously wanting to see what was to come and living in the tension of what is now and what is to come. But there is a LONGING for more that myself and many others are experiencing right now which has been very different.
One morning in early December, I was so overcome with the presence of God that out of me came this cry of: "I want more Jesus, I want more!" I was not saying that He was not enough or that I was ungrateful, but it was something He was doing in me to reveal the untapped vastness of His person – His glory – that I was not yet experiencing or seeing others experience.
It was a dissatisfaction that ran so deep that it seemed like all other appetites evaporated or waned instantly in light of the hunger that was erupting from my spirit. God began to show me that in this season He is rolling back the curtain and the veil, so we can see what is available. He is calling the Church out of stagnancy and "church as usual" to develop the appetite we were designed to have...for the unlimited riches of His glory!

Does this feel to you like a hunger that could only be satiated with the Eucharist?

It does to me.

Another part of that process is the discovery of ancient sources of renewal that are available to all, but few people know how to find or to value them. For example, the places hallowed by the prayers and lives of the Saints, the writings of the Early Church Fathers, the writings of the Doctors of the Church, the Sacraments, sacramentals (medals, holy water, icons, scapulars etc), the hymns of St Romanos the melodist and St Ephrem. Could this be what the Holy Spirit is referring to in these words from Michele Stickells?

I saw an angel stirring the waters, then I hear, The angel is stirring up the waters of ancient wells, that have become dry and redundant. I see it's time that God wants to restore the wells that hold the ancient anointing, to bring forth the end time anointing that will bring revival. I also see mantles lying in the dust, waiting to be picked up; they also carry past and ancient anointings. The Holy Spirit is moving across the nations looking to see who will see what He is doing, and be ready to receive from past ancient anointings that have remained dormant and hidden for an appointed time, for it takes an ANCIENT ANOINTING TO RELEASE THE END TIME ANOINTING !!!

At the same time there are various calls to lay down our own agendas and ideas and those things that have worked in the past, and to pick up God's plans. Nate Johnston explains it like this:
I had a vision of a hot air balloon that is being fired up to take-off, but it was being held down by sandbag weights all around it. I heard the Lord say, "You have to lose your sandbags to ascend." Then I began to see many obstacles in the spirit that many of us experience when God is inviting us to ascend. To my surprise, they were not just fears, worries, and concerns, but they were more like concepts. They were things like holding onto old patterns and ways of thinking – not wanting to shift from the way God was moving to the new way He was flowing and taking us. These sandbags were also the mindsets of wanting to stay behind the wheel and control the direction of our lives, the process, and orchestrate the outcomes. Not yielding to the Holy Spirit stops the fruit from growing. It's an interesting thought that you can look like you are full of fire and ready to go, but without letting go of the old and surrendering to the shift, you stay grounded. LET GO, and watch Him build and increase you beyond your own means.

And Lana Vawser explains it like this:

I had a powerful encounter with the Lord recently and in this encounter I saw Jesus and He was inviting the Pioneers into the most beautiful room in the library of heaven. The interesting thing about this room in the library of heaven was the door was VERY SMALL. The door was tiny, so to “enter into this room” and to move into the invitation the Lord was releasing, there was a significant call to “lay down, and go low”. There was a deeper place of surrender, humility and yieldedness to the Lord that had to take place, it is not a place of “striving” to “be humble” but a recognition that He is Lord, and we are not. He is the One who we hand the reigns over to, to lead, to guide, to speak. We hand the reigns of timing over to Him. We hand the reigns of “the way” over to Him. We hand the reigns of how things are “built” over to Him, it was a place of such deeper surrender to Jesus and trusting Him in His way and timing. The beautiful thing is I could feel so strongly in the invitation to continue to ‘lie down’ and ‘go low’, is the plans, purposes and manifestation of what He is building is bigger than what is even being dreamt about by the Pioneers.

What could be harder or more difficult than to lay down any anti-Catholic sentiments and to yield any long held teachings that are not truly biblical? And yet what is more necessary for true growth and the finding of untold treasures of grace?

So if you are a Christian and odd things seem to be happening in your life that are pointing you towards the Catholic Church, receive them as invitations from God to the more that He has for you and start to investigate what the Catholic Church actually teaches. If you are looking for a starting point, remember that burning question that you shelved because you couldn't get a satisfactory answer? Take it out, look at that question again, and find out from reputable Catholic sources what answers the Catholic Church has to that question.

So if you are Catholic start talking and thinking about what your parish would need, and what would need to change if the number of people wanting to do the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (R.C.I.A.) multiplied by ten. What would you need to do if it multiplied by a hundred? Start working on increasing the budgets, recruiting and training additional R.C.I.A. team members, and gathering the resources that the spiritually hungry are going to need when they arrive.

Mary, Mother of the New Pentecost, Star of the New Evangelisation, pray for us.

This blog-post is a compilation of a few off-line emails about the topic of the charismatic gift of tongues. Maybe they might go some way to answering your own questions on this topic.

Firstly, here is some recommended reading.

The first book I’ve recommended is They Speak With Other Tongues by John Sherrill
It is a classic book, which he recently updated for its 40th anniversary. In the early 1960s he began to research this phenomenon, and obtained interviews and information and put it all together in the book. Because it is written as an outsider looking in, you can follow along and make your own conclusions. If you have read it before, go back and re-read it. I re-read it last year and have recently finished rereading it again, and I am appreciating nuances of it today that even 12 months ago would have gone over my head.

The second book is As By A New Pentecost by Patti Mansfield Gallagher
It tells the story of how the Catholic Charismatic Renewal began, and how it was preceded by the actions of Pope Leo XIII and the various Pentecostal movements of the first half of the 20th century. I have yet to read it, because it is only available in hardcopy, but I have watched a few video-clips of Patti telling the story, and it is both an inspiring and a sad story. Sad because the Catholic Church would have received this gift much earlier if it had responded to Pope Leo XIII’s requests with vigour; inspiring because it shows that God responds magnificently when we call out to Him in faith.
Here is one of those video-clips https://youtu.be/twizOkRIzLo

Primarily the Catholic Church provides holistic support for the gift of tongues because in Council under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the canon of Scripture was put together by the Church in the 3rd/4th centuries, which includes the New Testament writings about speaking in tongues. If this gift wasn't considered real and relevant we wouldn't have the Gospel of Mark, the Acts of the Apostles or 1 Corinthians in the canon of Scripture.

How do you know it’s the Holy Spirit? Usually it is an act of faith and trust, and sometimes there is evidence of God’s fingerprints. The same can be said for any method of prayer.

In the ‘They Speak With Other Tongues’ book there is a story of the author making recordings of people praying in tongues and one woman said that for her she needed to pray about a specific situation in order to do so. The author knew his wife had been having trouble writing an article with a deadline, and he suggested this situation, and the woman used the author as a proxy for his wife. She prayed over him in tongues, and he felt something spiritually and emotionally, and his wife completed the article in record time. Whether the praying woman felt anything is unknown. God's fingerprints are all over this situation.

There is an effect that St Paul talks about in 1 Cor 14:4, ‘The one with the gift of tongues talks for his own benefit’, but there are other translations eg ‘Anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves’ or ‘A person who speaks in tongues is strengthened personally’.

Patti Gallagher Mansfield talks about praying in tongues as refreshment for the soul/spirit, and others writers speak about health benefits. This effect is one way you can tell that the Holy Spirit has been at work in addition to the classic signs of the activity of the Spirit of God in Gal 5:22, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control.

The gift of tongues is one of those situations where the adage applies, ‘For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe, no explanation will be sufficient’. That blessed leap of faith is the gap between.

John Sherrill talks about an interesting experiment in his book. Together with the recordings he made from people who believed they had the gift of tongues, he added in two recordings that were pure gibberish, and then asked some linguistic experts to comment. The former mostly had discernible structures of language, the gibberish did not, and it was quite obviously different.

Do people when they pray in tongues know whether they are praising God or interceding for a situation? Not for sure they don’t. If they have formed an intention to do one or the other, then the expectation is that language will flow according to that intention. If no intention has been formed, then sometimes the rhythms and cadence will give a clue. But do we know for sure? Not unless someone is around who can interpret.

I think this is what St Paul meant when he said that you have to be willing to look foolish before you can truly be wise (1 Cor 3:18). There are few things as foolish looking as someone taking the early steps of yielding to God and letting Him control the vocal chords. But it is extraordinary and necessary training, because the same willingness to look foolish and to yield to God is necessary for the gifts of prophecy, miracles, healing etc to happen.

In preparation for the 1967 weekend at the Ark & Dove, the student group read through the first 4 chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, and also ‘The Cross and the Switchblade’. David Mangan was drawn to the Greek word used by St Luke in Acts 1:8 that gets translated ‘power’. In the Greek this word has the same roots as the word we use for dynamite. David wanted to see the dynamite power of the Holy Spirit in action, and he prayed for this.

David Mangan had reasoned it out this way. He wanted to experience the dynamite of the Holy Spirit, and he wanted to hear someone speak in tongues, but he was intelligent enough to know that he’d never believe if it was someone else, there would always be some doubt if it was someone else, so he wrote down in his notebook, ‘I want to hear someone speak in tongues: me’.

The charism list in 1 Cor 12:8-10 are all gifts that have the power to change lives dramatically: preaching with wisdom; preaching instruction; faith, healing; miracles: prophecy; recognising spirits; gift of tongues; ability to interpret them.

The gift of tongues is in that list. It wasn’t left out.

There are plenty of gifts of prayer (vocal, mental, contemplative) and many acceptable forms of prayer (liturgy of the hours, lectio divina, rosary, prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, spontaneous prayer, the Jesus prayer, singing hymns, novenas etc) and they all have their impact according to the mysterious co-workings of our efforts, His will and His grace.

But there is something about the gift of tongues that aids a connection with the dynamite of the Holy Spirit that has no comparison. When individuals and groups pray this way, the spiritual climate changes, and in some way access to the other charisms in the 1 Cor 12:8-10 list becomes easier.

Re-reading Romans 8:26-27 in the light of the gift of tongues is worth doing:

The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit Himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words, and God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what He means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God.

This is true of all prayer, but it is especially true of the gift of tongues.

Any prayer that God Himself prays in us is going to be according to His will, and is going to have a swift answer.

The gift of tongues underlines in a dramatic manner that it is the Holy Spirit who prays in us, who causes us to call out ‘Abba Father’ (Romans 8:15)

We see human analogies of this gift in families, both with youngsters who communicate their needs quite well without words and sentences, and with adults who with insider family jargon can communicate with a specific grunt and gesture a whole page worth of meaning.

I thought the story from John Sherrill’s book was instructive, where someone gets called to a hospital to pray for a seriously ill girl, and this person has no idea whether to pray for death or for complete healing, so the decision is made to pray in tongues, because God knows what is needed and what is perfect. This person prays for a while and as the prayer continues the impression that the girl will make a full recovery grows. She indeed made a full recovery. The praying in tongues was the equivalent of praying ‘May Your kingdom come in this situation’.

We know that the pleas of the saints as expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God, so God is not going to curse Himself, and likewise when under His influence we are not going to curse Him either. Sons and daughters of God don’t do that.

You could say that prayer in tongues is more effective at getting God to answer the prayer the way God thinks it should be answered, especially in emergency and spiritual warfare situations.

Each of us has a multitude of weapons of prayer in our private arsenals. We turn to some forms of prayer when seeking discernment. We turn to other forms of prayer when praying for healing. We turn to other forms of prayer when we want to study the life of Jesus more closely. We turn to other forms of prayer when praying for big miracles.

You can think of the gift of tongues as just another weapon in your prayer arsenal. Like any weapon in that arsenal we can choose to use it, or ignore it. We can use to learn it well and skillfully, or bumble-footedly.

To use the same prayer weapon for every situation would be loopy, just like using a bread knife is loopy if you need to carve meat and you possess a carving knife.

If you are still on the outside looking in, the arguments boil down to:

Is God good? Mark 10:18

Does He only give good gifts? Matt 7:11

Why would God give the gift of tongues to so many people as described in the Acts of the Apostles (eg Acts 10:44-46, at Pentecost and elsewhere) if it wasn’t a good and necessary gift for the Matt 28:19-20 mission?

Are speaking in tongues a gift of the Spirit? 1 Cor 12:10

If the answers are Yes, then we have to believe that speaking in tongues is a good gift, and a worthwhile gift to have, otherwise it would not have been so widely prevalent among believers in the early Church. We know for a fact that St Paul spoke in tongues, (1 Cor 14:18), and that he thought it was a good gift, otherwise he would not have provided teaching on it. We also have him saying, 'Imitate me as I imitate Christ' (1 Cor 11:1).

If you are willing to let God be God, and to let Him be able to do things in you that are beyond your ability to comprehend, then all you have to do is ask and wait:
 
Holy Spirit I believe in You. I believe that Your power to save is mighty indeed. I believe that You bestow good gifts for good purposes among the members of the Body of Christ. Although I struggle, I believe that the gift of tongues that I have so much trouble wrapping my mind around is also one of Your gifts. If You want to give it to me, I want to receive it. I don't want to be without Your heavenly weapons in the battles that I must face against the enemies of our souls. You know my fears, You know my reluctance, but You also know that I am willing to trust You and follow where You lead me. Help me. Amen.
St Paul, Apostle of Jesus, pray for me.