The main meat of the evening plenary session for #DR16 began after the offering for the work of Divine Renovation Ministries was taken up. This was a long session, so go and get your favourite beverage now, and settle in. As usual, this is not a precise transcription, and there's been some light editing of Peter Herbeck's talk and of the prayer session that followed it.

Fr James Mallon (FJM): We want to thank you for your support and we are going to ask you to continue to pray for us; to pray for us in the weeks and months ahead as we continue to see how best to respond to this call of God. But before we continue there's a particular thing that regretfully I have to acknowledge, and kind of make a public confession of…When I introduced the countries yesterday morning I left one out. So please (kneeling) humbly forgive me because, let's hear it from the people from the United Kingdom (cheers).

Dan O'Rourke then had some housekeeping announcements and a long introduction to the main speaker for the evening, Peter Herbeck. The short version is that Peter is on staff with the team at Renewal Ministries and has been married for 30 years, with 4 children and 4 grandchildren and that he has a special gift for recounting stories about the things he has seen God do. The video-clip that was shown was an even better introduction to him.

This is the link for that video-clip about how Renewal Ministries started, and some of the things it has done. It goes for a little over 3 minutes. https://youtu.be/NEwH_emDAso

Here's the transcript for that video-clip (but the visuals will tell you so much more):

Sr Ann Shields SGL: We got a phone call from the Holy Father John Paul.
Ralph Martin: I remember giving him a copy of my latest book at the time. He took the book and he said, 'You know, I've read it already'. I almost became speechless.
SrAS: Then he turned to Ralph and he said, 'Ralph, tell me, what is the Spirit saying to the Church?
RM: I think what the Spirit is saying to the Church is 'Jesus'. We just stood there for a couple of minutes saying the name of Jesus, and it was just a very, very special moment of communion with the Lord and communion with the Pope and just proclaiming the name of Jesus together.
SrAS: We just began to pray. We'd get together every week and just pray and say, 'Lord, will You help us? Will You lead us?' And that's when we got the sense of the first countries we should go to.
Peter Herbeck: So here we were in the basement of a house here in Ann Arbor. Sr Ann gets the sense we're supposed to go to Lithuania. We don't know anybody there. Two weeks later the bishop of the cultural centre of the country calls us and says, 'Would you come and help me?' And what we had heard prophetically from folks who prayed for us said. Don't. Only go through the doors that God is going to open for you. He will open doors for you. It started with Lithuania, and then it went to Slovakia, and then it went to Hungary, and then it went to Ukraine and now it's 40 countries around the world. Clearly God's calling us. What are we going to do? So we formed an organisation, Renewal Ministries. That's how it happened.
RM: The Holy Spirit is alive and well. He's active today. When people call out to Jesus and call out to the Holy Spirit, He's going to do things.
PH: The hour of the laity has struck. The Spirit seizes us, lays hold of us, and see that's exactly what we experience, and as he said, it's happening all over the place.
SrAS: What does God want from us, His sons and daughters? How are we called to live in this generation? In this time and all the challenges that we're certainly beginning to face?
RM: We're living in quite a time of conflict and decision. It is for such a time as this that we've been called to do what we're doing. I hope that Renewal Ministries can help people make the decision that they're going to be friends of Jesus Christ and they're going to be loyal to Him even in the midst of tremendous oppression and difficulties.
PH: It's now. It's time. This is it. We didn't come together to create a religious organisation so we could have jobs. I mean Renewal Ministries is just the form, it's the way we do it. But what it's all about is what's burning in us. It's what God has put in to us. It's what the Holy Spirit has given to us. And we want to give it away to other people, and we've seen it pass like a contagion to people all over the world, to countries all over the world. And just like the Word said, He brought people to us with that same fire, with that same exact conviction burning them and we've joined forces together, and that's why we've been able to do the work so broadly across the world, because the Lord has given other people to run with us.
RM: We use all different kinds of means and methods to secure the message. But the message, which is, 'God is', that's what we're about. That's what we do on radio, that's what we do on television, that's what we do in our conferences, the seminars, the clergy convocations, and the classrooms at the seminary and all over the world.

(Here ends the video-clip transcript.)

Dan: Join me in welcoming Peter Herbeck.

Peter Herbeck: Well good evening everybody. What a delight to be able to be here with you tonight friends. This has been for me an amazing couple of days. I think today for me, besides the testimonies which were clearly the highlight for me, one of the things I learned today, I learned about my friend Fr James. Because people ask me about him. What's he like? And I try to describe him. But between Laurie and Fr James, it was very succinct what they said this morning, did you get it? He's a progressive weirdo. That's what I took from this morning.

What Father asked me to do tonight is to talk about the power of the Holy Spirit. Luke chapter 24: where Luke tells us that Jesus told the apostles that He was going to clothe them with power. What I'd like to do tonight is talk a bit about that passage and then apply that passage to what we are seeing here these last 2 days. Because what's happening here is something I think is very prophetic for the Church. I think we're experiencing the realisation of the very thing that Luke was telling us Jesus spoke in Luke chapter 24, verses 44-49.

Now, setting the scene: This is the first time Jesus appears to the apostles after His resurrection. The apostles are hunkered down. The apostles are troubled, they're confused. They've been destabilised by what happened a week earlier. Some of them had a certain amount of faith that that was the way it was supposed to go. Others are wondering if the entire project, the hope that was in their heart in Christ was for nought. Jesus appears to them. And He says this: Then He said to them 'These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about Me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled' then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, 'Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness for sins should be preached in His name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are My witnesses to these things and behold I send the promise of My Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.'

We've all heard that passage many times, right? But think about the situation. The first thing Jesus did when He spoke to them in Luke's account, is He understood where they were, understood the confusion, the destabilisation, probably the anxiety and fear that was there – and what does He say to them? 'Everything that happened went exactly according to plan'. According to the Scriptures, the Messiah must die, suffer and die, and rise again on the third day. Everything went according to plan. Now, this is what it was all for. All this happened so that repentance and forgiveness of sins could be preached to all nations. You are witnesses to these things. And I'm going to send you, but you have to wait until you receive power. This is important.

I think this is something of what we are seeing here, a kind of renewal of the very promise that Jesus spoke about in the Gospel: You shall receive power. Pope John Paul II once said, when Jesus talked about receiving power He said what the Holy Spirit does, the promise of the Father when He comes, He released power and that power creates movement. He said, so you know that someone has received that grace of the Holy Spirit when they begin to move into God's purpose and God's plan for them.

So what's God's purpose and plan? The Catechism and the Council laid out it very clearly for us. What's God's fundamental plan, if you could reduce it for us? Universal call to holiness and universal call to mission. The universal call to holiness is what? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbour as yourself. The universal call to mission is what? Go make disciples of all nations. So the Holy Father reminds us, the Holy Spirit is given to us to move us into the fundamental call for which we were made and the Church was born, to bring about holiness and mission. Right? Holiness and mission. We've been given power to grow and to do. Say it with me: to grow and to go; to grow in holiness and to go make disciples of all nations.

Pope Francis reminded us. He said Pentecost, the day the Church was born, friends, never forget he said friends, when the Church was born, it was born on the move. As soon as the Holy Spirit came, John Paul II said, the Spirit stirred the deepest energies of the apostles, the 'splankna', and then thrust them out into the marketplace.

What have we been seeing happening in the testimonies the last 2 days? Every single person encounters Christ. And where did they describe the encounter? What was the difference making experience for them? The Holy Spirit weekend. Right?
The whole reason this parish exists and the great prophetic witness they are to each and every one of us, is to bring about an opportunity for that experience to happen. For people to be able, for just a moment in time, to be present, to hear the story of Jesus - and to give the Spirit permission, to give the Spirit an opportunity. Because the fundamental mission of the Holy Spirit, the special mission of the Spirit, is to reveal to every human heart the glory and the majesty of Jesus. Amen? Amen. The glory and the majesty of Jesus.

Every single person who testified the last 2 days talked about how they were touched by love and they fell in love with Christ. Only Jesus can do that. Chris got up here earlier and he said, he had a hundred questions for his friend and what did this friend say? How did she have one answer? You've got to go to Alpha. You've got to go to Alpha why? Because the person we all know what that heart is seeking, the answer they're looking for is Jesus, is a person. Not just to have all their questions answered, but to literally meet Jesus. And so here you have people, ordinary Catholic people, who also have been touched by Christ. They know what that person is looking for, because they had been looking for Him. So just trust me, come. Just trust me, come. What you want, is you want to meet Him, and time and time again we heard it.

Now Pope Francis puts it this way. Instead of talking about a movement, he said what we are experiencing in our time is a special grace of the Holy Spirit, and he said that special grace is like a current. He said it's the current of God's Spirit and the key is to plug into the current.

The testimonies were a tremendous witness to that. One person came and got touched, and what happened? They extended it to another, and they extended it to another. Gemma. How many of you are still thinking about Gemma's testimony? I'm tracking her down. We're going to give a big conference in Toronto in March. She's got to talk about her story there, because that girl has been launched, hasn't she? You talk about movement, did you see her eyes? Did you see the conviction that that girl had? She stood up here and she's on fire for God. She not only met the Lord, but man she got the whole ball of wax, and she ends up bringing her whole family- and then she moves to Toronto and she's evangelising her peers in Toronto. Movement. Power. Current of Grace.

Why does it happen here? It happens here because there are people here who know how to set up an environment to help bring people in, and they have great expectation. They know it's not them. All of this is an excuse to make that connection happen. And I was touched so much watching her. She had so much fire and conviction.

It reminded me of when I was a young guy. When I was about 20. I actually came to the Lord when I was about 19 and I went to college. I was at a college seminary for a period of time, and between my first and second year I lived in an apartment with one of my buddies from high school – a guy who played American football. He was a really big guy. He had a very large head. Everyone called him buffalo head, he didn't mind that. He was just a big thick offensive lineman. He was an academic all American football player. And I was excited to move into an apartment with him, because I wanted to share the Gospel with him.

So the first night we came together we had to go to the grocery store, because we had nothing in the cupboard. And I can still see him pushing this cart, probably the first time he pushed a cart, 2 guys walking down the aisle. 'Hey Doug', and I started telling him some of the things God's been doing in my life, and he didn't pay any attention to me at all. And so after a few minutes I said, 'Hey Doug, how are you doing with your faith? Are you still going to church?' He was raised Catholic. He looked at me and goes, 'I don't want to talk about it'. He's big, so I said OK. He made it clear he didn't want to talk about it.

So throughout the summer I was praying for him. He has a class. I had a class. We lived in this tiny little apartment. Then one night about the middle of summer, about 11 o'clock and we're about to turn out the lights, go to bed. And the beds were in this little hallway between these two rooms. So they're kind of close to each other, and I flip off the light and lay down and I'm going to do a little night prayer before I go to bed. And after a few minutes I hear Doug say to me, 'Hey Pete'. I said, 'What?' 'Turn on the light'. I said, 'What for?' 'Turn on the light'. So I flip on the light. I said, 'What's up?' And he sits up in bed and looks at me and he goes, 'Is the devil real?' Huh, that's kind of a wild question. 'Yeah, why?' 'Is he real?' I said, 'Yeah'. He said, 'OK', and he laid back down. I turn out the light. I'm thinking, that's weird. A few minutes later, he said again, 'Pete, turn the light back on'. And so I flipped the light on, and he said, 'I'm going to ask you again, is the devil real?' And I said, 'Yeah, the devil's real, why?' 'Because I think there's something wrong with me, I think I'm being hassled'. I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'Well you know over the last couple of months I've been thinking, I've been feeling very depressed and thinking a lot about suicide'. Now I never would have known that, because here's Doug, an academic all American football player who looks like he's got it all going for himself. And here I am 20 years old, having no experience whatsoever in a situation like this. I remember the thought going through my mind, I wish there was an adult here now who could help us, for a minute, that there was a grown-up anywhere to do to. And I said, 'Doug, look, I don't know if it's the devil, but it sounds like it could be, but I do know this, we were baptized and Jesus Christ has conquered the power of the devil, and if we pray, we've got the power, we can drive him out.'
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So here we are in this apartment, and I was totally surprised. He's sitting there. He sits at the edge of the bed in his pyjamas, and says, 'OK, let's pray'. He's got this look on his face. I didn't know what I was doing, because I had never done it before in my whole life. I had never prayed with anyone. And I came up to him, and I said 'Doug, just think about Jesus and I'll pray'. And so, he's closing his eyes and I put my hand on his head. And I was trying to think of what to pray and so I just said, 'Jesus, You conquered the devil, and You're stronger than the devil, and in Your Name Jesus I take authority over anything that's beating up my friend'. And I'm just standing there. Inside I'm thinking, 'Get him Lord, get him now, get him, get him, while he's here, get him'. And I'm just waiting and after a few minutes I lean over and I look at him and I say, 'Hey Doug, is anything happening?' He looks up at me and he says – this is no joke, this is exactly what happened – he looks at me and does, 'You don't see it?' I go, 'I don’t see what?' 'You don’t see the light?' 'No, I don't see any light'. He goes, 'Come on, you don't see the light?' I said, 'I don't see any light Doug. What do you mean?' He goes, 'As soon as you started praying in Jesus' Name this light, this light just came through me. It's here, I can feel it and see it'. I said, 'Great, I don't see a thing'.

He gets up and he goes into the other room and we had this chest where we stored stuff in, and he flips it open and throws out magazines we shouldn't have had and things like that in there. And he reaches down and he pulls out a bible that his mum gave him when he went to college. And he sits down on the bed, and I'm watching this big oaf of a guy, and he starts paging through the bible and he starts reading bible passages. As he is turning page to page and he gets to the great 'For God so loved the world' he goes, 'Listen to this Pete: For God so loved the world He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him…' and he goes, 'This is unbelievable!' I go, 'I've been trying to tell you that all summer, man, and you never listened to me one time'. (laughter) He then, he's so overcome, he gets on his knees in our apartment, he raises his hands and he starts shouting, 'God You're amazing! God, I love You!' I'm thinking, 'Doug, be quiet'. It's like 11:30 at night. That's all we need, some guy to walk in and see us in our pyjamas and he's on his knees holding the bible, screaming. That guy would say, 'What are these guys smoking in here?'

So he's literally in that position and he gets up on the bed and he's paging through scripture and I start praying like, 'OK God, this is great, this is like the stuff I've read about in books and stuff, this is really good', and I said, 'Lord, what can I do Lord? What should I do? And I felt like the Lord said to me, 'Wash his feet'. I said, 'What else would you like me to do?' (laughter) Seriously. So I'm thinking I'm being melodramatic, like this is just me, and I'm so excited about the moment I'm kind of going overboard, but I felt like the Lord say, 'Do it'. Doug's praying on the bed, and I go and I'm opening our cupboard. We had one pan. This is literally, one cake pan, and I got the cake pan and I went to the sink and I put water in it and I got a towel and I put it on my shoulder. And I went over to Doug, and he's sitting on the bed, he's got his eyes closed, he's been reading the bible. And I kneel down in front of him and I put the pan down and I said, 'Hey Doug' and he goes, 'What are you doing?' And I said, 'Doug, I'm supposed to wash your feet' (laughter) And he goes, he looks at me totally straight and does, 'Do it, Do it, Yeah, Do it'. This is no joke, and I'm looking down at triple Z feet and I feel myself blushing. Like we're the only ones in the room, and I'm totally red, I feel so stupid, you know? And he's got tears coming down his cheeks, OK, and it was crazy. So we were done. I dried his feet with the dish towel and Doug gets up and he says, 'Pete, do you realise how important this is?' And he fell on his knees, he just got on his knees and he said, 'Pete, the most important thing in human history is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ'. He said, 'I see the Cross at the centre of everything.' This is no joke. He's actually saying this to me. It's like the Holy Spirit is revealing to Doug a revelation that is coming to this guy right in our apartment, on the floor, and so I kneel down and we're praying.

We prayed for a long time. We started praying for friends and family, and it was literally like 12:30 at night. And I said, 'Hey Doug, this has been awesome, but I got to go to bed'. And he goes, 'OK'. So we go to bed. I'm laying down. I turn off the light and I'm just thinking, 'Lord, thank You so much', and I'm starting to doze and all of a sudden Doug goes, 'Pete, turn the light back on'. And I said, 'No, Doug, I'm not'. He goes, 'Dude, turn it on'. I say 'OK, I'll turn it on'. So I turned the light on. He goes, 'We're supposed to go over to the football stadium and pray right now'. I said, 'Come on, I've got to work in the morning.' It's about 12:30. He says, 'No'. So we get out of bed. He puts his jeans on and we go over to the 50 yard line at the football stadium on the field. And the dorm where some of the football players, his friends, live. We're supposed to pray for them. So here we stood, 12:45 at night, two guys standing praying towards the hall at the university where the football players live, saying, 'Lord, get those guys. Lord, bless those guys. Lord, save those guys, sober them up, do whatever it takes Lord to win them'. We were there. We prayed. We started singing (laughter….he nods his head). We actually started dancing – but not together. No, not together. We laid down on the field and looked up at the stars in the sky, and we were there literally friends, till the sun came up in the morning. We went to Mass, went back to the apartment, I called in sick, and I went to bed. (laughter).

About 6 years ago I was speaking at a men's conference in Northern Illinois university, and I gave my talk and I went to my book table, and I'm kind of wrapping things up and I look, and who comes walking down the hall? Buffalo head. Right? And he comes walking up and he goes, 'Hey, Herbs', I said, 'Hey Doug, how are you doing man?' He goes, 'I'm fine. I'm fine'. He said, 'You got a minute?' 'I've got to head to the airport, to O'Hare'. He goes, 'Can I give you a ride?' I said, 'Sure'. So I get in the car. We get in the car, he puts the keys in the ignition and he looks at me and he goes, 'Do you remember that night?' Just like that. I said, 'How could I forget it?' He said, 'Pete, a week hasn't gone by in my life that I don't think about that night' and he said, 'It's been a part of me my whole life, and since that time it totally changed and transformed me'.

The reason I tell the story, not just because it's so goofy, it's so unusual, but because I was 20/21, I didn't really know much about anything yet, but I had met Jesus, I had been touched by the power of the Holy Spirit, and friends I think back now in that moment when Doug started sharing the problems that he was having, and I felt I had a moment where I felt there was nothing I could do about it, like, what do I do? And then I thought, maybe pray. And in my mind I'm going, 'Pray?' What's that going to do?' What do you expect to have happen? What do you know about this stuff? And like feelings of inadequacy, or I was in over my head. Do you have them? Moments like these? Yeah, a couple of us have, that's good. I don't feel alone. Seriously. And this is where the power of God…You are clothed with power, you've been baptised, you've been confirmed, Jesus Christ the Lord lives in you. And He's given you His Holy Spirit and it's through the power of the Spirit of God that the kingdom is extended, one heart to the next.

Listening to the witnesses that we heard, yesterday and today, ordinary people encountering Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit, and suddenly they're praying over each other. Who were the two guys? Mike and Alan. These guys coming together and now they're saying not only would I not have gone to a meeting like that, not only I would never let anybody pray with me, I could never imagine myself being in that situation. And now these guys have been delivered and released, are now bringing that same grace to these men in their parishes. Isn't that beautiful? (clapping) I mean the current of grace, it's the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit.

There is a woman named Mary Hagar, and a deacon Michael Thoennes, they live in Minneapolis St Paul. They came to an evangelisation school we did about 10 years go in Ann Arbor, and we talked about the kerygma. At the end of it she stood up, she's about mid-60s, she said, 'I've been a DRE (Director of Religious Education) for 28 years. I've led every program any parish could possibly run', and she listed them all. She said this to the whole class. 'And it dawned on me for the first time: in 28 years I don't think I've led one person into relationship with Jesus Christ'. And she said, 'I think I know why. Because everything we do presumes this person or these people have met Jesus'. She said, 'I got it all backwards. I wrote everything in the parish, from cradle to grave, I wrote every program for our parish. I'm going to go home and talk to the pastor'. She said, 'I'm going to tell him, let's tear up every course we wrote, and let's start over. And let's have as the goal of every course, whether it's confirmation prep or marriage prep or whatever, to meet the Lord Jesus Christ, to have an encounter with Jesus'. (clapping)

So she goes home. Two very ordinary people. If you saw them they wouldn't wow you at all, but they wow me now. She goes home and meets with her pastor. It’s the first time he's a pastor of a parish. She said, 'Let's tear everything up', and of course he was afraid, right? And so he called the archbishop and said 'Here's this proposal, and Mary wants to do this. What do you think?' And the archbishop knew Mary and said, 'Just relax, no problem. Go ahead and do it'. So they re-wrote everything.

She comes back 5 years later. I had very little contact with her. She came back to the same course. I said, 'Mary, what are you doing here?' 'We came back to get another shot in the arm'. I said, 'What happened?' She pulls out a binder with 500 individual testimonies in it. She had DVDs she brought me, DVDs of truck drivers in the parish weeping, talking about their experience on Alpha. They went back and said, 'We need to introduce people to Jesus'. And the priest said, 'How do we do that? What should we do?' So they looked around, they searched for different vehicles and well, this Alpha thing… So they did Alpha.

She stood up in front of this new class and she said, '5 years ago I was here and I came just after our parish fund raiser. At the time we had 2 parishes that are related to each other, we had a Catholic school that had to close because we didn't have enough people in it. We tried to get Eucharistic adoration 24/7, we couldn't get that to happen, and we had about 10 to 15 people going to Mass each day, and we were literally managing decline is what we were doing'. And she said, 'I'm here to tell you right now we just won the bronze medallion in the diocese, for our elementary school is completely full, we have a waiting list to get into the school. We have Eucharistic adoration 24/7. We've got almost 200 people gone through Alpha who are now on service teams with us. And the thing that Father really notices: 5 years ago we raised $25,000, this year we raised $100,000. And Father learned something: converted people give money' (clapping) They are now mentoring 25 parishes in the Minnesota-Iowa area, it's called CORE Ministries.

I called them a couple of weeks ago and said, 'How's it going?' 'They've put 1500 people thought Alpha', she said. 'We've got about 250 people who are engaged in mission, helping us build other parishes and mentor other parishes'. Ordinary people. And I said, 'How did it go?' She said, 'The crazy thing is nobody believes it when you tell them how simple it is. They just don't believe it. All we are is environmental architects', she said, 'We set up this opportunity and we invite people, in the kind of way that Laurie described this morning. 'I was loved, and nobody judged me, and they welcomed me and they loved me' – and they met the Lord. Amen? Amen.

This parish is a sign for us. The Lord is responding and helping us with the challenges that we are facing. It's a Caleb moment, like the pastor said. How many of you have experienced over the last few years of your life and ministry what he was saying about the 10 that said it just ain't going to work? Most of us are tempted to experience that same thing. And what we need to do and what we need to hear is not, 'Wow, Fr James is Superman', you know, I mean if he was in our parish, sure it would work. Did you hear what he said today? Wasn't it revealing, listening to them about their relationship? It was so great to hear about the push back on Fr James. That made my weekend. It was so good.

Look, we don't know everything, but what we do know is that we're called, and that the One who is calling us is faithful, and that He has the power to accomplish all that we can ask or imagine. And so they take that step of St Peter out of the boat, and they decide to live right here (balancing precariously on one foot). Friends, this is where the power of God gets released. Not when we're sitting in the boat, but when by His command we step out and we just decide, we're going to live the kind of faith that you spell R.I.S.K, a faith that will risk because we know the One who has called us is faithful.

That current of grace is already present in your parishes in various ways. But the Lord wants to ratchet up the voltage a little bit. He wants you to know that He has clothed you with power and is making you a conduit of this grace to be released in your parish, and to help your people come into that experience of the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Amen? Amen.

How many of you think we're facing new challenges in our culture? How many of you think the wheels are falling off around us? We are in an intense battle, aren't we? Pope Benedict XVI characterised our time like this: He said, 'Today the faith is in danger of dying out in vast areas of the world, like a flame which no longer has fuel'. He said, 'What we are witnessing is humanity is pushing God from the human horizon' and he said, 'As God is pushed from the human horizon, the light that is in God, what happens? Darkness begins to settle on the human mind and the human heart', and then he reads it perfectly – he says, 'As a result humanity is losing its bearings'. Do you see that? We don't even know what a family is anymore. We don't even know what sexuality is about. We are incredibly confused, our culture, and it is getting more and more confused all the time because people have pushed the light away. And what is God doing in the midst of it? He's pouring out His Holy Spirit, the answer friends to the dilemma of the time we are living in. Pope John Paul II said, 'You are the answer, the Spirit of Christ Jesus risen in glory in your heart is the answer to the moment that we're living in. So be the light of the world, and be the salt of the earth.' Amen? Amen.

We're going to take a few minutes to pray tonight, maybe a bit longer than we've had the last few sessions, and what I want to do first is to sing. Let's stand. We are going to ask the Holy Spirit to come and to lead us in our prayer. I want to begin with a song, to give us a moment to open our hearts, stretch out our hands, and open our hearts to the King, using this song as a prayer to invite Him again to pour out His Holy Spirit on us.

(If you want to join in with this time of prayer it begins at 1 hour 20 mins into the recording https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I5nJ8T3QKE )

(Song: Lord, I need You)

Lord, I come, I confess
Bowing here I find my rest
Without You I fall apart
You're the One that guides my heart

Lord, I need You, oh, I need You
Every hour I need You
My one defence, my righteousness
Oh God, how I need You

Where sin runs deep Your grace is more
Where grace is found is where You are
Where You are, Lord, I am free
Holiness is Christ in me

Lord, I need You, oh, I need You
Every hour I need You
My one defence, my righteousness
Oh God, how I need You

So teach my song to rise to You
When temptation comes my way
When I cannot stand I'll fall on You
Jesus, You're my hope and stay

Lord, I need You, oh, I need You
Every hour I need You
My one defence, my righteousness
Oh God, how I need You

You're my one defence, my righteousness
Oh God, how I need You
My one defence, my righteousness
Oh God, how I need You

Songwriters: Christy Nockels / Daniel Carson / Jesse Reeves / Kristian Stanfill / Matt Maher

PH: As we were beginning to pray, Cilla had a sense from the Lord that she wanted to share with you

Cilla: The Lord gave me this sense that there were some people here tonight who feel like a well, but inside they feel like this well is deep and nearly empty. There's a little bit of water inside, but just very little. And when people are coming to the well they can't really draw any water. And I felt the Lord remind me of the picture that Fr James shared of the pump with the water pouring out, and then the picture of the church filling up with water and the water pouring out the windows. And I feel that God is saying to some of you who feel empty and nearly dry, tonight He wants to fill you. He wants to fill you with that life giving water, so that out of you streams of living water will flow and the thirsty will come and there is plenty of water to give.

PH: If any of you feel like that word is for you, would you mind raising your hands? Because we'd like to pray with you. Get them up high so people can see them, don't be shy. If people round them would be willing to lay their hands on them and pray for them for a moment as we ask the Holy Spirit to come. And those of you with your hands up, if you'd like to pray with me:
Lord Jesus Christ, You are my Lord, You are my God. Lord, come. Pour out Your Spirit upon me again. Lord, I am empty, I feel empty. Lord fill me, fill me.

Come Holy Spirit. Blessed be Your name Lord. We ask You to release the power of Your kingdom on our brothers and sisters. Come Holy Spirit.

(repeat of the song, 'Lord, I need You')

Let's pray together. Join me. Lord Jesus Christ, You are my Lord and my God. I love You Lord. I ask You Jesus to release the power of Your kingdom in my life in a new way. Pour out Your Holy Spirit. Send Your anointing. Release the power of Your kingdom. Come Holy Spirit.

Let's wait on the Lord together, just to be in His presence and to receive from Him. He's here. He loves you. He knows you by name.

Some of you are experiencing the Lord just touching you or filling you in some way. If you do, just raise your hand wherever you are, and sense His presence working in you and beginning to fill you with His Holy Spirit. I feel on my heart the Lord saying:
Receive My power. I'm with you. I am with you. I have called you. I've called you by name and I have anointed you. Receive My power.

(repeat of the song, 'Lord, I need You')

Receive His grace. Receive His power. He's here, welcome Him. Say Yes to the anointing He wants to give you. Pope John Paul II said, 'Pray for a rain of charisms'. At this moment, let's pray together, let's ask the Lord to send more of His charisms upon us, to give us the grace of a new Pentecost on us, and on your parishes back home. Give the Lord permission. Invite Him to work in you in a new way. Lord we stand with John Paul II and with Pope Francis who exhort us to cry out to You for a rain of charisms. Lord Jesus Christ, we stand with You tonight, and we ask You Lord to pour out Your gifts upon us anew. Lord, send us more apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers, gifts of hospitality and leadership, gifts of prophecy and teaching, gifts of tongues and new ways of praying. Lord, new freedom in the Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit. Come Lord.

(song: 'Holy Spirit You are welcome here')

He inhabits the praises of His people. One of the things to look for, and the Lord wants to help you as you go home, is to help teach your people how to cry out to God. To help them, give them permission to be able to open their hearts to Him and to welcome Him. It's a sign of the presence of the Spirit, because the Spirit within us cries out 'Come Lord Jesus Come', and that is in their hearts. Cry out to God and to welcome Him in your homes, in your parish, in your ministry.

One of the things we want to do tonight was to ask the priests who were here and you brought your people with you, if you would be willing to let your brothers and sisters lay hands on you tonight and pray and to bless you. If you'd like to, pastors, just raise your hand, put them up so your people can see them, and we'd just like to pray with you. Feel free to join in, and ask the Lord to come and to bless these men whom you love.

Lord Jesus send Your power. Lord bless them, anoint them. Release Your power Lord. Let these brothers and sisters be a conduit of grace, a current of grace. Come Holy Spirit. Lord refresh our brothers. Lord drive away all fear and renew their strength tonight. Let them be Joshua and Caleb when they go home. Let them be men that say Yes, Yes, Yes, God is able. He can establish more here. He can break out His kingdom here in our parish.

Brothers as you're receiving prayer, any feelings of self-limitation, fear of discouragement, loneliness, just give them to the Lord. He knows you. In the presence of these people incarnate right here, He's loving you and speaking to you. He is saying, 'My sons, I have called you, I have named you, I have anointed you, and I promise I am with you always until the end of the age'.

Lord, we pray for a release of Your Spirit in a new and a fresh way in our brothers. Renew their strength. Come Holy God. Brothers, know that you're loved, that God loves you. These brothers and sisters love you, and you are not alone. Lord, we ask that you would forge these teams together. Help us. Come Holy Spirit. Lord we thank You for these men. We thank You for the gift of the priesthood. We thank You for how everyone of us has been loved and cared for and ministered to by priests since we were little kids. Men who have heard our confessions, consoled us when we were sick or dying. Thank You for the word they brought to us in the scripture. Thank You for Your call on their lives. Lord we lift them up to You and we say thank you tonight. Amen.

Now turn to somebody next to you and say, 'God is good' and give them a hug. You guys are glowing now, there's a glow here. Amen. Praise the Lord. Your faces look different. (clapping)

Something hit me earlier today and it's still in my gut, it's a kind of 'splankna' moment for me, and I'm going to give it to you. Say it with me, 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom', repeat, 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom'. It is time for the Catholic Church to be free, for brothers and sisters to rise up in love and mercy in the power of the Spirit without fear in the courage and freedom of the sons and daughters of God. Amen? Amen.

I want to drive out the enemy, who has tried to drive us down, to drive us in the back, to silence us. Amen? So with me right now, we're going to take authority over that spirit that always tries to steal our freedom. Amen? Say it with me: Lord Jesus Christ, in the power of Your Name, in the power of Your Blood, I cast out every spirit of fear, of timidity, of discouragement, and I receive the freedom of the Spirit, the freedom of the sons and daughters of God. Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Amen. Amen. Amen.

Did you know that the Church has an infinite capacity for regeneration? Did you know that? Did you know that the Church has right now all the power, every resource it needs, to conquer every enemy strategy the enemy brings against Her. Amen? Amen. Because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. Right now many people in our countries are scared, aren't they? Because it is so strange what's going on, right? People are frightened, and lots of Catholics are frightened and confused, right? They don’t know what you know. What you know is that Jesus Christ is Lord and that Jesus Christ is enough. The reason we have strength in us that are stronger than the world is that Jesus Christ reigns in glory at the right hand of the Father. Amen? Amen. And He's given you a share in His glory. Amen. It's in you. The thing the devil is so afraid of is if we start waking up, if the Church starts waking up to what it's got – if we cast aside our idols and our lukewarmness and we wake up to Jesus Christ like that 17 year old girl that was here with her game face on. If we receive that Spirit, and the freedom, look out, we are actually the answer for United States, for Canada, and for the world. Right? Jesus Christ is what they are all looking for (clapping). He's it.

We prayed with our brother from Pittsburgh? Are there any other protestant or non-Catholic brothers and sisters we can pray with? Put up your hand if you're here. Get them up nice and high. Would you be willing to come up here, so that we can pray with you?

(around 15% of the participants responded to this)

When Father was interviewing Pastor Lee a few minutes ago, it was another very important sign that we can't miss of the grace that's present here. It's the Holy Spirit who brings us together. The Holy Spirit wants unity. He wants to bring us together. Amen.

You brothers and sisters, just receive. We are going to ask God's blessing upon you because we love you. We thank you for your Yes to Jesus. Come Holy Spirit. Let's sing again 'Holy Spirit you are welcome here' as we pray for them, just a united prayer of our hearts for you, and for God's blessing on you. (Song)

Lord Jesus we ask You to bless these brothers and sisters, with the power of Your Spirit bless them. Lord we cry out for the broken body of Christ. We cry out that You bring unity in this hour, in this critical hour in the Church. Lord, mend our hearts together. Release the power of Your kingdom. Lord forgive us for how our division hinders our witness, our witness to Your glory, Your majesty, Your love and Your power. Lord we don't want it anymore. We can't do it on our own power. Come and heal and unite, mend us together with one voice in this confused world, where we can say together Your name Jesus, we can say Jesus to the world united. Brothers and sisters, we love you. We thank you for being here. We thank you for the witness that you've been to us in so many ways; your faithfulness to preaching the Gospel. We pray tonight with united voice that the Lord would bless you, your lives, your families, your ministries, with a double portion of His grace, in power, for His glory, for the glory of His great name. In Jesus' holy name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Let's pray for the St Benedict's team. Amen? (clapping) Could the St Benedict's team come up here? The whole team that's here serving, not just the leadership team, everybody, and the staff. This is a big family. Amen. Let's thank the Lord for them (clapping) This is Jesus. This is what happens when we sinful broken people decide to be honest about who they are, even weirdos, and just give the Lord permission to reign. Amen. Look at all of you. This is amazing. Let's extend our hands, brothers and sisters, over them, and pray God's blessing on them.

(Song: Holy Spirit You are welcome here)

I can say on behalf of everybody who is here, thank you. Thank you for your Yes to Jesus. Thank you for your sacrifice and your love. You know, your little community is starting to touch the whole world because you are saying Yes to Him. We want to thank you. We have all been touched immensely this weekend. God is using you, He's commissioned you, He's empowered you, He's anointed you. He's given His authority to you because He wants to wield you like a sword. He wants to set captives free all around the world. You gave Him permission. What you have done this weekend is just beginning. This is not the end or a climax but a beginning of a move of God in you, if you just keep saying Yes. Amen? Amen.

I have to say a special honour to the women, because in these testimonies it started with a woman, right? It started with a woman, yeah. Amen. You are so special. God bless you brothers and sisters (clapping)

Dan O'Rourke: This is the St Benedict family all crushed up around the stage and we were all so excited to have all of you 600 people come and visit us. And like any proper family gathering where we've invited extended family from countries and from cities all over the world, we wanted to take some photos of our gathering. So we had our teams going around taking some pictures and shooting some video of the last 2 days and we've put it together in lightning fast speed so that we can have a chance to watch some of what we experienced.

(The video is 6.18 minutes long, https://youtu.be/ZxAuyuElKUM or search 'Divine Renovation Afterglow Video'. It contains snippets from the workshops, so it's well worth viewing.)

Father James Mallon: I said at the beginning that we didn't know who was crazier, us for doing the conference, or you for coming, but actually there were a number of people who were even crazier than that. The guest speakers here at this conference who came from far away…basically I called them and said, 'Hey, how would you like to come and speak at a conference that we don't know if anyone will come at, and pay your own way, and not get paid for it?' and they all said Yes. (clapping) We have a gift for you, a special Nova Scotia crystal Christmas ornament with the DR16 logo engraved on it. Thank you so much. (clapping)

There are 2 final people I wish to say thank you to, who put in an incredible amount of hours, Anne Marie Sime and Elizabeth Randell, who dealt with many of you over this last year. I think these 2 women spoke and emailed personally to almost every one of you over the last year. These women were sometimes working from 5am in the morning till 11 o'clock at night, working very passionately to make this a success. I also want to thank Louise and the organising committee that at the very beginning got things going. There's so many more to thank, you know who you are. Thank you so much. (clapping)

Our closing hymn is a kind of unofficial DR16 theme song, 'Open up the heavens', and that's what it's all about.

Open up the heavens
We want to see you
Open up the floodgates
A mighty river
Flowing from your heart
Filling every part of our praise     (chorus of the song written by Meredith Andrews)

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Below is a print friendly version, which has had some extra editing. it runs to 12 x A4 pages.'

Feel free to share it around to anyone you know who needs encouragement in their work for the Lord.

Because it could be many weeks until the evening session is transcribed, it seems like a good idea to not hold up sharing the testimonies until the rest of the 2 hours' worth of transcriptions are done. These are the testimonies given prior to the evening plenary session at the 2016 Divine Renovation Conference #DR16 together with the update given on the development of Divine Renovation Ministries and information on how to support it.

Music lyrics:
'In the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, in the name of the Spirit, Lord we come. Our God saves. Our God saves. There is hope in Your name.'
'I believe in the Son, I believe in the Risen One, I believe I overcome by the power of His blood. Let my song join the one that never ends. Because He lives.'

Testimonies
Fr James Mallon (FJM): God our Father, we thank You and bless You for these days together. Lord we thank You for the life You give us, the life You pour into us each day. Lord we pray that we may continue to experience the resurrected life of Jesus this night. We pray through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. 'I am alive because He lives' and that's something we've been witnessing these days, especially in our testimonies. People have said, you know, the talks have been good and all that, but those testimonies are…. – and I absolutely 100% agree. It's absolutely amazing, and I'd like to invite Mike to come up. Let's give Mike a welcome. (clapping)

FJM: So Mike, tell us, where were you spiritually 4 years ago?

Mike: 4 years ago I wouldn't be anywhere close to a conference like this. Just to back up a bit, I was raised in the United Church, we went to church maybe an hour a week, but that was it, like church meant nothing besides that. So as I grew up, I maybe left the church a bit, until I was a little older and I met this nice Catholic girl. And eventually, not only did I marry a very beautiful girl, I married into a very Catholic family, very Catholic. So I was around it, but it didn't mean anything to me.

FJM: So what happened?

M: Well I can remember. I think I was sitting right out there probably about 3 years ago, and you mentioned this Alpha course, and I'm thinking, 'O yeah, there's no way I'm doing that. Like, no way.

FJM: Ok, ok, so even before that, how did you end up in a pew of a church to begin with?

M: Well, when I became married, my wife, it was very important for her to take the kids to church, and her and my daughter used to go all the time. But it wasn't until my daughter was just a little girl, big curls and all that, and I can remember her saying to me, 'Daddy, I really wish you would go to church with us.' I'm hooked. So you got me in the pew. Mind you, when I was here I was probably looking at the watch to see when the hour was up. So that was basically it. But then, as I said, I was over there, I heard about Alpha and I never thought I would take it, but my lovely wife was nice enough to sign me up. So, like a coup was like hitting. So when I went to Alpha, at first it was great, the people were nice, the talks were good, food was good, but that's all it was. And then the big weekend away, great. And I can remember being a little freaked out, and all these people were praying over each other, and I'm thinking, you know, 'I could probably use the prayers, but there's no way I'm going up there. I'm not putting myself out there'. So I can remember leaving and I can remember driving home with my wife saying, 'You know, I don’t think I'm ever going to have a relationship with God.' But that week I just had this feeling like I needed to be prayed with, and I was kind of, I was almost beating myself up because I didn't go, but lo and behold Alpha comes around that week and they're doing the prayer ministry again. And I decide, I'm sitting there, 'Do I go up? Do I not?' And after what seemed like a while I said, 'Yes, I'm going to do up', and you know, I had a lot of pain and hurt inside, and I went up, and I just felt this, like immense, just peace flow right through me, as if God's love was just flowing right through me. And it was at that moment I knew that I was going to have a relationship with Jesus.

FJM: What difference has Jesus made in your life?

M: Well let me see, ah, after taking Alpha I've been on team I think 5 times. I'm in a connect group. I'm involved in the youth ministry. I'm speaking here, which honestly I would never… I would have bet the firm that this would have never happened to me. So I really thank God because I think I was at a time in my life where I really did need His love, and I just feel blessed.

FJM: Chris, come on up. I'm going to ask Chris to come up. Where were you spiritually 7 months ago?

Christopher: Not very far. I went to church for the first time in 30 years last summer. I had a lot of questions and absolutely no answers. A good friend answered every question I'd asked her with 'You have to go to Alpha' and finally – I didn't even tell her – I just went. The first face I saw was Mike's wife, ironically. I started out a skeptic and kind of grew from there.

FJM: So what happened on Alpha?

C: The big point for me was the weekend. A few weeks in I was still skeptical and growing and I started feeling something, I didn't really know what it was. And on the weekend away I heard about all these people having these amazing experiences and the leader said to me, right before the big moment, 'Have a good snack, you're going to need your strength'. And I looked at her like she was crazy and then I realised, I wanted to have an experience, and I was really scared that I wasn't going to.

FJM: So you're on the Holy Spirit weekend, and what was it that happens?

C: So we got to the moment we were calling the Holy Spirit to fill people up, and I just started shaking. I was, I didn't know what I was feeling. I can't even explain it, and the girl beside me from my group kept elbowing me, 'You have to go and get prayed over', ''Give me a minute'.

FM: That's not in the Alpha training, to elbow the guests. You'll have to take note of that name Ron.

C: I'm not giving names. And I get ready to go up and I was walking up and I only saw one face I recognised, and it was Mike. I didn't really know him well, but I just made a beeline.

FJM: This guy was doing the prayer? (pointing back to Mike)

C: Scary thought, but yeah.

FJM: So tell us what happened? Obviously I knew that, right? I knew that. Do you know what I didn't know? I found out 2 days ago, that his prayer partner was Alan, Laurie's boyfriend, from this morning. He was the other prayer partner that prayed over Chris. So what happened?

C: It's interesting. I got up there and I was a mess. I was a mess and I'm surprised Mike hasn't mentioned it yet. I was leaned over and there was a puddle of tears on the floor underneath my face. And it's funny, they asked me if I wanted to be prayed over, and I thought I knew and I said it, and then all of a sudden Mike started to pray for something else entirely – which is how I knew there was something going on because he had no idea what I needed, but He knew what I needed.

FJM: What difference has Jesus made in your life?

C: I'm still working on that. It's early for me, but it's more this parish and this family and these people. I think I needed that, that feeling, that community, that open arms. I really needed that.

FJM: We're going to have another testimony, a different kind of testimony. Where's Lee? Come on up. This is pastor Lee Kricher, and he is from a particular city in the US that is the envy of many Canadians these days. The Sidney that now lights Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.

LK: I'm pastor of Amplify Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I would like to say from the bottom of my heart, thank you for Sidney Crosby. Thank you for sharing Sidney Crosby. (a professional ice hockey player).

FJM: So tell us Lee, what has brought you here from Pittsburgh to a conference here in a Catholic church in Halifax?

LK: Well, I mean, 6 months ago we had Matt Maher at our church. He wrote the song we just sang. In our church we have 600 evangelicals lifting our hands singing, 'Because He Lives I'm alive' and here 600 evangelical Catholics with their hands up in the air doing the same. And so the idea of us worshipping together makes so much sense but also because of our goal of changed lives. As we've been seeing all week long here, and making a difference in our community for Jesus Christ. Learning together and learning from one another makes all the sense in the world. So I found out about the conference. Our church in 2003 was on its last legs. We were under 200 people. The average age was well over 50, and we were one of the fastest dying churches in the city. And we had to make a decision whether we were going to close our doors or to try and do something we had lost the ability to do, and that was re-connect with the next generation. And so because of our commitment to not lose our faith to our children and our grandchildren, we made a lot of changes that are so similar to what you heard about in Divine Renovation.

FJM: And the incredible thing for me is when we start to get some feedback from evangelical pastors about the book. I thought this was a Catholic problem only, and I've found out it's not. It's really a human problem, isn't it?

LK: Yes, very much so. We made some dramatic changes. Some people stayed; some people left. But this many years later, our average attendance – we have 3 campuses – we have about 1800 people. And what's most exciting (clapping), what's most exciting is that every generation is well represented again in our church. So I'm very blessed about that and having been called upon by other pastors saying, 'We need to re-connect with the next generation'. And so I was recently with a Catholic collaborative in Pittsburgh, 5 different parishes. I'll be with Parish Catalyst in September in Los Angeles, and I thought one reason to come is I need to understand better the context of church revitalisation and renewal, from a great place to learn it from, but I also found… I just talked to our board of directors and to my associate senior pastor, I said, there's some things we're going to be working on learning here at the conference. So it's been absolutely amazing.

I think of when we started our journey, one inspiration was in a story from Exodus, of when Moses sent out the 12 scouts, and all of them saw the exact same opportunities and the exact same obstacles, but 10 of them came back saying, 'We can't do this', 'We can't'. And we had a bunch of 'we can't' people in our church. And they were saying, well, we're not in the bible belt where people just roll out of bed and there's a 1000 people in the church automatically. We're in the North East U.S., churches are dying. We're not even in the fast growing part of town in the northern suburbs. We're in the eastern suburbs where there's no growth, and you know, we don’t have a great music band like this – so we don't have that to attract people. We're not like a Catholic church where people automatically come because there's… I say that because every reason is as crazy as the next, and you can pile them all up as to why we can't do it. But there is a man named Caleb. Joshua had the same attitude. And Caleb said, 'We can', 'We can enter', and you know what? What's funny is the 10 never entered. Caleb and Joshua did. So the ones who said 'We can' and the ones who said 'We can't' both ended up being right. So I would just say, don't be quick to say 'We can't', and the main reason we came is I'm attracted to Caleb types, and that's also who you are Fr Mallon. (clapping)

FJM: Lee has a book being published by Harper Collins on 2 August called 'For a New Generation: a practical guide for revitalising your church' and I was privileged to read it a few months ago and it's a fantastic book. I highly recommend it. But as you were talking Lee, especially with your work in working with other pastors in different churches and helping… And thank you, by the way, for desiring to impart wisdom into Catholic parishes and to helping us, thank you so much. And I just had a sense that we should pray for this man. So Let's stand together for a moment. Let's just extend a hand of prayer.

Lord God, we praise You and we thank You Lord. We thank You for the many manifestations of the life that You wish to give us. And Lord how You move in our midst through the hearts of leaders to lead renewal of Your churches to reach the next generation. Lord, I thank You for Lee. I thank You for his family. Lord we ask that You continue to pour Your Spirit upon him, to continue to anoint him in his ministry. Lord we thank You that You have given him a heart to help other pastors. We thank You for the work that he is doing and we ask that You go before him Lord, and to prepare the way for that work for Your kingdom. And Lee, I'm going to give you a good Catholic blessing here, ok? And we ask that You bless him in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. (hugs and clapping)

FJM: You notice how I snuck that one in? (laughter). We have our ways, you know. I want to take a few minutes, before we launch in tonight, to give you a little update on where we are. The reason we had this conference was because we were simply overwhelmed by incoming stuff. Honest to goodness, we never imagined we…., we had no clue. We just thought we'd write a book and let the book do the work. We didn't realise it would cause us even more work. (laughter) And at first it was really cool, it was like, great, we said Yes to everyone and all of this, and then we realised very quickly that wasn't going to work. We actually talked among our staff team. We found out about a year ago, that adding up everyone's time in any given week, responding to other churches was the equivalent of between 1 and 2 full-time jobs. It was almost a half-time job to say No to people. And in a sense if you've got a plate of French fries and one person wants one French fry, it's no big deal, yeah, no problem. But when 200 people want just one French fry, we've got a bit of a problem unless we've got a steady flow of French fries coming through. So I talked this morning about sustainability. And you know I've been down that path. We've been down the path of working out of models of ministry that are unsustainable, and it's not life giving. It will never, as God is my witness, and as I am free to do so, I will never consciously lead like that again.

And so we really do believe that God is calling us to help other churches – not entirely sure what that means. We know that this conference this year was a part of it. We're thinking there might be…People are saying, is there going to be a DR17? No, there's not! If there were, we're already 6 months behind. But there might be a DR18, we're not sure. But we have a website, we have podcasts that we do that are very, very helpful to people, we have videos, we are looking to build other resources. We have launched a Divine Renovation Coaching Network where we invest heavily in other churches and other pastors. We have an interning program. We've got vacancies for that. We are looking at ways to do this. But, the one thing is that in a sense we are launching a ministry in answer to what we believe is God's call.

And tonight we debated whether we should do this or not, but I decided to model for you here what I do with my own parishioners when it comes to making an 'Ask'. And it is simply to give people the freedom to respond to God's call, but not to any other human motive. We know that many of you have invested tremendously to come here, tremendously, you've already made great sacrifices and your presence here is already an enormous support of our ministry, and we thank you for that. And we know that you are praying for us. But we also believe that there may be some people here tonight who might say, you know, we might want to help you, give you a leg up, to launch this ministry so that you can continue to help other churches like us, so that you might be able to provide some staffing and resources behind this so you can get it going. And for that reason we did put envelopes in the pews. Some of you probably already spotted them. And we're just going to take a few minutes and please, please, please hear me say this: we know you have sacrificed greatly to be here, and I fully hope that if it's not the time for that, that you have complete freedom to do so. And if you do feel that you would like to support us in anyway whatsoever, there are envelopes there. We can issue a tax receipt for donations from the U.S. and Canada, as it says on the envelopes. U.S. donations are to be made out to Renewal Ministries, they are able to pass that through so that you can get your tax receipt and it's all legitimate. Canadian donations to John Paul II Media – it's on the envelope. And if you think that you might be able to partner with us beyond a one time offering, we're just going to ask that you give us your email address and we'll be in touch to talk about that. So again, please, no obligation, we know that every single person has made sacrifices to be here and that you are supporting us in that way and with your prayers. But we're going to take a few minutes just for some music, and in about 2 minutes from now some of the ushers will just pass the basket. Ok? Thank you so much.

(instrumental music)
……………………………………………………………
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from these testimonies for me is the reminder of just how difficult it is for a person (particularly blokes) to get the courage to ask someone else to pray over them for the first time. The next biggest takeaway is the importance of the loving friendly environment that Alpha provides to give people the gentle pace, enough time and space for God's grace to begin to open their hearts sufficiently to let Him in.

And the biggest action point? Particularly in the light of the recent graffiti attack (Halifax Easter 2018), a reminder that we need to pray for ministries like this because spiritual attack and spiritual obstacles are intense for those at the leading edge of what God is doing. I am reminded of the spiritual insight of the desert fathers, and the image of a single demon stationed outside a city, and a whole legion of demons besieging a monastery.
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P.S. The exchange of wisdom and experience and support between the churches, within and without denominational lines, is something we all need to open our hearts wider to.

During this session Fr James Mallon and Ron Huntley bounced off each other as they co-presented this Unread Chapter. (As usual, this is not a precise transcription.)

Fr James Mallon (FJM): Praise God! Isn't God great?!

Ron Huntley (RH): Good morning.

FJM: We originally called this talk the Unwritten Chapter because when the book (Divine Renovation) was published in early September 2015 it was actually written – I finished writing it in the very first days of January 2015. So if you think about the time gap (from end of writing to start of this conference), it's a good year and a half. And one thing about our experience here at St Benedict's – and any time a parish heads off in a direction of mission it is because you are innovating, you are doing things you've never done before, you're taking risks. And if we keep our eyes, our minds, our hearts and our ears open, we are always going to be learning things. So the original idea of this talk this morning was to communicate to you all the stuff that we've learned – mostly through making all kinds of mistakes – since the book was published, to kind of bring you up to date. However, as you heard from Dan, well, we now have to call it the Unread Chapter, because basically all the content of what we are going to cover this morning is in the Guidebook, and as Dan said, the royalties (not necessarily all of them mine) are going back into supporting this ministry. Perhaps it is certainly yet Unread but not Unwritten. We are going to cover 6 things.

•The three phases of renewal
•Four non-negotiables of a senior leadership team
•Process versus programs
•The game plan (one of the workshops covered this in depth)
•The three 'Ables' of ministry
•Three critical success factors for ministries

RH: How many days do we have to do that? It's going to take a while. You know, it's interesting, because as we were planning for the conference and were preparing staff for the workshops we realised some of the things we don't do anymore, and some of the things we are doing we are looking at transitioning, so should we stop what we are doing and go back and live out who we were when the book was originally written? No, because we are living this in real time, and what's so fun about this and what we want to communicate today is this spirit of learning that takes place on our team. It's really fun. What is really cool about it is we have no idea what God is going to come up with next. God is God. He is in charge. And the Holy Spirit animates our ideas, our hopes and our dreams in ways that we have no idea where the next wave is going to present itself. So it's been really fun learning together in this culture of health, and it does include a lot of conflict – as Dan said – but it's fun conflict, because we love each other, we love our team, we love our parishioners and leaders and we are committed to the goal, and so the first idea doesn't rule the day, it's the best idea that we want to rule the day. So we want to share with you what we've learned, but we also want to communicate to you a spirit of being open to how the Holy Spirit wants to empower your team with even better ideas. That's what we want to communicate right now more than anything else.

The Three Phases of Renewal

FJM: At this point, this is ¼ theory ¾ coming from our experience. Why do I say that? Because I believe in this journey from maintenance to mission. We haven't completed it yet, we're not fully there, we're still in process, but out of our experience we've discerned what I believe are 3 distinct phases of renewal. Now I've got an image of a sailing ship up there. I'm not much of a sailor, but imagine a trans-Atlantic voyage. There are 3 phases to a journey isn't there? There's when you go out and you go to the point where you can no longer see where you came from. Remember the 'Lord of the Rings'? When Sam says, 'Mr Frodo, if I take one more step I'll be further away than I've ever been before'. Well, this is in a sense the end of Phase 1. And the middle phase, of course, is the whole part in the journey where you can't see where you've come from and you can't see where you are going. And the third phase is where someone shouts 'Land Ho!' The end is in sight. This middle phase is where we find ourselves at St Benedict's parish right now. We have a sense that we're halfway through this middle phase. And I'll tell you, it's sometimes scary. Have you ever seen 'Mutiny on the Bounty'? You know, it's the middle phase, where you can't see where you are going and you can't see where you came from that you begin to think, 'Are we doing the right thing: Are we crazy?' And maybe some of the crew might begin to think of mutiny.

FJM: But I think that these 3 distinct phases are very, very necessary, and I just want to speak briefly about what they are. And I want to use a good old Canadian symbol to talk about that. Now I know that some of you cannot relate to this (image of men pushing a snow-bound car) but when a car gets stuck in the snow there's a technique to it you see. There's an initial phase where you have to rock the car back and forth, you've got to build up momentum and get it going and you need 3 or 4 people, and at one point when you have enough momentum you give it a big heave and it starts moving. And what's really cool is when the car starts moving you kind of just walk alongside it. You can push it with one hand and it's really easy, but the other thing you need to do – you need someone at the steering wheel. Because if you don't have someone at the steering wheel, you are in big trouble. And in a sense, that's Phase 2. And in most Catholic parishes, when it comes to discipleship and evangelisation (and we've already identified that the primary task of leadership is to change culture: is to lead cultural transformation) that initial phase is about getting momentum, enough momentum to overcome the inertia, and that requires a lot of building momentum, back and forth, a lot of brute force, a lot of repetition and a lot of pushing. But just like when the car gets freed from the snow once it starts moving, you don’t keep rocking it, you've got to change what you do. You've got to change how you do it. Now we didn't know this when we started off. In many ways we didn't know what we were doing. We just knew where we wanted to go. But we knew that something was up.

RH: It's interesting as well. It does take a lot of momentum. It takes a lot of teamwork to rock the boat. But do you know what it takes? It takes a lot of trust. Because if the people in the parish don't trust that you love them, and that you care about the people that they care about, then it's just a good idea. We need to care about people and we need to communicate that, and they need to see us loving them, Right? Because if people catch you loving them they are more likely to get behind you and help you in the direction you're going. But if it's all academia, if it's all good ideas on paper, then it's not going to get a lot of traction: it's love that wins the day. It's love that wins people over, and so one of the really cool things that Alpha does (if you haven't done Alpha, you should really try it) is that it gives us an opportunity for people to see us loving them. We love people, and they see us doing it 10 weeks in a row in Alpha, it is really creates a lot of people behind this car that we can push things in a direction. Wouldn't you say?

FJM: And the primary tools that we used to get that initial momentum were Alpha and Stewardship and having Stewardship Fairs. I cover all that in the book. So basically what you read in the book was this – how we got the car out of the snow. But then, once it started moving we realised we had to make a change, and someone once said that the hardest model to change is a model that works. Because it's working! But the truth is this: that because of the very fact that it works it will mean that you will eventually have to change it, because, guess what, because it works it will eventually stop working or it won't work as well as it once did. And that's what we experienced. And the 5 remaining points of this presentation are the things that we changed because of this.

RH: And what was that line that Carey Nieuwhof said that day when we went to see him? "Are you married to the method or are you married to the mission?" And sometimes what happens, especially when people have a conversion, they think that's the way to do it. Don't change anything, because it worked for me. It's really funny, we see it every time. We went from Alpha over 10 weeks to Alpha over 7 weeks. People lost their minds. And it was so funny to manage that because they were married to the "It's the 10 weeks". No it's not. There's a lot of things at play. So as people get used to things that work, it really is hard to change. So change is important.

FJM: There's a very difficult thing to communicate to our people. We said, trust us, we asked for your trust as we move forward and do these new things – and you know three years later we're saying, well, remember the thing that we asked you to trust us about? Um, err, we're going to change it. It's even worse when you write a book about it. Because a lot/some of the things I talked about in the book, we don't do anymore. But the principles are the same, the vision is the same, the values are the same, but the method is always going to be adjusted from time to time. So let's dip into what some of these things were.

Senior Leadership Team

FJM: You would have heard Patrick Lencioni talking about this last night (at the conference). Dominic Perri is here today from Amazing Parish and he's going to be doing a workshop. For those of you going to it – it's going to be great. This has been the single most greatest game changer in my life in the last couple of years as we finished Phase 1. Because, let me tell you something. I came to this parish. I've always had strong vision. My first hire was Ron who has been my sidekick through all this. He's the one who actually introduced me to Alpha many, many years ago. And we knew where we were going, we had a common vision, and I knew what my original strategy was going to be. Why? Because I had used it before in previous parishes, and it worked. But I had never moved into Phase 2 because I don't have those gifts. I get things going. I start things. I blow things up and start new things. But once they're going I kind of get bored and move on and start even more new things. And eventually I blow the engine, and the whole thing comes to a halt. So it required something different, a different way to lead.

RH: I heard it said in a blog I read recently that good leadership needs management and good management needs leadership. And Fr James is an amazing leader and he does blow things up, in a good way, because he wants great results, he expects great results, he expects changed lives, he expects staff and ministry leaders to do great things. And what ends up happening is often times his biggest influence is because you guys all invite him to travel all over the place and speak to your dioceses, and so we miss him a lot of the time, which is fine, we love to share him, but what happened was – that's when he'd have the opportunity to read really cool books and when he'd have opportunities to talk to people like you and get really inspired by good ideas, and then without any consultation at all, he would come back to our church and wreak havoc on us when we're already doing something. It was like, "Dude, what are you doing? Stop the madness. Why don't you ask some of us what a good idea is rather than asking everybody else out there?" And he had no idea he was wreaking havoc on our staff and where we were going.

FJM: The interesting thing is, you know, with the strategy that I knew, I knew this is what I wanted to do. The problem was as I said, it worked, and like Sam in the Lord of the Rings all of a sudden I realise, O my goodness I've never been this far out before and then I realised I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I honestly don't know what to do next. My strategy has expired. I need help. I need help.

We talk about 4 non-negotiables of a leadership team. These are very much reflective of what Pat Lencioni talks about in his 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. So we've kind of adjusted that a bit according to our experience, but it's really very much rooted in his teachings and we have some of his books here. And initially we tried to make our parish staff function as a leadership team, and it was at that point about 8 or 9 or 10 of us, and it just kind of wasn't working all that well.

RH: That's an understatement.

FJM: That's an understatement. Then we realised that the optimal size of a leadership team is really the pastor and 3 or 4 other people, or maybe 5 of them at the most. You can read about that in Pat's book.

RH: Was it fair to say it was working for you? Because you travelled and stuff, it was giving you an opportunity to get updated from other people and is it fair to say it was probably feeding your needs? At the time, in terms of meeting in a bigger group. Is that fair?

FJM: Yes, I think initially when we had staff meetings before we moved into Pat's methodology we would have weekly staff meetings. We'd pray together, and we'd have some time of sharing and we'd have updates from everyone, and that was good because I was travelling a bit and it kept me on track with things. But then we did change how we did things.

RH: And it's really important. And I want to point out to the pastors to hear this. It might be working for you, but if it's not working for your team, it's not working.

FJM: I was really excited. I was gone probably about 25% of the time. Was that good or bad?

RH: We've got it all written down. It was.

FJM: I'd be almost like proud, O yes I can be gone 25% of the time and my parish is great because I've got great staff and they're doing great, and I think I remember it was you Ron who said, pulled me in and sat me down and said, 'We're not doing great'.

RH: True enough, and to be honest with you and to be transparent, 2 years ago we were toxic. Our staff culture was toxic. It wasn't a fun place to work, there was a lot of dissension, there was a lot of water cooler talking going on, frustration was high. People were on the edge of burn out. Now we love Fr James, we love his mission, we love his passion, and yet, just because of the way he's hardwired he wasn't able to see that we were dying trying to keep up with the things he was blowing up and doing.

FJM: And I was having a blast. I'm loving it. When we talk about the 4 non-negotiables, this is No.1 Unanimity of Vision. We talked about this: vision is where you are going. And if you are going to form a senior leadership team, that close group that's going to meet with the pastor every single week to hammer out your tactical issues, the implementation of strategy, and even some low level strategic stuff (because we work out broad strategy with our pastoral council) you need to have unanimity of vision. You've got to have absolute commitment to where we're going and there has to be absolute intolerance of a different vision. Because if you're in a canoe in the middle of a lake with 3 people, and one person wants to go to the north shore, one person wants to go south and one wants to go east and west, and you all start rowing, guess what's going to happen? You're just going to go round and round and round in circles or tip the canoe. When you have 2 visions, you have division, and division at the top will divide the entire team. But the amazing thing about it is when you have unanimity of vision it opens the door for what Pat talked about – to have healthy conflict about other things.

RH: Fr James, if I could just say too. That doesn't just go for the senior leadership team. That also goes for the rest of your staff and your ministry leaders. You have to raise people up into ministry who have a common vision because they can be in the parish undermining everything you're doing. And so they might be great people, but it might not be a great time for them to be in leadership because they might not be on board with where we're going. And it's OK to remove people from leadership because that toxicity is what tears down churches and makes them less effective.

FJM: The 2nd non-negotiable is Balance of Strength, and this is absolutely fundamental. Last night Pat talked about the different tools you can use, DISC and Myers Briggs. We use StrengthsFinder from Gallup. We find it's a tool that came our way and it's been very enriching. We really recommend that you check that out. Basically we have this myth of the well balanced person, right? You know in the seminary we were formed to be well balanced. Well, guess what? There's no such thing as a well-balanced person. No such thing. We are all weird. But there is such a thing as a balanced team. I've got real gifts. I've got leadership gifts for influencing and vision and communicating vision and getting things going, but left to my own devices I blow things up. In the end I'll blow the engine. And I will drive everyone into insanity because I've got blind spots. I've got a whole bunch of blind spots. I'm also a terrible coach. I think I'm just too impatient. I'm just not good with that. And we found our staff were getting frustrated with me and just a whole bunch of stuff I'm not good at. I'm not 7 foot tall. And here's the great realisation – that everyone is gifted, everyone has particular gifts. You have leadership gifts that I don't have. And I really believe our parish…God was able to use our parish to bring us even further because we had the grace to bring a team around me that complemented my gifts. Sometimes pastors will bring a team around them and the people have all the same profile. You see we all have blind spots, and as I said last night the problem with blind spots is you don't know you've got them. And we need a team that will compensate. You know, again whatever tool you use you generally have those 4 quadrants. Make sure that those quadrants are covered.

RH: Just to give you some insight into our team. Now Fr James is really strong on influence. I'm really strong on relationships, Kate is really strong on executing and Rob is really strong on strategy. So that 4 of us that cover all 4 quadrants of what you'll find in 'Living Your Strengths' book. Where's Fr Simon? He's on the senior leadership team.

FJM: It's a great balance and it's an incredible gift. Now here's the thing about unanimity of vision. If you have total unity in vision it allows us to engage in healthy conflict, not about the vision, but about how we're going to get there. You know Pat when he's writing says that you should mine for conflict, because the more truth we can get on the table, the more perspectives from people who have our blind spots covered, the better decisions, the more information we are going to have to make the best decisions.

Healthy Conflict and Trust

FJM: And healthy conflict is a risky thing. We heard last night that's why you need to have trust and vulnerability. We are going to talk about that as well. But we have. I have to say that the 3 hours we meet every week (3 hours, O my goodness!), the 3 hours are the most exciting, fun, difficult 3 hours of my week. It's incredibly life giving. We have a blast.

RH: We do. I'd just like to say I only like mining for conflict when they are his ideas. I don't like mining for conflict when they are my ideas because I don't think it's appropriate. He's the priest, he can handle it.

FJM: We take conflict so seriously that this is a standard piece of equipment (shows a nerf ball blaster) at our senior leadership team meetings.

RH: And the thing is, his attention span is…and he gets bored easy, so he starts shooting people at random for no good reason.

FJM: Sometimes we are on the floor laughing. Here's the thing. We commit together, we pray together, we put up the white board, we have a quick report from our different teams, some stuff for accountability, but the main focus of our discussions are the decisions that need to be made around the implementation of our strategy, when we are not sure what to do. And I mean this in all humility, it's not like we can call the parish next door and say, 'What are you guys doing for this?' They're like, 'Huh? What are you talking about?' So we don't know. And we have some amazing discussions, and Pat talked last night about accountability. And I want to tell you this (and I'll just put the 4th one up, it's self-explanatory), vulnerability and trust. Because it gets real. We have sometimes very heated disagreements. We get upset. We get that silence. And we stop and say, what just happened there? Could we just talk it through? We don't let anything like that pass. It's very vulnerable and I'll tell you it's incredible, it really is. We talk about accountability because we will have decided, this is the principle, this is what we're doing and often, OK, sometimes I might come in with a decision and I want it to go this way, but deep down I know it is not in line with what we agreed a couple of meetings ago – and these guys don't let me get away with anything. And sometimes, and I'm going to be very, very honest, in the midst of this passionate discussion because its right there on the table – and remember it's not about vision, it's about how we get there, there is sometimes a part of me that wants to say, 'I'm the priest!'. But you know, I could do that and there's ways to say that verbally and non-verbally – and we don’t get away with it – you get called out on it. I get called out on it. Let's be clear that the goal of senior leadership team is not to come to consensus. We don't try to find consensus. If there's no clarity on what we've got to do, I'm the pastor, I'm the leader, I've got to make the decisions, but as Pat said if people have been able to invest in the process, they're going to buy in. But I know this, that if I was ever to abuse that authority – you know no one in that room is there for the pay, they can all find better jobs somewhere else. They've given their lives to this too, to this vision, to this dream, and for me to do that would be an act of violence, and beside the point 99.9% of the time they're right anyway, and I know it. And it has been an incredible experience.

RH: And that goes for us too. We come in with great ideas, but we always leave with the best idea. And I was the last guy to get shot down in a ball of flames in a senior leadership team meeting, and it was painful. It was really painful for me because I put a lot of thought into it. I did all the pre-work, I did all the discussions, I know where we're going, I know what we're doing, and these guys didn't agree and it drove me bonkers. And I left and we just had to pause it. Fr Simon in his wisdom said, 'Guys why don't we just pause this?' because it was heated, it was, you know, I was blowing my stack. It wasn't healthy, right? That happens sometimes. And we had to walk away and as a day or two passes I'm thinking yeah, they're right. Doh! I hate when that happens.

FJM: You see it's about passion, right? We talked yesterday about the splankna, remember? You know, the feeling you get when you get passionate people who see what you don't see? And I'll tell you, it's amazing. And to my brother priests, when I first realised I had run out of strategy, I felt so alone, because I'm the pastor I've led them this far out – like we can't see the shore anymore – and they're looking at me, and I don't know what to do anymore, I don't know what to do next. I've got to pretend. I'm alone. And since we formed this team and have been living it this way, it's been absolutely profound. There is no decision – I want to speak even to the bishops here, because I think this model we desperately need it in our church – there is absolutely no decision in my leadership that I am left to work through on my own. No decision whatever. Nothing. We want to work it out together, and no one's after my job, and it's been an incredible experience. You don’t have to be afraid about losing the authority in all this.

RH: Can I say something to that too? You spoke to the priests and bishops. I want to speak to the lay people here. Can we love our pastor enough to let him make the decisions around who those 2 or 3 people are? Again, it might not be you. You might be here, and an important part of your staff or your volunteers or your leadership, but if your pastor needs people around him that can help him to be the most effective pastor possible, can we put our egos aside and let him make that decision and then support it? Whether we are on it or we're not? I remember talking to you and pleading before we got there, pleading Fr James, who are your people? And I don’t care if I'm not one of them, but you need them.

FJM: And by the way, that conversation took place several years before I knew what Ron was really talking about. I remember we were actually in Royal Albert Hall in London and he was saying, 'Who are your people?' 'Who are your team?' I was like, 'Ron, I don't know what you're talking about'. And he saw it. And many of the other staff saw it long before I did. Let's move to the next one, I think back to those three Phases.

Process not Programs

FJM: Remember, what we're covering in this chapter is Phase 2 stuff. If you are here today from a parish that hasn't really begun to do anything to move from maintenance to mission, remember your focus is going to be Phase 1. So take notes, but put it aside and go back to it in time. Because the rocking and pushing out of the snow, you've got to do that. If you go into a parish that has no culture of discipleship and evangelisation and start doing this stuff it will blow up. You need to do Phase 1. But if Phase 1 works, you've got to move to Phase 2. And we had the first couple of years doing stewardship initiatives, we had tons of stuff going on. I think we had like 73 ministries one year and 76 programs of faith formation, for adults, children and families.

RH: And we'd be at staff meetings and someone would ask a question, 'Hey, who is responsible for that ministry?' I didn't even know we had that ministry.

FJM: I loved it, it was great. I was having a ball, you know, the more the merrier. That was my philosophy. And it was kind of like, something for everyone. Like when you go to MacDonald's and there's the full menu and you can take your pick, and in one sense I do believe that in that initial phase we needed to do it like that, but once the car got moving, once evangelisation and discipleship, more people like Laurie and her family, and people having conversions, hearing testimonies, the more that just became normal, we had to shift it. Because it's not just about random programs that aren't connected to each other. This is the thing, like people would do stuff, so we had a lot of stuff going on, a lot of busyness, but the question is, 'What's it all about? What's our purpose?' It's to make disciples. And we define our purpose statement, you will see it all over the place: 'To form disciples to joyfully live out the mission of Jesus Christ'. That's our purpose; not to be busy. I mean we might be busy making disciples to joyfully live out the mission of Jesus Christ, and that's good, keep doing it. But we can be busy doing a whole bunch of stuff that's not making any difference ultimately. And so this was another thing that we had to do.

RH: It was interesting. I was in the pharmaceutical industry and I was running into the hospital and Fr Owen Connolly was the chaplain there. And he said, 'Ron, how are you doing?' 'Hey, Father, I'm doing great, I'm so busy' and he took my arm and he was so sincere and he said, 'Ron, busyness is not a virtue'.

FJM: One of the things that I had to basically repent of was my 'the more the merrier'. I honestly, to be brutally honest, I think for me, I like the chaos, I think my own needs were being met by that, I think my own ego loved 'Look how busy we are, our parking lot's full all the time, we've got every room at the school..'

RH: That's not hard by the way; it's a small parking lot.

FJM: So I had to repent from a 'more is merrier' to a new philosophy called 'less is more'. Think about when you go to a restaurant, the best restaurants. Do they have 20 page menus or 1 page menus? The point is we can actually accomplish more for the kingdom of God by doing less things and doing them incredibly well, rather than doing a whole bunch of stuff even a little bit well, or oftentimes poorly. We can accomplish more. God can accomplish more in and through us by doing less things, especially when those things are the things that actually work. A couple of weeks after we were talking about this, I actually went on the internet and googled the name 'less more' and I found a photograph of a guy from the 1940s. His name is Les Moore – so we printed it off and framed it and it hangs in the room where we have our senior leadership team meetings and actually if you walk around his eyes actually follow you everywhere you go. And if you start a suggestion, 'Hey, I've got a great idea, how about we do this?' he actually shoots lasers out of his eyes and gives you a hundred volts. Because as many of you know, it is in one sense hilarious. But it's relatively easy to say no to a bad idea, but there's tons of good ideas, and every single week – especially when parishioners start waking up and taking on the mission and getting excited – they're like 'Woah, I've got a great idea' and every day there's lots of good ideas coming for us. And when I first started I would say, 'Yes, great, go for it', I'd just light fires everywhere. It wasn't such a good idea after all.

RH: In fact, we begged Fr James to no longer say 'Yes' to anything, but to say instead, 'That's a neat idea, you need to talk to Ron', and I say 'No'.

FJM: The next thing we want to talk about is the Game Plan. You've seen these pictures. I'll let Ron introduce this concept.

RH: So an archaeological dig, sometimes you'd think they happen by mistake, don't they? Maybe a big back hoe making a building or clearing something and all of a sudden they maybe bump into something that they think might be important, and then all the tools change, right? They get rid of the back hoe, they stake everything off, and they start painstakingly uncovering things to see what's underneath. And in many ways, well, it was already there, and we're just uncovering it. And with this spaghetti approach, with this busy approach we were taking at St Benedict's parish there were some things working great, somethings working well and somethings not working at all. And at one point during this second phase – that is all about nailing down the process – we started unearthing, removing the distractions away, to see what is really working. And I know at that time I was working with Tanya Rodgerson, who was previously with C.C.O. She was a staff member here and she was a genius at helping us see through the chaos and the busyness and the clutter to see what is actually working. And the Game Plan, it was unearthed, and it has allowed us to stay laser focussed now on forming disciples who joyfully live out the mission of Jesus Christ vs 'Oh man, I'm so busy'.
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FJM: We had always had a sense of the basic movement of the Game Plan and I've got to tell you this story: that 5 ½ years ago within my first 2 months in this parish, I went to a meeting of church leaders. There were 10 churches, Catholic and non-Catholic, and I had my parishioners with me and we were asked to think about our vision for the role that Alpha would play in the renewal of our church. And I was great, getting ready to write something down and the presenter said, we want you to draw a picture, and I said, 'Man, I hate that'. It turns out that the guy I was with, his whole life ambition was to be a cartoonist. So it was great, but we sat there and we thought things over and I said to him, 'I have this image of a pump, and the handle of the pump is the Alpha question mark', because I really believe that at least at this point Alpha is the best tool that I've found to help evangelise people; people from the pews and people from outside the pews. We've always brought both together in our Alphas. I think that is very, very important. And to pump them into a discipleship process so that's the image that comes to me – a pump that is pumping people through. And he said to me, 'Wow, the image that came to me was a church building filling up from the inside with water and when it reached the level of the windows, exploding the windows and flooding the city. So this is what we drew – or rather what he drew. My contribution is the written reference to Ezekiel 47 up there beside the church. And at the top, that's not a flying fish, that's actually Nova Scotia, the blue part being our diocese. We said our vision was that by pumping people through Alpha and evangelising and discipling them our church will slowly fill up with missionary disciples who will spill out and touch and change our city. And what absolutely blows me away is the fact that a little less than 5 years later that flow of water has somehow touched many of you, to bring you here today. So that was an amazing vision that God put on our hearts and it really was the beginning of a Game Plan. You've seen this poster in our foyer

Invitational Culture: Alpha: Alpha Team: Connect Groups: Ministry: Discipleship Groups: Worship

What we struggled with was a representation that communicated process but wasn't linear. That was very important to us. It's not that you do this, then you do this, then you do this. We also wanted a process that had multiple on-ramps. So this is basically our fundamental strategy in making missionary disciples. This is not just for the people in our church. The starting point is invitational church. Yes, we want to invite those in our pews who have not yet encountered Jesus personally, experienced the power of the Holy Spirit, who have not yet become missionary disciples to take Alpha. But we want to have an invitational culture. You heard about Hayden inviting everyone. That's what we want. That's what we celebrate at our parish. Whether the people say Yes or No, that's not our problem. Our call is to invite. And here's an important thing. Here in our context in Nova Scotia, Canada, and Canada, I think is a bit more advanced in the process of secularisation than the United States – so our fundamental interface with the unchurched is not the weekend experience, it's Alpha. Because I believe there are limits to what you can do (you can still do a lot of things) but in the end it will still be a bit strange because I don't think the Eucharist was meant to be a frontline tool to evangelise. That's why if you look here, (at the Game Plan), worship is at the very end. Now that doesn't mean that we don't recognise the presence of unchurched people in our weekend. We don't have signs up saying 'Only Committed Catholics Allowed'. And we try to maximise our weekends with the 3 H's, Hymns, Homilies and Hospitalities. And often a lot of people will start coming and then take Alpha. So we try to do both, but this is our primary strategy.

RH: And it's interesting too, because at one point we did have a couple of different models that we were wrestling with and we were just about to embark on a particular journey of communicating where we were going when I was brought on full time – just about 2 years ago – and I'd realised that it was a clash of two different influences and it wasn't going to work, and so fortunately  we were able to hit the pause button before we launched it – and it was such an important piece because where we were really falling short is at the very top, the apex, which is connect groups. Connect groups are where Alpha alumni go to connect and to grow. To grow how? To growth in all of the gifts and also in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and it's out of that model that we have our very most trusted leaders as connect group leaders who then pastor, small 'p' pastor a small church because you (FJM) can't do it. I can't do it. But we want to care for you individually, we want you to be loved and cared for. Like how many priests here often, or occasionally, get a telephone call from the hospital? 'So and so is here, they would like you to come down and visit them or anoint them or what have you', and that's really important. But I tell you if you belong to a connect group and you go down, your health goes down, you've got 30 people around you providing food for your family, visiting you at the hospital, praying for you, and yes you will call the priest.

FJM: Yes definitely we have the sacrament of the anointing of the sick once a month, we'll anoint 120 people, and we do go out to homes and to the hospitals for sacramental ministry, but that's a whole other topic. They're about the demands that this is going to mean for our model of priestly ministry, where the pastor is the personal chaplain of everyone. If we cling to that model of ministry we are never going to be able to lead anything like this. So the traditional ways of belonging to our church and having a sense of belonging was often a personal relationship with the priest – and if you are in a church of 200 people or less, that's actually what you should do, you should keep going, because that's the model of leadership appropriate to the size of your church. But if you are a church of over 500 you need to change that, and definitely if you are a church – we get a weekend attendance here of between 1500 and 1800 people on a weekend and probably have about 2000 'regulars' – that model is not going to work. And if it does work, 2 things are going to happen: the level of pastoral care is going to be pretty small proportionate to the size of this church: and I'm going to be dead in 3 months: and all the growth that we've got is going to be coming to a standstill. And so we see this process as an invitational culture. You heard about the Journey of Hope, inviting people to a pre-evangelisation program, we've used the Marriage Course, the Parenting Course, Prayer Breakfasts, but ultimately the goal is to get people into Alpha. We do Alpha several times a year. We have lay witnesses. We constantly invite, invite. I invite people as well. After Alpha our goal is to get as many people as possible either back on the Alpha team or into a connect group. Because Alpha team is our basic leadership pipeline. You can only be in the Alpha team circle for a couple of years and then we literally fire you. You get moved on. Because a pipeline can only function as a pipeline if it keeps flowing, if people come out. And this often happens in churches, people often own their ministry and they block the pipe. And see we want – you heard about Laurie – essentially Laurie was formed in her leadership through the experience of Alpha team, so that when we fired her we said to her, 'What's the Lord's call on your life?' and then we came around to her and equipped her for this new ministry. You see connect groups (on the Game Plan). When I first started doing Alpha many years ago my primary concern was to fill in the catechesis. So that was it, get people through Alpha, and those who have – or have had or have been touched or have had an experience, let's bring them in and let's fill out the theological picture. That was my primary concern. But I still realised at the same time that we lost a lot of people. Those of you who have done R.C.I.A., do any of you lose people after the Easter Vigil? Happens all the time. And I became convicted that we need to focus primarily after people are evangelised into getting people into community, authentic Christian community, where, as Ron said, they can grow. So connect groups are primarily about connecting, they're about community, where people are loved and known and supported and are accountable to and for one another. And when people are caught up in a web of relationships, then they've got the rest of their lives to grow.

Ministry. We call everyone into ministry. Anyone can enter a ministry. We'll still invite people back to Alpha. We are seeking to have ministry shepherded from within connect groups. Ron, how many connect groups do we have right now?

RH: 13, I believe. We just had 3 new ones. 2 new ones, and I'm hoping to close another deal – right after we're done talking – and start our next one. But it's not growing. It's not keeping up with demand. Our demand far outweighs our supply, but it's really important. One of our values is we will not grow at a pace that exceeds the leaders that God reveals to us and raises up. Because I don't want to do anything poorly, it's important we do a great job. So we will not start something until we have the right people to lead it, and it's hard.

FJM: The next symbol is Discipleship Groups. It looks like a little flower or like 3 people gathered around a book. These are our small groups that are focussed on content. This is where our catechesis happens; adult catechesis, bible studies, different programs, and unlike what we did in Phase 1, where we had everything in the building with these big groups, we have decentralised this. All of the connect groups happen in homes. The discipleship groups, the majority of them happen in homes. Small groups between 4 and 10 people who will gather for some program whether its 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 10 weeks. And the number of groups will fluctuate. Last Lent I think we had about 90 groups meeting at homes. We try not to manage this as much, because it would be impossible to manage. We want it to be impossible to manage. Because we want to say, 'grab 3 or 4 friends and gather for coffee and watch a DVD and talk about it'. That's it. We will vet resources though. We want to vet what people are watching, you know, we don't want any crazy stuff, you know what I mean. So, we're still kind of implementing this, in changing that model, but it has already started to bear fruit.

And finally, the final piece is Worship, and you'll see it’s the chalice and host are someone doing this, (person with raised arms) symbol of worship because the Eucharist is meant to be the source and summit of the Christian life. The problem is that in most of our parishes all we do is the Eucharist. The only experience of Christian life people have is the Eucharist, and it is not the source of anything, it's not the summit of anything, and the life, the vitality that can come through the Eucharist is blocked. And we believe that when people live the Game Plan to the fullest that's when worship will truly come to life.

And I think of someone like Laurie and her family, I mean, a perfect example, you know she was invited, she experienced an invitational culture here, she eventually did Alpha, she did her time in the Alpha team, she went into a connect group. (In fact I understand that Alan and Laurie are actually in 2 different connect groups – it could be a possible source of divisiveness to which connect group they might eventually end up in together.) Involved in disciple ship groups and then finally worship comes to life, and then ministry, involved in ministry. So it's been an incredible blessing for us.

We have 5 minutes and we've got a few more things to cover, but here's a picture of our family friendly connect groups, and I wish I had time to tell you the story of every person in this picture, because as you'll see Johnny B there, there's Laurie and her family at the back there, it's such a delight. Hundreds and hundreds of these gatherings have happened over the last number of years, and I think I've gone to 3. I was at one a couple of weeks ago, and I just ate food and prayed, and as we were singing and praying together there were babies crawling over my feet – I was in heaven. It was just such a joy to see this happening.

The Three Able's of Ministry

FJM: This actually came to me, I was thinking about this and it's not new, per se, but the idea of the 3 Able's of ministry, and the first one came out of the experience that we've talked about. The others followed. Sustainable, Scale-able and Transferable. We just want to say something quickly about it. Sustainability, this was Ron's big thing in calling me out, because, well, you tell the story.

RH: So Fr James' health actually wasn't so good for the first number of years he was here. He would get a virus of some sort, and it would take him down big time, and that would happen several times a year, and plus he'd be travelling and things like that. So he physically was not healthy, his schedule and all the other demands he had, plus the pressure of being a pastor of a big parish like this was hard. And he wasn't healthy and he knew he wasn't healthy, and people came along side of him and helped fund a consultant to come and help us restructure, which was wonderful. And he started getting healthy, because we had a healthy structure, which allowed him the support he needed to get healthy. And his physical health even got better, and that was great, but our staff – at the time I mentioned – they were burning out too. So he was healthy but we weren't healthy, and so, I'd say, OK I'm glad you're doing good, but we're not. It's so good for you.

FJM: I was so happy. I'd tell, 'I'm feeling so great everyone', 'yeah, well, we're not feeling so good'.

RH: And so we realised that we needed to stop every now and again because we red line here. We work really, really tirelessly. We've got amazing both volunteers and staff that give like you can't imagine. And we need to care enough about them to see when they're red lining and we need to say, 'How are you doing?', 'What's going on?', and 'How can I help?' We need to be sustainable, which means healthy, as individuals and as a staff team, as leaders and volunteers.

FJM: Healthy things grow and bear fruit.

RH: Amen.

FJM: The second thing is scale-able. Why does something need to be scale-able? If you're innovating and looking to create and establish a model, create something from the start that is scale-able, that can grow. Why? Because if your church is healthy, it will grow. If you have a missionary church, it will grow. You heard Laurie's story about her ministry. She started, she found one other person, within a year she had raised up other teams. They were able to multiply these courses. It was set up from the start to be scale-able. And if we have ministries that are running that are all focussed around one person, who is running around really, really busily and not calling out other people, not raising up other leaders, it's not going to grow. And your proportional impact is going to be very little in the larger organisation, even though you're very, very busy. So make it scale-able.

And finally transferable.

RH: That scale-ability thing, if I could just speak into that for a quick second, I know we're running out of time. If often does start with one person. And they're really good at something and we have to figure out why they're good at it. They often don't know why, and we help them figure it out and it only then does it become scale-able. Because sometimes people are just really good at stuff and we know that, but we've got to figure out why they're really good at it, and sometimes it's partnering up with them to understand it, and once we do understand it, then we can give it away, and that's the transferability piece. Like once we understand, then we become consciously competent. Ken Blanchard has a great book, 'The One Minute Manager' and stuff and he talks about those principles. But once we became consciously competent and knew why, we became really good. Then we can teach other people and give it away. And one of the things that we value here is to become a blessing, as much as God calls us to, to anyone who asks. And that's part of the reason we like to have churches like you understand what you are doing that works well, so you can bless your local diocese. So that people when they come to you – not when you go to them, unsolicited advice never works…

FJM: It doesn't work. I tried it.

RH. Yeah, you did. (laughter) You got shot down like a ball of flames. It was awesome. (more laughter) I told him not to do it. He did it anyway. (more laughter) He thought it was the Holy Spirit. It was indigestion. (more laughter). But when people knock on our doors we want to pour ourselves into people, so that they can make church work. We just love the church, don't we? We love the church.

FJM: Here's the thing, you know. As I said at the end of yesterday morning I'm sure, I wish I had an hour to spend with every single one of you here. Because I know there's things you're doing in your churches that we could benefit from, and learn from, especially if you're innovating. But if you've made the decision to move from maintenance to mission, and you do find something that works – and by the way for everything you find that works it takes about 3 false starts or mistakes to get there. But don't be afraid of taking risks. But when you do find something that works and bears fruit, we have a responsibility to communicate that to others, and to ensure that from the beginning when we construct a model of ministry to be a part of fulfilling our strategy and purpose that it should be transferable. That we should be able to say, 'here's how it can work in your context'. Finally we are just quickly, I'm going to ask Ron to speak about 3 Critical Success Factors for Ministries.

RH: And the 1st thing is, and we communicate this to all our ministry leaders. You need to be healthy. 'Health vs Toxicity'. Just because we are doing the Lord's work in the church doesn't mean we are healthy. Toxicity can reign in churches, and it stifles everything. So we teach people how to have that talk. Within team environments do we want to be healthy or are we going to let toxic rule? Because culture is created by two things: what we reward and what we tolerate. If we tolerate toxic behaviour, then that's the bed you made, and you actually deserve it. So root out toxicity. We demand health. And we get toxic from time to time, and we need to call each other out, and love each other enough, the mission that we're on can't. I always say, everybody has a bad day, but when a bad day turns into a bad week, a flag should go up. And a bad week should never turn into a bad month when you are in leadership, because there's too much at stake, and I need you to love me enough to call me out when I'm toxic.

The 2nd thing is a 'leadership pipeline'. Understand your ministry. Understand the different roles in that ministry. Rank them in terms of influence and responsibility. Your early entry points should have low responsibility and low impact. But the more you move through a pipeline, you grow in impact or influence and responsibility. But you need to define the different places because once you've defined each role, what it takes to be good at it, then you can have a great culture for apprenticing. Because now you actually understand your ministry, what's required at each phase, and how you need to grow people through your ministry. It was Rick Warren who said, 'don't use people to build up your church, use the church to build up your people'. What if we applied that to ministries as well? We want to make people great here by being a member of St Benedict's parish and what we do.

FJM: Ron began this morning by talking about whether we have the capacity to learn, the willingness to learn, whether we are teachable, and in truth, some days we are, some days we're not, especially when there's ego and there's pride and we may have, you know, come up with this great idea. Something we thought was great, and it turns out it's not so great and rather than having an honest conversation and backing away we double down. But sometimes it's not just bad ideas that are a threat to this, or bad models of ministry, but again, if you get something that starts working - eventually it's not going to work, and we need to be willing to allow ourselves to be pruned, and to allow our ministry models and our leadership structures to be pruned as well and 'pruning' is always a painful reality. It's always difficult. And yet Jesus says, you know, 'I will prune every branch that bears no fruit, it will be cut down and put in the fire'. But here's the thing, 'Every branch that does bear fruit, I'm going to prune it.' Why? So it will bear even more fruits. See it's not enough to have a good plan or a good model or something that's kind of working. If it's kind of working, let it be pruned so that it will work better. Let it be pruned again. Because as Ron said, we owe it to the Lord, to the mission of the church, to be the best that we can so that grace can build on nature. It's only the Lord who ultimately produces this fruit. So the question for us this morning is, 'Are we willing to learn?' I'm saying this to a bunch of people who have travelled to come and learn, so praise God for that.

So let's stand together and take a moment just to reflect on our ministries. I want you to think right now of everyone back home, your home parish, your staff, your ministry leaders, your volunteers, and let’s ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to us, to bring to mind to whisper in our ear, our hearts and our minds anything that we need to prune, even the things that might be working, even the things that are working. Does the Lord want to prune it, so it can bear even more fruit? So let's just wait, let's just ask the Holy Spirit to come as we did yesterday morning. I invite you to just close your eyes and just, if you're comfortable, to open your hands to just pray 'Come' in the silence of your hearts. Come Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit. Come into this place Lord. Speak to us now Lord. We come with expectant faith Lord. Come Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit you are welcome here. When the Holy Spirit comes, He will speak truth into our lives, and into our ministries and convict our hearts. (music)

You are welcome Holy Spirit. Come, Come Holy Spirit. Speak to us Lord. Speak into our hearts as we imagine our parishes, our ministries, our staff, those at home, even those who are here with us Lord. Convict our hearts right now. What do we need to stop doing? What needs to be cut and removed? What needs to be pruned Lord? Speak now, into our hearts, convict our hearts.

RH: I just invite you to, as you are praising God, as you are making space, to just to, if you've never just put your hands up before or just as a sign of openness. I see this hole here, and God just pouring His grace and mercy on us. Just allow, like Fr Simon talked about in his homily the other day, let it rain down on you. You don’t have to do it, but if you've never done it before allow yourself the freedom as you're singing this next verse to just raise your hands. Come Lord Jesus.

I just get this image while we were praying, this beautiful image of just being in a big field, with flowers all over the place, and just dancing, just hands in the air, just so aware that God's just pouring His mercy, His grace, incredible freedom to just be yourself. You're loved. You are loved. You are loved. It's awesome. As we were praising I just see this field and I was just dancing, and God's rejoicing and just smiling. He loves you. Fr James used to have a dog, and he used to love to watch him run, because the dog was crazy, it just loved to run. You were meant to praise God. You were made to praise God, to experience His love and to give Him glory and praise. Thank you Lord. Let us just dance with You as we sing this (music)
We praise You. Let Your love just pour down on us, wash away our egos. Praise You Jesus. Praise You God. You are awesome.

FJM: Father we bless You and thank You. We thank You for this time of grace. Lord we remember Your word to us to not be afraid. Do not be afraid. And Lord I pray for the parishes here today who are looking at beginning Phase 1, and with everything that that means to push the car out of the snow, and Lord I pray that they may not be daunted because Lord, You are pushing with them. You are with them. Lord, I pray for the parishes who perhaps are on the verge of Phase 2 and might not know it. Lord, I pray that You will give them wisdom to truly know what to let go of, what to stop doing, what to focus on. And Lord, I pray for any parishes here today that who are moving towards Phase 3, because Phase 3 doesn't happen when Phase 2 is finished. That's the amazing thing, Lord, Phase 3 happens one person at a time, just like Laurie, as she is equipped for mission and off she goes. Just like Flavia, she's equipped for mission and off she goes, and like other people throughout the world. So Lord we bless You and thank You for this day. We pray through Christ our Lord. Amen.

(The remainder of the video recording has some housekeeping announcements regarding lunch, dinner and transport, and some more music.)
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You can view the recording at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUtE9nbMsjE
This talk begins around 32 mins 40 seconds in.
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For a 16 page print friendly version, that has edited out some of the 'just', 'so', 'and', and other not fully necessary linking words, and has edited a few other bits to make it flow better, download the PDF below. The testimony that began the plenary session has been included, because it is referred to several times in the main presentation.

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​Personally I suspect that Phase 3 is corporate and not individual. That healthy things not only grow, they reproduce. Whether that is in birthing new movements and ministries, or whether that is pioneering new parishes with the right culture from the get-go, or both, we'll have to wait and see. 

Because the Divine Renovation Conference 2016 was designed to let participants 'see under the hood' at how St Benedict's parish, Halifax works, this preamble to the main talk on the Tuesday morning of the conference is included separately because it gives an insight into the culture of the place, and the love and teamwork that keeps it going.

Dan O'Rourke gave this preamble. You can find him on Twitter as @DanORourke and you can find the podcasts here and here.

Dan O'Rourke: Good morning and welcome to Day 2 of Divine Renovation 2016. I am so thrilled that we're all here. It's a full house yet again and lots of people streaming online. I mentioned yesterday that we were the No. 1 trending hashtag on Twitter nation-wide (#DR16). So for those Twitter users, I encourage you to keep taking photos and tweeting quotes. It's amazing. That's driving people to click the Livestream to join us from their homes all over Canada. So please keep tweeting.

In a minute I am going to invite up onto stage my two podcasting buddies, so Fr James Mallon and Ron Huntley will be joining me in a moment. And there's actually a 4th staff member that is part of that podcast. He doesn't appear audibly, but he is our producer and our audio tech, and he's also the guy who plays the central role for all the audio and AV for this entire conference: Paul Lang. Paul, are you around here somewhere? Are you up in the booth? There he is. So there's Paul way up in the booth (clapping). So Paul's a young guy. He's been putting in a lot of hours lately and it just so happens that today's actually his 24th birthday and he's going to spend it here working – working long hours of overtime. But I was just wondering if all 600 of us could turn around and sing Happy Birthday to him. So Paul, stand up again, we want to be able to see you buddy. (singing). Paul, we love you man, you do amazing work.

So I've been blown away by all the love that the podcast has. So many of you have been coming up to me and saying, 'I love the podcast', 'I listen to the podcast'. A few of you have come up and said, 'When's the next podcast coming, it's been a while since we've heard a podcast?' Many of you would know, since we put the podcast on hiatus in the lead up to the conference for 2 reasons. 1) We were doing a conference 2) Fr James had committed to himself, to the team and to others to write another book.

We haven't talked too much about the book, but the Divine Renovation Guidebook is available to buy at the Novalis table at the back. Novalis has been a wonderful partner with us. So if you haven't yet checked out the guidebook, there's a few copies remaining. There's not many. They're the only copies in existence. They are taking orders. And what I want to be able to (I know Fr James will kill me for even telling about it), but what's important to note is that all (he doesn't earn a dime off the sale of that book), all the money from the sale of that book goes straight back into the Divine Renovation ministry. So if you buy the book, know that you are not getting Fr James a new Lexus, he's still going to be driving the same old car he's been driving for a long time. But the book's back there. I know they're going to sell it real soon. They are taking orders. And for anyone who orders at the conference they are offering free shipping of the book – so that's part of the deal there.

I know many of you know Fr James really well – many of you would also know Ron Huntley, who is also on the podcast. And he's had a couple of workshops. But not all of us have met Ron. If you have met Ron, there's no doubt that he's already invited you to Alpha. So that is what Ron is best known for: inviting people to Alpha. But honestly he's a key member of the Divine Renovation team, he's a key member of St Benedict's parish, he's a quintessential coach and he's the host of the Divine Renovation podcast. He brings to life what Patrick Lencioni was talking about last night, which is that healthy conflict. Watching him and Fr James go back and forth is like, I feel like a referee, watching the 2 guys having a healthy conflict in front of me sometimes. So if I could ask you all to help me welcome Fr James Mallon and Ron Huntley up onto the stage (clapping)

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I understand that the Divine Renovation Guidebook is designed to be written in, but how I wish they had released a Kindle version as well as a paperback version!

What you see here is Dan O'Rourke being a living example of Romans 12:10 (Outdo one another in showing honour). He's modelling two things that should be seen in parish life, but often aren't: 1) thanking people for their hard work – especially the 'behind the scenes' people and 2) praising them for how well they do it. Both things encourage people to keep serving God. Hebrews 3:13 (Every day, as long as this 'today' lasts, keep encouraging one another.)

This is the kind of love that Laurie experienced, the love the Holy Spirit had poured into the hearts of the parishioners at St Benedict's, the love that ultimately drew her to Jesus.

Because this testimony of Laurie's contains so many important things, it deserves its own blog-post. This was the testimony given prior to the morning plenary session at the 2016 Divine Renovation Conference #DR16.

​As usual, this is an imperfect transcription.

Music lyrics:
'Jesus, let Your kingdom come here, King of heaven, come now.'
'O our Lord, how majestic is Your Name in all the earth…We behold…Your Name is a light in the darkness'.

Testimony
Fr James Mallon (FJM): We want to take a few minutes this morning to introduce to you another parishioner. Let's give Laurie some welcome. Where were you 5 years ago?

Laurie* (L): I was not on any spiritual journey 5 years ago. I was a cradle Catholic and had fallen away from my faith in my early 20s.    (*The spelling of this name could be incorrect. If so, my apologies.)

FJM: So how come you are now standing in front of 600 people? We had 2000 views on Livestream from yesterday morning. So there's a lot of people watching out there as well. Let's give them a wave. (they wave to the viewers) So that didn't make you nervous at all?

L: I'd do anything for Fr James. That's true.

FJM: So what happened? What was the beginning of your journey?

L: I had a very tragic marriage that ended in divorce. I am the mother of 2 beautiful children, a son 17 and a daughter 12. I'd done all the secular things to try and heal from my divorce. I went to counselling and I sought other relationships. None of these things worked. I actually woke up one morning at my boyfriend's home and I walked into the living room and I was hit so quick that I knew that I had to find God. I ended the relationship from that moment and I went on a search for God, and the only place I really knew to find God was in the church. I didn't really want to come back to the Catholic Church because I was divorced. I could never reconcile being divorced and Catholic. So I sought out a couple of non-denominationals and they were very nice, but didn't seem right to me. So I spoke to a co-worker and said, 'You know, this church search is not going so well' and her parents were members of this parish, and she said, 'You know, you should really try St Benedicts', they have a young progressive priest'. That was 5 years ago.

FJM: I was reacting to being called a progressive. We aim to be very traditional here, you know like apostolic traditional right?

L: So I decided to come to Mass one day. I could not tell you what happened that day except for when I came into this church I was given a huge sense of peace and just sat in the pew and sobbed my eyes out. I did that for about 2 months. I did not reach out to anyone in the parish, I came in and left. And finally I knew God wanted me to do this for my children – and I really, really had no idea how to do this. The only minister my children knew was the Prime Minister. So anyways, this is when I reached out to someone and asked about how to get my daughter baptised. This came with huge shame and guilt because I never baptised my daughter. So someone from the baptismal committee called me and she loved me on that phone. She did not judge me, she was just so full of joy and said, 'I cannot wait to tell Fr James this story' and we made arrangements to meet, and of course I was scared to death to meet a priest. And again, praise the Lord, Fr James was the same, he just loved me, he did not judge me, he gave me 3 directions, and he said, 'Laurie, I want you to start taking the kids to Mass (1), put your son in youth group (2) and your daughter in catechism class (3), (at that point he was 12 and she was 8), and I promise you God will do the rest': and, He has.

FJM: So what was the next step after that?

L: So my children received the sacraments, and during that year my daughter was baptised and my son received his first Holy Communion, they did it together. That was very special. My son joined the youth group and he as well was loved by the youth ministers and had a powerful experience of the Holy Spirit through a youth minister. And we just became active members in the parish, and the parish just loved us. Eventually, due to a lot of talk about Alpha in the parish and the encouragement of my priest, I did take Alpha and had a powerful experience of the Holy Spirit on the retreat weekend, and again the profound thing for me during my Alpha experience was being loved by the table helper. My table host was pretty cool, (Ron Huntley), but the table helper loved me, and that just made me want to come back.

FJM: So after Alpha, what kind of impact did that have on your life?

L: Well Jesus became my Lord and King, I gave my life to Christ, and I want to share that. My family saw complete transformation in me, including my brother who was away from his faith, both my parents were away from the church as well. So I prayed that the Lord would help me evangelise my family, and eventually my mother did take Alpha, and she had a profound experience as well, on the weekend away, and at the Holy Spirit retreat.

FJM: And what's your mum's name?

L: My mum's name is Gail*.

FJM: Is she here today? Gail, get up here. (clapping) Come and stand beside your daughter, Gail.

L: So yes my mum eventually went on to serve on Sushi Alpha and both my parents (my Dad's not here today) are active members of St Benedict's.

FJM: That's an Alpha we run in a Sushi restaurant, in case you were wondering.

L: And so my so is quite an invitational disciple, he has invited my father to prayer breakfasts, his father – who is not a Christian – to prayer breakfasts. He even brought his father to Mass on Easter, which was very healing for our family. He invited my brother to a men's prayer breakfast where there was a very profound witness shared at that prayer breakfast, and it started to stir things into my brother's life, and he started to ask me questions, and praise God he texted me in September and said, 'I just went to Mass these last 2 Sundays'. So I tried to act really cool, I went 'Cool', but I was jumping up and down in my kitchen, ecstatic, praising God. The kids thought I was crazy. And so he returned to his faith. And since then my niece, who is 10, was baptised in January, and she just had her first Holy Communion. I'm a godmother for the first time, and my son is a godfather.

FJM: Speaking of your son – well he's here. He's supposed to be at school, but he's here. We're not going to tell them. Come up here.

L: So my dad, who is a very devoted husband, came back to church with my mum, and so they attend Mass every week and it's just awesome.

FJM: Gail, can I just ask you, what difference has Jesus made in your life?

G. Well I feel it helped me understand my relationship with Jesus, and also He is the light in my life.

FJM to L's son: The first time I met you, you were about that height (double that now). What difference has Jesus made in your life? This guy had a job interview a few months ago and he invited the lady interviewing him to come to church. And she came. What difference has Jesus made in your life?

L's son: Well, I had let anxiety and fear stop me from following Christ, and when I threw that all away and got on my knees I really felt I had a purpose to be a missionary disciple, and I let that run my life now. It's amazing how I've changed. (clapping)

L: So when I completed Alpha I knew God was calling me to apply for an annulment. This as many know, is a very painful process but to me it was so healing. The Lord brought so much healing to my life through that, and then the boyfriend that I talked about before, when I woke up at his home, we always maintained contact and we'd bump into each other once in a while. So we happened to have this conversation, and he was struggling with some things related to his father having dementia, and he was asking me questions and I said, 'You should really think about taking Alpha, you might get your answers there'. And there just so happened to be an Alpha Come and See the next week, and it was just perfect timing. And I asked him to come, and he did, and he took the Alpha course – and he as well had a profound experience of the Holy Spirit on the weekend away, and again the helpers and the people on that team just loved him and just showered him with non-judgment and love, and he as well has returned to his faith. He was just confirmed this Easter.

FJM: And just to be clear. This is the boyfriend you dumped, and now you've got him back. Alan*, come up. Alan, what difference has Jesus made in your life?

A: Oooh, big question. Calm. A lot of glory, and He has let me realise that if anybody is going to bring you through anything – it's Jesus.

FJM: You know, the remarkable thing is that 4.5 years ago (family photo on screen) not one single member of this family was connected to church, and now they are all not just connected, they're living as disciples, as missionary disciples. It is an amazing grace and it doesn't stop there. Laurie, tell us a bit about what the Lord (we talked yesterday about passion and vision). What did the Lord put on your heart?

L: When I was applying for my annulment, I really wanted to know what the Catholic church said about me being divorced. So I was on the internet and I came across this beautiful website called divorcedcatholic.com , and I saw a ministry there called Journey of Hope (now called Recovering from Divorce). It is a Catholic cased ministry for divorced Catholics and there's a book on there, and I thought, 'Oooh, that looks interesting'. I applied to get the devotionals from that ministry to my emails. And those devotionals are written by people who have taken this program. So I was getting them for about a year. They were very, very powerful, very healing. This was all around the time I was going through my annulment, and a year later one of the parish staff, she saw the ministry on another church website and she said and asked me, 'Laurie, would you do this?' And I said, 'Absolutely!'. God has healed me of my deep pain of losing my marriage and He wants to use me to help others, and that is my mission.

FJM: And what has happened since then?

L: So the ministry was launched at St Benedict's 3 years ago, God provided the perfect person to help me launch it. We will be finishing our 3rd year next weekend, and through this program people who have taken it have become leaders in the ministry, and it has been a profound healing for the women who have taken the program. Also some of the women who have come were disconnected from the church, and last year in particular, 4 of the women who were disconnected from the church came to take the ministry, received some profound healing, went on to take Alpha, and one of them actually was just on our Alpha team.

FJM: What's your vision? What's your hope? Your desire for this ministry?

L: First, that the Lord will raise up male leaders, so we can have a group for men. Secondly, I would love the ministry to be offered in the community, because for a lot of people coming to the church is scary, so I would love for that to happen. And also that perhaps some leaders here would have it on their heart to take that ministry home.

FJM: Thank you so much to you Laurie, and to all of your family, thank you.
……………………………………………………………………….

There are many important things to notice about this testimony.
Firstly, it is the action of the Holy Spirit that initiates it. The first action was the desire which came out of left field of a desire to find God. It was His work again that gave Laurie the restlessness in other places and the huge sense of peace in the pew at St Benedict's. His action again was in the urging to bring her children to the sacraments and to take the step to do Alpha.

What we don't have in this testimony is the story of how this grace was won for Laurie. Was it the answer to the prayers of a deceased holy grandmother? Did someone meet Laurie and commit themselves to praying for her? Was it the general prayers of the parishioners of St Benedict's praying for people to come and do the Alpha course? Maybe it was all of the above, and more.

Secondly we have a series of moments of truth, which could have gone badly wrong, but in this case were extremely positive.

Laurie had to get up the courage to find someone to ask about the process of getting her daughter baptised. The person she spoke to is unnamed, but this person was obviously approachable and helpful, and followed through and obtained contact details from Laurie and got them to the right person on the baptismal committee. This sounds like it may have bypassed the parish office, and if so, it was probably a good save because the average parish office receptionist is trying to juggle many things at once. However, the first point of contact for many people is the parish office, so any time invested in choosing warm, friendly people with hearts filled with the Holy Spirit's love in these positions is well spent. (NB. When you pray for your priests, remember to pray for the parish staff as well).

The baptismal committee member may have been given a brief description of Laurie from the person passing on her contact details. Every bit helps. Certainly it made a difference that the baptismal committee member could choose a time to phone when she wasn't stressed and had prior experience welcoming people into the baptismal program. It made a difference that this person chose to build a relationship with Laurie in preference to just giving her details about what to do and where to go for the program. It made a difference that this person was excited about what God had done in Laurie's life to bring her to this point, and that she was sure the priest would share this excitement – setting things up for a positive priestly interview. At the end of this conversation Laurie felt wanted and loved, and not like a number to be processed through a conveyor belt.

Fr Mallon was in to building relationships too, and listened to Laurie's journey. She was met with joy, welcome and genuine interest. Did you notice that he gave her three 'easy to remember' achievable goals? He didn't bring up annulments, he didn't bring up Alpha. He set her up for success knowing that if she could achieve these three things, she would give God the time and space to do the rest. At no point did she get the feeling that the priest was itching to get back to tasks he considered more important.

Laurie's whole story illustrates one of God's maxims, 'You just love them, and leave Me to do the business of converting them'.

Another thing to ponder is how long this conversion process took. It takes time to get from 'I need to find God' to 'I need to check out a church this Sunday'. It takes time to shop around for a church. It takes time to get up the courage to enter the doors of a Catholic church. It takes time to go from being a passive church attender to asking a question. It takes time to go through catechism classes, to go through an Alpha program, and it definitely takes time to go through an annulment process. So when God sends us someone it is right and just to acknowledge the workings of grace in his/her life that have preceded this new step along the journey of faith. Can this process be hurried along? Probably not. Although it would have been interesting if someone had noticed Laurie crying during her season of tears at Mass and did more than just pray for her from a distance.

Pope Francis has spoken about how we need to learn the art of accompaniment. The table helper at Alpha is one example of how to do this, and the daily inspirations emails from the divorcedcatholic.com website is another. Those daily inspiration emails filled a need that the parish at that time was unable to fill; they put Laurie in connection with others on the same journey of healing from the wounds of divorce.

Did you notice that St Benedict's had several options for outreach to people happening outside the church walls? The sushi restaurant; Alpha: prayer breakfasts, and hopefully the ministry to divorced persons too. Each was meeting people where they were at, and in non-threatening and non-scary locations.

Another lesson we can learn is to not despise small beginnings. If that first phone call from the baptismal committee member had not gone well, a whole family could have missed out on the transformation Jesus brings into people' lives.

May God bless and protect Laurie and her whole family as they seek to live out all that God has called them to be and to do.
St Benedict, pray for them. Amen.

.............................................................................................
Lest you think that a ministry to divorced people is an optional extra, these excerpts from Wendy Alec's 'Visions from Heaven' Part 3, from the chapter entitled 'The Minister' will hopefully make you rethink that.

'There is no wound on Earth as terrible as a wound inflicted by a husband on a wife, or a wife on her husband. The marriage covenant is eternal. By rejecting the wife of your youth, you gouged your own entire body in such a manner that it was almost impossible to recover. My children who suffer the most are those who reject their spouse and then they themselves feel that they experience no pain. Divorce has become commonplace in My Body. There are many, many of My children who walk at this time literally gouged and bleeding from the wounds of separation, divorce and rejection. I long to heal them. You felt little pain as a result of rejecting your wife on Earth, and yet your wounds were even more desperate than your wife's. You were the one whose wounds were so desperate that they led to an early death.'

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

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

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

​On Monday 13 June and Tuesday 14 June 2016, the parish of St Benedict's Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, ran a 2 day conference to share their experiences of successful parish renewal. Using #DR16 will get you an overview of the conference via Twitter or Facebook.
 
I wasn't able to attend in person, but I was able to participate through the Livestream video of the plenary sessions which were uploaded to the internet. http://livestream.com/accounts/6379109
 
It is worthwhile watching them all, there's no question about that. But you will have a greater appreciation if you have read the Divine Renovation book first: https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Renovation-Bringing-Maintenance-Mission/dp/1627850384
 
You will find a lot of references made during the conference to something called Alpha. In essence it is a course run over several weeks which helps people come to a personal decision about who Jesus is. If you know nothing about Alpha, then these links might be helpful:
 
https://catholics.alpha.org/
http://australia.alpha.org/context/catholic
http://alphausa.org/catholic/
 
This Monday 13 Jun 2016 Plenary Part 1 had a few technical difficulties. The best way to see it is through YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb6VuTroUb4
 
Here follows a rough transcript of that Plenary Part 1 and then my own response to it.

Why bother? Not everyone likes getting their information via video, and going through the process of taking notes and typing them up enables the message to take deeper root – and there's no guarantee how long the Livestream option will be available for. Good stuff deserves longevity.
 
This session was entitled 'Vision, Passion, Hope'
 
Fr James Mallon, the parish priest of St Benedict's, began the session by welcoming the international participants to the conference, and those who had come from other Christian communions. As part of that introduction he said that it is good for us to get out of our everyday boxes for a while, and that Unity follows Mission, and not the other way around. Unity is a fruit of the Mission.
 
What is vision? Vision is a picture of the future that produces passion in us. Having a vision is essential for leadership, but it is not enough just to have the vision, you have to communicate that vision to others and you can't communicate the vision without passion.
 
In the account of the feeding of the 5000 by Mark, we see Jesus and the apostles seeking some quiet time only to find when they come ashore a huge crowd. Mark tells us that Jesus was moved with compassion when he saw them. At other key pivotal moments in the life of Jesus we see this happen, before He acted He was moved with compassion. The root of this word refers to the intestines or the guts, 'splankna'.
 
Splankna is the disposition of God towards ourselves. If our parishes are to become the missionary disciple making machines that they are called to be, then it has to start with spankna.
 
If we are not feeling it, we are not going to lead it.
 
The chapter in Divine Renovation called House of Pain was written after listening to many priests. Those who are able to maintain passion have an underlying reality of hope.
 
There are many ways to lose hope:
• been hurt
• fatigue/tired/exhaustion
• disillusioned
• cynical
• contentment
 
Renewal does not come about without pain. Cynicism is wisdom stripped of hope. Our hope is in Jesus, in Him who can restore our hope.
 
Picasso said that good artists copy, and great artists steal. That's what we did, we went looking for things that were working elsewhere and tried them. Some worked for us, others didn't.
 
Renewal has to involve a cultural shift, and culture is composed of the values we hold dear to us.
 
It is possible for parishes of any size and in any location to be healthy.
 
Just like in the battle scene of Braveheart where a warrior can't get his head around the fact that William Wallace isn't 7 foot tall, in these days of the conference may you be underwhelmed by us and overwhelmed by God.
 
Testimonies
 
Flavia told us that 5 years ago her life was empty, she felt lost and without meaning, even though she was going to Mass regularly. In 2010 she signed up to do the Alpha course, as a team member. On the Holy Spirit weekend she experienced God's love in an overwhelming and life changing way. This enabled her to invite God to take control of her life. This almost didn't happen, because 3 weeks into the Alpha course she wanted to quit it completely. Following this powerful encounter with God's love, she had a desire to share His love with others. She became aware of a fire in her heart, and a call to serve, but she had no idea how God wanted that to happen. Things became clearer after Flavia and her husband attended an Alpha conference, and she knew she was called to serve in a prison. So with the support of the parish, that's what she has been doing. The first Alpha in a local prison was run in 2013, and so far 5 have been run for women in prison and 5 have been run for men in prison. Her vision is to bring Christ to all the prisoners in Nova Scotia and a neighbouring state. Her husband isn't here with us at the conference, because he is in Kuwait to bring Alpha there.
 
Flavia has invited hundreds of people to Alpha. One person she invited 7 times before he came.
 
Robert told us that at that time he wasn't really interested in God, and he was experiencing a lot of pain and grief. Flavia said that I would feel peace if I came to Alpha. Finally, Robert decided that he'd either have to try this Alpha thing or leave the parish. 'If I go, will you leave me alone?' Going to Alpha was amazing. I went in with lots of doubts and cynicism. At the Holy Spirit retreat weekend, God introduced Himself to me. My whole life has changed. I used to be sad and depressed, now I am happy, I'm 100% different. I have a relationship with Jesus, which to me is amazing. Now I am leading an Alpha group in a pub.
 
Rosemary and John were attending Mass in the parish, it was routine for them and they weren't involved in the parish. Fear, though, was a part of their lives. After 27 years in the pews trying to stay awake through the homilies, with Fr James around it was easier to stay awake. We started seeing the positive fruits of Alpha in those who had done the course, and we wanted that for ourselves. The weekend away gave us a sense of connectedness and purpose. All the fear I had has been washed away, and the love of God has filled me.
 
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My own response
 
It was good news to hear that passion is good, and that it is necessary to bring about the changes God wants in parish life. But to be a lone wolf with passion, that's not going to end well. If you have that 'splankna', then you have to find others who have it too, together you can make things happen.
 
In order to retain both hope and passion in ministry, you need reminders that God is still active even if you can't see the evidence in your patch of the world. That's why some kind of yearly conference is necessary. That's why I get my weekly dose of The Journey Home from EWTN, to hear a conversion story. That's why the quarterly Ave Maria magazine is 'must read' material for me (to subscribe write to PO Box 118, Midland, WA, Australia, around $20 per year for Australians, a bit more for the rest of the world).
 
We need, as the good song says, to be reminded that
 
'God can do it again, and again and again
He's the same God today as he always had been
Yesterday and forever, He's is always the same
There's no reason to doubt, God can do it again.'
 
As much as this session at DR16 gives me hope, I grieve for the many priests in my own region who have lost hope through at least one of the reasons Fr Mallon gave us. Who will bring the fire, the splankna, back to our priests? Without them engaged we can do so very little. We need to pray every day for them, asking the Holy Spirit to work in them.
 
Lots of us need healing. Just about anyone who serves in parish ministry gets hurt and gets hurt badly. Ecclesiasticus 2:1-2 is real. Rarely do those hurting ones find anyone who cares that they are hurting. We need to lift our game in supporting and caring for one another.
 
Alpha, Alpha, Alpha. It is certainly working for them. What would it take for it to work here?