​Just in case you haven’t been using the woftam catchphrase, it means waste of time and money – although some people like to include an expletive starting with f. The Framework for Motions document, the working document for the second assembly of the 5th Australian Plenary Council, was released on 1 Jun 2022. The actual assembly starts 4 Jul 2022, so it doesn’t give any of us much time to assess what each motion means, and what the implications are should it pass.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EiQBQV8U8-T5DemhN1TY-WSlT4uSzy-v/view

It isn’t an easy document to read, even though it is only 44 pages long. That’s because it is couched in a language that’s part lawyer and part education bureaucrat.

To even begin to read it, you have to get past the title, and when I think Framework for Motions a toilet cistern is what comes to mind, and for that reason ‘motions’ is an unfortunate choice too.

Because I was curious, I wanted to know if the Holy Spirit was mentioned in any of the motions that were of a non-introductory nature. After all, if we have been truly listening to the third person of the Most Blessed Trinity, shouldn’t He be mentioned a la Acts 15:28? (It has been decided by the Holy Spirit and by ourselves ….). The answer was no. In fact, references to the Holy Spirit could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

However there were references to the Spirit, spiritual and spirituality, and some of those references would make just as much sense with Zeitgeist being substituted for Spirit, and sadly maybe even more sense, than substituting Holy Spirit for Spirit.

This curiosity extended to seeing what kind of splash this new document was making in the Twitterverse. I had to really dig to find any response at all, and it’s been over 48 hours since release. Indeed this kind of ‘non-event’ status has been observed on Twitter throughout the whole Plenary Council saga.

Thinking back the communication policy seems to have been drop a document, provide press statements for dioceses to use, and then have radio silence until the next document drop. As I said back then, that’s not the way to engage minds and hearts in the process, and without grassroots engagement the Plenary Council process cannot rise above woftam status.

Where there has been engagement is with levels of church bureaucracy (diocesan curia et al) and with catholic education bureaucrats, and maybe with the odd bishop or two (yes I know that’s a tautology). The Plenary Council process has been bureaucrats taking to bureaucrats about things that matter to bureaucrats.

Every so often during the whole Plenary Council Process I’ve tried to find blogs with Plenary Council commentary. After you wade through page after page of diocesan blogs with word for word copies of the official press statements, you give up looking. So all you have left is commentary from semi-regular journalists in the Catholic Press. Of them, Dr Philippa Martyr has been the most prolific and reliable commentator. The upshot of this is that non-bureaucrats haven’t been able to find other non-bureaucrats to compare notes with on Plenary Council matters, unless they are long-suffering family members and similarly long-suffering friends -and those long-suffering ones tend to be people in the stratum between bureaucrat and disinterested laity.

Unless the whole church in Australia is engaged in the Plenary Council process then adoption of any approved motions (amended or otherwise) isn’t going to happen. If the outcomes of the Plenary Council process are not ‘received’, then it has been a colossal woftam. For a Council or a Synod process to be received something more than just engagement is required, people have to be both convinced about the necessity of change AND inspired to work towards it.

Compared with the fruit of the Detroit Archdiocese synod https://www.unleashthegospel.org/the-letter/ and its high levels of inspiration, the Framework for Motions document is lacking in inspiration at all.

Several of the Plenary Council motions have more to do with virtue signaling and public opinion than anything else.

The ongoing problem is that the Church is a movement not a bureaucracy, even though it needs levels of bureaucracy to fulfill its God given charter to draw people to holiness and to send them out to co-operate in establishing God’s rule on earth. The Church is a theocracy, it is not, and can never be a democracy, because the only person’s opinion that matters is God’s.

We are here to please and serve Him, not public opinion, not ourselves and not our own preferences for ways of doing things.

So the only proper lens to view each motion through is, ‘Is this what God wants?’ and can we back up any yes with evidence that this is what God wants from scripture, tradition and magisterial teaching? How does each motion assist the universal call to holiness and the universal call to mission?

How do these motions measure up against what I consider are the Big Three of what God wants?
Scripture -His message to us, to help us know, love and serve Him better.
Family -His plan for human life, which has been under extreme attack in our lifetimes.
Holy Spirit – how to open up pathways for the charismatic dimension of the Holy Spirit’s activity to flow through the Church and bear superabundant fruit.

Scripture is rarely mentioned, except for a push for inclusive language, which is itself based in an ideology and not found in scripture or tradition.
Family and families get mentioned in the introductory parts of motions and are given an oblique and not primary focus.
The Holy Spirit’s charisms are mentioned sometimes in a general way, and usually with the connotation of some people being better at doing certain tasks than others, not in the charismatic way of openness to the ‘dynamin’ power of Acts 1:8.

There are a minimum of 104 motions for the second assembly to consider in the space of 4 days. Each one deserves far more time for consideration, modification and the development of referendum-like pros and cons than the brief weeks between now and July 4. Does this speed imply an expectation that each motion will get rubber stamped? Many of the introductory motions will need several amendments, and each amendment will need to be voted upon.

Some of the motions will produce ‘jobs for the boys’, opportunities for expensive studies, investigations and reports by bureaucrats which will keep said bureaucrats in employment and which may – or may not – produce information conducive to helping people respond to the call to holiness and the call to mission.

Some of the motions are so vague that whole sections of the Church in Australia could get on with business as usual, keeping the status quo, and concoct creative reports that speak glowingly about how well they have adopted those motions. The work necessary to concoct such creative reports will help keep the bureaucrats employed too. Ditto for the paperwork necessary to produce the careful investigations required for some motions.

I continue to mourn the lack of realism about Catholic education. According to the motion all we need is a new national forum to talk about all manner of things to do with education – which by implication means the education bureaucrats think everything is as rosy as pie. While the rest of us wonder if the huge amounts of money poured into the Catholic education system are doing anything worthwhile at all - since so incredibly few graduates of Catholic education live recognisably Catholic lives.

Have you been to a school Mass recently? They are a combination of a school concert and a school assembly with a Eucharistic prayer thrown in there somewhere. Youngsters who have seen such diminishment in importance given to the non-school parts of the Mass are unlikely to take those holy parts seriously.

Those who do care about the religious education of their children are voting with their feet and either home-schooling or sending their children to Christian schools where at least they will learn lots of scripture by heart. Image the number of full-time youth ministers and parish sacramental co-ordinators who could be employed if the budgeted funds were directed to that purpose instead of the national forum.

I note the motion for laypeople, especially women, to preach homilies within Mass. Anyone with a microphone kit and a computer these days can preach whatever they want and upload it to YouTube or similar platforms. If you are any good at it, you will get invitations to speak at retreats and similar non-Mass opportunities for preaching. But at Mass we do want the person in persona Christi, who has been the person in persona Christi throughout the rest of the Mass to speak to us in the homily; to break open God’s Word for us. So the push for laypeople preaching homilies at Mass has more to do with wanting the authority that comes from being regularly in public view than most other reasons.

One way to fix this is to provide regular opportunities for preaching outside the context of Mass.

The other major push for this motion is the abysmally poor quality of preaching in homilies. I get it, I really do. The majority of homilies come in the following flavours; word salads; retelling the Gospel narrative almost word for word, something obviously put together a few moments before Mass started, something poorly regurgitated from an online source, or something using examples from a non-Australian culture that do not resonate meaning with an Australian audience.

Another way to fix this is to replace this motion for lay preaching with a more useful motion containing constructive proposals to improve the quality of clerical preaching in homilies.

I am also concerned about the proposed motions which put those who vote nay to the motion in difficult positions. Consider this scenario. You agree that recognition of the custodial role of first nations people is a matter of justice, but you have reservations about whether all the subparts of the motion will bear good fruit; or you have concerns that some parts of the motion will have unforeseen and detrimental consequences. In conscience you cannot vote yay for the motion as it is, and no amendments have been proffered. In essence you disagree with specifics but not the general direction. On motions like these it will be so easy for people to unfairly conclude that the nay voters were first nations haters, rather than people who wanted a better motion to vote yay to. Under conditions like these having true freedom to vote according to conscience will be hampered.

A similar concern is the peer pressure to vote a certain way which is going to be much higher under in-person conditions than under zoom-like conditions. It is the nature of these things that factional blocks will form, and the better organized factional blocks will be a force to be reckoned with. Certainly we need to pray for the second assembly delegates because when how you know God wants you to vote is different to how the largest faction wants you to vote -voting true to God’s way is going to require extra courage.

I still think the best use of the days of the second assembly is to throw all the motions away, and spend those days imploring the visitation of the Holy Spirit upon Australia like a nation-wide Pentecost.

Whenever I overcome my repugnance, I’ll read the Framework for Motions at a much deeper level and attempt to come up with lists of pros and cons, even though such a task feels like a complete woftam.

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Should you want a print friendly version of this, the file below is 4 x A4 pages. 

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, is taken from the third quarter of Chapter 9 of St Mark. Between last Sunday and this Sunday (Mark 8:27-35) there has been the transfiguration of Jesus, questions about Elijah preceding the Messiah, and the deliverance of a boy with a spirit of dumbness.

At the transfiguration the Father had a message for the disciples and for us, ‘Listen to My beloved Son’; and what had Jesus been talking about prior to the transfiguration? That the Messiah must be rejected, suffer and be put to death, and be raised up.

After the transfiguration and the deliverance of the boy, Jesus deliberately takes the disciples away from the hurly-burly of public ministry, away from all the usual distractions, so that He could teach them something of the utmost importance.

The crucial mission of the Messiah – far above all the other parts of His mission from the Father – is to redeem the world from sin, to totally conquer evil, and the only way that can happen is through His sacrificial death as the pure and innocent Passover Lamb of God.

Soon the journey to Jerusalem, the one that will take Him to Calvary, to accomplish this crucial mission, will begin. It is imperative that He prepares His disciples for the cataclysmic events that are going to take place.

But it becomes obvious that they are either unable to listen or unwilling to engage with the topic of the necessity of suffering and of the Cross.

One reason for this is denial. Jesus is talking about truly horrific things as being a non-negotiable done deal. It is also our usual first response to bad news.

Another reason is fear. When we experience fear, the body’s fight/flight/freeze response kicks in, and the higher mental functions of reasoning are suspended.

So they don’t do their job as disciples, which is to ask questions of the teacher. Asking questions and probing a topic is how students best come to grasp and internalize that topic. And no teacher can go on to the next topic until he/she is sure that his/her students have grasped the prerequisite topics for understanding the new topic he/she wants to present to them. For example, in order to teach multiplication, you must first teach addition; before you can teach how to cook a mornay, you have to teach how to prepare a basic white sauce.

What kind of questions was Jesus expecting?

Perhaps…
How are You feeling about that?
Is this suffering you are to undergo absolutely necessary?
Help me understand why.
Why is it necessary for the Messiah to suffer like this?
What’s the point?
How do You prepare for sufferings like that?
How do You keep sane knowing that this is coming?
How certain is this, 80%, 90%, 100%?
Does that mean suffering of that order of magnitude is in our paths too?
What do You want us to do when this begins to happen?
How can we help You as You face this?
Is it possible for us to help You in any way?
Those psalms that foretell this are quite scary, is it really going to be like that?
What is the value of rejection, suffering and death?
How should we prepare for when these days overtake us?
Teach us how to prepare for our own times of suffering and trial.
How far away are these events? When will they take place?
How do you want us to handle your burial?
Death is final. What is this event after your death that you speak of?
How will we recognise it?
What will become of us when you are gone?

Can you begin to understand how differently the disciples would have coped with His passion and death if they had asked any of these questions?
Can you begin to fathom the treasures of wisdom and understanding that were there for the asking, but were never asked for, and how much we (the whole church throughout time) would have gained if those questions had been asked?
Can you begin to grasp how frustrating it must have been for Jesus, to see His disciples not listening, and so utterly disengaged from what He is trying to teach them and prepare them for.

Despite their lack of engagement, Jesus still continued to try to prepare the disciples for the horror to come, and also tells them that the horror won’t be the end of the story. What else could He do? He had to trust that when the hour of His passion and death overtook them, that they would remember that He had told them it was going to happen, so that they might find a ray of hope that God was still in control, that this was indeed part of God’s plan, and that His death was not the end of that plan, and there’s something big to come after His death.

Fear and denial are our usual response too
‘dear God I hope that’s not true, may it never happen’.

In fact we do it regularly. We dismiss prophets as false because what they say seems so surreal eg Kenneth Hargin 1963 http://garycarpenter.org/PDF/KennethHagin1963Prophecy.pdf

We did the same with the very few prophets who said ‘pray, because there are laboratories preparing bio-weapons’ and the ones who said, ‘a pandemic is coming’.
It seemed so wild, so far from the reality at that time, so weird, so far-fetched,
and yet ultimately it was true.

Our automatic response at the time was: ‘O dear God, I hope that’s not true, may it never happen’.

It should have been
How do You want me to pray about this?
What do You want me to do about this?
What kind of preparations need to happen to minimize and/or prevent this?
I need confirmation from You to treat this as seriously as You want me to; if this is true please send me confirmation, and help me to recognise it when it comes, as coming from You.

If the disciples can’t hear the part about ‘rejection, suffering and death’, then they can’t hear the part about being raised up either. We don’t know what else Jesus wanted to reveal, because the disciples shut their minds and hearts down and refused to engage in the teaching process.

Jesus must have been so disappointed and discouraged by this. Any teacher is when his/her students just don’t get it and they actively disengage by passing notes and creating paper planes.
And this was teaching of the highest importance, the key to understanding everything else.

To make things worse, instead of spending their conversation time productively
His disciples indulge in that sad masculine pastime of ‘I’m better than you because…’

What did Jesus do?

He set Himself to do the best job of teaching them these unpalatable truths that He could.
That way He knew He had done the best He could, and He could hope that later on they might remember that He had tried to teach them about the cataclysm that was going to happen.

He could have chosen to leave them in the ignorance they preferred
but He loved them far too much to let them face the days of His passion and death without preparation.

Jesus could have walked away, the provocation was there, but He chose to persist with His apostles and disciples. This was probably in obedience to His Father, because part 1 of the messianic mission is suffering, death, resurrection and ascension and part 2 is building the foundations of the church, of the kingdom of God. Both missions had to be fulfilled.

He could also have yelled and thrown things and generally have let His frustrations out with impact, but He doesn’t.
Have you ever tried to teach something as basic as the answer to 10 times 11, and they just couldn’t get it, no matter how many times and ways you tried? That kind of frustration.
Be amazed at His self-control in this situation, at His gentleness, and at His patience.

If we are amazed at His resurrection and ascension, we should be equally amazed at the church that emerged at Pentecost from this motley bunch; and astounded that today it is still continuing His mission, albeit at some times in history much better than at other times in history.

Jesus knew what was going on, with the one-upmanship game, and He had a plan.
But it didn’t get sprung until they were behind closed doors at Capernaum, where they felt safe.
He could have given them a public scolding about being unteachable and about how one-upmanship decreases love and trust.
but He chose to do it in private, to not humiliate them publicly.

But He still got the message across that even if they thought they could hide what they were up to from Jesus, He knew the whole without being told.

He waited patiently, and took this teachable moment when the opportunity was ripe, and then whammied them with a lesson in kingdom values that they would never forget.

Humble service is the yardstick of greatness in the kingdom of God;
the exact antithesis of the world’s yardsticks of money, power, attractiveness and pleasure.

What is the challenge for us in this Gospel?

Don’t be afraid to ask Jesus questions.
Don’t be afraid to ask Jesus difficult questions.
Don’t be afraid to ask Jesus to tell you more when He shows you something that is beyond your current levels of understanding and comprehension.

If you are game, pray with me…

Dear Jesus, there is probably something in my life, or something about my future, that you have been trying to show me, and I just haven’t grasped it. I may not have even picked up on Your signals. I am truly sorry for not having been attentive enough to You. I am sorry for the many times I have not recognised the ways You have tried to gain my attention. I am sorry for the times I have said to You in my words, or by my actions, ‘oh no, I don’t want to go there, I don’t want to know that’. Please forgive me. I trust that You only want to show me things – especially when they are difficult things – to bring about greater good in my life and in the lives of others – and that You know me and love me too much to give me anything that I can’t handle (with You and Your grace to assist me). In Your goodness, please help me to recognise the messages and teaching You are so graciously offering to me. Help me to engage with You on those matters, and to courageously ask You questions about those matters, and to wait for Your answers and to act diligently upon them. Help me to believe You the first time, and to take what You say seriously. I want to be a much better student and disciple of Yours, better than I have ever been before. Amen.
​
Holy Mary, mother of Jesus, please intercede on my behalf for this. Amen.
​

Obviously I have a particular organization, and a particular online event, in mind as I write. But these thoughts are applicable across the board, in parishes, dioceses, religious organisations etc.

So I dare you to come and do a pulse check on your church culture.

Some of you may have participated in the Pilgrimage to Pentecost that happened this year in the 6 weeks leading up to Pentecost 2020. Each week 2 tranches of talks were released, one on Sunday and one on Wednesday. You had to sign into a website portal to gain access to these talks, most of which were in the 20-30 minute range, from a wide range of international speakers, and a diversity of vocations. Each talk had a page with a brief description of the talk and the speaker, the link, and a place to leave comments. Participants left a healthy number of comments, 30 comments seemed to be about average for each talk, and the subset of commentators varied significantly from talk to talk (it wasn’t just the same people leaving the same comments). This is a healthy level of engagement.

Compare this to the final talk of a conference, shared on a religious organisation’s Facebook page, bearing in mind that the organisation would have to have upwards of 400 members. Admittedly the holding image for the video recording was uninspiring, but zero comments, 2 likes and 1 share? That is definitely Not a healthy level of engagement!

On the week after the conference the number of likes on YouTube for the talks were in single digits, and now three weeks later they are in the teens, and only one or two comments. Again, this is a very low level of engagement.

If you have proportionately low levels of engagement on social media for your major events, that means there is something amiss with your organisation’s culture.

If something is good, the natural response is to share it, and to share it with as many people as possible.
So either the event didn’t touch a chord with your people,
or your people are ignorant about social media,
or your people are not alert to the easy ways of promoting a message,
or a combination of all of them.

Organisations that value the means of social communication will automatically include a final note which says, ‘If you found this useful or valuable to you, please like and share this ….(insert type of media)… or leave a comment or subscribe so that you don’t miss out on future content”.

Because people do look at the number of views, reviews, likes and comments before committing themselves to watching something on YouTube, or downloading a game or app, or buying a book.

The next thing to remember is that when you post online content, be it website, Facebook, or anywhere else, the whole world is watching. This means that you need to rethink any member only information, and how things look to an outsider.

For example, doing a lovely 30 countdown to a major event as an encouragement for members to pray and fast for the event is great. But to then have radio silence as the event is happening is not great at all. If you want to make it even worse, barely refer to the event after it concludes. Those outsiders who have been watching your countdown on social media will now be completely baffled as to what all the fuss was about, and as a result will consider unfriending or unfollowing your organisation.

At a minimum you should be inviting online discussion after each talk of your event, and/or posting a brief video clip from each session as a discussion starter.

Do you realise that at secular events and at many religious events, that people choose to live tweet during the event? They do, it is a really good thing to do, and it should be encouraged. Not only because they capture the most important points of a talk/presentation, but because they also provide access for those unable to attend, and because it documents your event. These days it is true, if it didn’t make it to social media, then it didn’t happen (even if it did!).

If you don’t have ‘roving reporters’ sharing the best of your event, then you need to find the people you already have who are capable, training them up, and activating them. It will be harder if the event is online, but just as necessary. Screen shots are easy to produce and package for social media, if you know how. Encourage them to always add text, because an photo/image on its own says ‘we were having a great time, and you missed it’ whereas adding text says ‘we were having a great time, this is why, and I don’t want you to miss out on this part that touched my heart’.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to online events where a registration fee is paid.
The first school says only those who paid should have access. In that case, you need to set up some kind of simple login procedure to give access. Pilgrimage to Pentecost did it with a website link that required email address for access.
The second school of thought sees the registration fees as seed for harvest; the fees enable the event to happen (technical equipment, labour, administration, marketing, talent), but once the event is live and recorded, the expectation is that it gets shared to as many people as possible, so that the maximum number of people benefit.

If it is an event that has the capacity to bring someone closer to Jesus, surely you want to maximize those who experience it (in person and/or via recording).

There are hybrid models, where only the plenary sessions of an event get shared publicly, and the non-plenary sessions get recorded but not put online, and later the recordings get packaged for sale.

Or where a temporary YouTube channel is set up for an online event, permitting people to get to all the sessions in their own time, and re-watch them if desired. For this one, by its very nature, if it is on YouTube and not login protected, then anyone can share it. If the content is good, then such sharing should be encouraged.

Isn’t it better if 650 people or 830 people or 2000 people see the fruits of the hard work and many prayers rather than only the 400 who registered?

Some may object, ‘Why bother paying a registration fee if I can get it for free?’, but most will be happy to pay a registration fee (if it is reasonable and not exorbitant) if it is presented as seed money to get the event possible and happening, and even happier to pay that seed money if there are plans to share the good content of the event as widely as possible, and to enable those who could never afford it to participate.

Here's the pulse check:
*Do you have healthy levels of online engagement for your organisation’s size?
*Do you have reminders somewhere in the content, to like and share if they found it valuable?
*Do you encourage people to leave comments on your online content?
*Do you encourage your people to engage with your online content?
*Do you have enough members online?
*Do you encourage or discourage social media use in your organisation? (not talking about it at all is passive discouragement, talking about social media negatively is active discouragement)
*Are you on social media yourself? (lead by good example)
*Does your online content remember that it isn’t a members only forum?
*Do you promote online discussion after special events?
*Do you have any ‘roving reporters’ or ‘social media natives’?
*If so, have you activated them and given them a vision for this kind of ministry?
*Do you include text with your photos, or do you leave people to guess why you posted them?
*Do you have a plan and a vision for maximizing the number of people who can access your events, your content and your message?

Now is the time to start doing something about it, if you weren't able to answer Yes (honestly, and with evidence to back it up) to just about all of them. A great number of the people you want to reach with the Gospel message are online, but you have to be intentional in your online activities in order to reach them. 

Towards a new paradigm for conferences
Something has been niggling at me for at least the last 10 years when it comes to conferences of all kinds, be they professional, community or church based. The prevailing model is that you get a well-known speaker, or group of them, and then get lots of people to listen to them. Up until the advent of YouTube and Livestream the prevailing model made sense. Now it no longer makes sense. Why gather a group of people together if you are only going to provide something they could access on YouTube?

Far too often we gather people together to listen to a well-known speaker, and the vast majority of people arrive and leave without ever making a meaningful connection with any other attendee or leader or member of the organizing team. Follow up beyond a feedback form is non-existent. As long as they came, and either paid for entry or gave a donation or offering, purchased books and merchandise related to the conference and thereby enhanced the reputations of the speakers and the organization putting on the conference (and their social media followings), that is considered success. Positive testimonials, healings and conversions would be a bonus.

This is a consumer driven model, not a participative or collaborative model.

It is definitely not tapping into the wisdom and experience of the people present, nor permitting connections to be made that could move careers, ministries and relationship networks to a whole new level.

This has to change, even though there are many vested interests that will resist such change.

And the change has to be well beyond the addition of a few discussion groups into the conference mix.

I believe that the Divine Renovation team are thinking along these lines, because when the DR20 conference had to be foregone due to the coronavirus pandemic, they didn’t rush out to replace it with pre-recorded video since they had been planning more ‘hands on’ experiences than guest speakers.

So here is my vision for how a conference could be very different:

At the time of registering for the conference, participants would need to fill out a reasonably detailed survey. The survey would require answers to where participants
* feel that God is most active in their lives (to get an idea where charisms might be, and there would be long lists to choose from),
* experience burdens or callings (eg Pro-life, mental health, evangelization, prison ministry, helping people with addictions, helping people in domestic violence situations, youth ministry, ministry to the homeless, political activism, etc)
* have creative, artistic and musical talents
* write about a project or ministry that is on their heart, but currently unattainable due to lack of funding, co-workers and prayer partners
* and provide their top 5 themes from the Gallup StrengthsFinder questionnaire

Each part of that survey will assist in the planning of the conference, and in developing groups with the greatest numbers of shared interests and experiences. If there is enough prayer in the preparation and planning parts of the conference, the groups will fall into place with the Holy Spirit’s fingerprints all over it.  
 
The conference facility would need therefore to have a large room where all participants can gather, as well as at least 6 smaller rooms for groups to meet in.

Each day of the conference participants will get the opportunity in groups to interact and collaborate with people with whom they have shared interests, callings or abilities.

As far as possible such a conference would be open to all age groups, and the more inter-generational the better.

The conference would start on a Monday, in time for lunch for those who have top 5 themes in the Influencing domain and in time for 5pm Mass for other participants. Day 2/Tuesday would be devoted to charisms, Day3/Wednesday to burdens and callings, Day 4/Thursday is a combined creative day and lectio divina day, Day 5/Friday is a vision day (or start up day), and Day 6/Saturday a half day to pause and reflect on the whole week, with time alone and with opportunities for free ranging conversation and swapping of contact details.

The idea is to have some basic structure to each day, and yet have plenty of opportunity for God to move as He wills.

A live-in location for the conference would be best, however a blend of live-in and 9am-10pm participants sleeping at home is possible if they live within an hour’s travel of the venue and have sufficient stamina.

The timetable for the full days would be something like this:
7.00am Morning Prayer, followed by personal prayer
7.40am Rosary
8.00am Breakfast
9.00am Praise & Worship, with outline of the vision/plan for the day
9.30am Break into groups, give more specific vision/plan for the day, and get to know each other
10.40am Morning Tea
11.00am Seeking God, what does He want to do with us, say to us today; praying for each other
12.00pm Mass
1.15pm Lunch
2.30pm Major work of the day
5.30pm Evening Prayer
6.00pm Dinner
7.00pm Team meeting
7.30pm Night session
9.30pm or 10pm Night Prayer and end of the day

Day 1 Monday
After lunch, special sessions with those who have top 5 themes in the influencing domain, because these people will be called on to lead at least one group during the conference. These special sessions will provide a vision for how we want the leadership of the groups to function during the conference, and a bit of additional leadership training. Before the others arrive to register, we will pray over these leaders asking God to help them.

Then the conference begins in earnest with 5pm Mass followed by 6pm Dinner and the first Night Session at 7.30pm. The Night Session will start with Praise & Worship, a short keynote talk of encouragement, followed by housekeeping information and guidelines for how prophetic words and words of knowledge are to be discerned, and only released when permission from the discernment team is given. That way there can be a small team of people assisting in the interpretation and praying about the best way to act upon and release the messages. As far as possible we need to avoid and discourage undiscerned messages of personal prophecy. In groups, the group leader will facilitate group discernment procedures. At the end of the Night Session participants break up into groups of around 4 people and pray for each other. Night Prayer ends the day.

Day 2 Tuesday
This Day is foundational, because the more the charisms of the Holy Spirit are activated in us, the easier it will be to co-operate with His leadings and promptings throughout the conference.

Today we want to group those who have similar charisms, so that they can share their experiences and learn from each other.

Ideally there would be a group for prophets, a group for intercessors, a group for evangelists, a group for those with the gift of discernment, a group for those with the gift of healing, a group for those whose charism doesn’t fall into these categories, and a group for those who have no idea what their charism is.

In the introduction part of the day, participants would be invited to share how they experience that charism (eg an urgency to stop and pray for a particular person or situation, tingling and warmth in the hands, dreams, changes in senses of smell etc), a story about a good outcome from the operation of that charism, and a challenge they are experiencing with regard to that charism.

Obviously if several people are experiencing the same challenge, then this is a sign that dealing with it is on God’s agenda. Before the next session starts do a bit of research, consultation and prayer for resources and wisdom on this challenge. This topic will then become the first thing the group does in the main afternoon session.

Then after Morning Tea each group spends time seeking God for what He wants them to do as a group. After a time of seeking such guidance, group members share any impressions they have received. There should be enough, ‘I felt that too’, to chart a course of action. Otherwise start with the first impression, give it ago, if it feels anointed continue with it; if not, try the next impression. Some groups may feel like God wants them to lead them in a time of repentance, or to seek God’s mind about a particular topic, or to pray for a particular group of people, or to just rest in stillness before Him for a while.

The main thing is to get a bit of consensus about what God wants to do with the group in the main session, (at least to start with) and then to pray for each other for deeper releases of the charism they already share. What to do is one thing, how to do it is another, so until the main session starts everyone should be seeking God individually for specifics. For example, if the general impression is to pray for Japan, is it for the leaders of Japan, is it for protection against natural disasters in Japan etc and how to pray, eg in song, in tongues, with the Rosary, with a map of the country etc. Where you start in the main session may not be where you end up, allow God to lead you step by step. It is OK for the leader to ask for feedback from time to time, eg should we go deeper here, or do you feel that the Holy Spirit is changing our direction? Is the anointing as strong as when we started? Or has it lifted? Remember to follow good spiritual hygiene principles before and after the main session.

At the after dinner team meeting, group leaders give a brief account of the day. Are there any common threads between the various groups? If so, then go deeper with that in the ministry part of the night session. Otherwise the night session will be a full on ‘whatever you want to do with us God’ prayer meeting, expecting God to give people practice in the various charisms.

For the group of people with less common charisms, the group times of the day should be very similar, just needing extra levels of open heartedness to listen to the experiences of others that are so very different from your own.

For the group of people who have no idea what their charism is, they will have more of an input day than a collaborative day. For them, bring in guest speakers who describe their own experiences with charisms, and growing in them. Some of the day should be one-on-one conversations about how group members have experienced God’s guidance in the past; from those conversations some nascent charisms might be recognized. If so, pray for them to become more manifest. By dinner time everyone in this group should be better equipped to recognize and respond to charisms, and have had a time before the end of the main afternoon session where everyone prayed for the release of God’s charisms within each other for the welfare of the church.

(For a conference made up of people mature in the use of the charisms, you could add a similar day breaking into groups of those with similar offices, viz, apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher. We say people have an office if there is general recognition that a person has been used by God consistently in this area for several years, and with much fruitfulness.)

Day 3 Wednesday
This day is designed to bring people with similar burdens, callings and ministries together. The purpose is for mutual support and encouragement, the improvement of relationships between people with similar God-given passions, and the sharing of ideas. If at the end of the day people have been helped to avoid common pitfalls, if solutions to common issues have been shared, if a bigger vision for what God is doing in this ministry area is received, if mutual collaboration begins between ministries, then the day has been a success.

The break up of these groups will be determined by the answers to the registration questionnaire. Likely groups would be pro-life, youth ministry, ministry to the poor/disadvantaged; less likely but still possible groups could be catechists, prison ministry, drug & alcohol rehabilitation, social media apostles/evangelists, protection of religious freedom activists etc. The emphasis is on the burden of the heart more than where someone is currently in mission. For example, if someone goes to state schools as a catechist every week, but God wakes them up on a regular basis to pray for those tempted to suicide, then that person should be in a group with people sharing a passion for mental health rather than with the catechists.

The first group session of the day begins with prayer, and then time for group members to get to know each other through introducing themselves, how this calling or prayer burden first manifested itself in their lives, a story about a good outcome from this ministry, and the sharing of a challenge arising from the calling, prayer burden or ministry. Only if time permits, group members can share how they have dealt with some of the challenges the others are currently facing.

If there appears to be commonality among the challenges, then we see God’s hand in bringing people together with a common challenge, and the group leader in the break goes to seek out wisdom and resources through research and consultation with team members. This will be the first topic for the main session in the afternoon, and a videoclip for discussion starting, or role play, or bringing in an expert speaker, may be the way to start it off, but then collectively pray for God’s wisdom for the challenging situation, and share any impressions, ideas and scripture quotations that come. It could be as basic as producing a budget, or as nuanced as exploring ways of setting boundaries and saying no to those who are demanding more than can be given.

The second group session is about seeking what God wants to do with the group. So this will involve prayer. It could very well be that God would like to give the group a time of restful, soaking prayer to refresh and bring healing in this session, as a prelude to what He wants to do with them in the main session. It may become a time of collective repentance for the occasions that we failed to respond to His promptings, and/or failed to serve the people sent to us. If group members agree, it could also be about sharing solutions to challenges, and respectfully learning from each other. At the end of this session there should be general agreement as to how the main session will start. Before the session ends, pray for each other and for each other’s ministries.

The main afternoon session will start by dealing with all the things that arose from the previous group sessions. But this should take up no more than one third of the main session. Then the rest of the session is turned over to God, letting Him direct what happens next, with the group leader facilitating group discernment. It is likely that the various groups will be led into times of intercession for those for whom God has already given them a burden (eg youth, those who don’t know God, those bound in addictions etc). It is also likely that the various groups will be led to seek God for fresh vision and fresh strategies for their ministries, and for the deeper release of charisms with which to serve in those ministries. If a time of repenting for obstacles placed in the way of unity between ministries begins, flow with it. Allow God to share his heart with you, and to broaden your vision for what He wants to accomplish through you. Begin and end this time with proper spiritual hygiene practices, since the possibility of intense spiritual warfare is high. If God wants to use your group in prayer to help bring down spiritual strongholds that are holding back His floodgates of grace, do not resist and do not be afraid.

The group leader’s debrief after dinner is again crucial. If in the debrief and sharing you find that many of the main sessions prayed for the nation, or were led to pray for financial help to be released, then the night session should devote time to praying for these things as a whole conference body. On the other hand, if groups were led to pray for boldness, or for those in political leadership, then do more of that. So the night session starts off as a prayer meeting and covers those areas that came up as themes in the groups, and if time permits at the end, there will be a time of sharing of good outcomes from various ministries. To make that happen each group leader will go and invite the person who shared the best story in the group to share it with everyone, so that the evening ends with collective praise and thanksgiving to God.

There will be a group for those who have less common callings, for whom there aren’t enough to have a specific group for those callings. With extra patience and openness of heart to each other, there is every possibility that their group may be led by God in deep and amazing ways. Be on the lookout for any indication of being drawn together into new multidimensional or multidisciplinary forms of ministry. For example, it might be discovered on sharing, that while each has their own calling, many of those callings may have a ‘calling within a calling’ such as an interest in First Nations peoples or a tug towards South East QLD.

Then there will be a group for those who don’t yet think they have a calling, a prayer burden or a ministry. For them, at the first group session they will introduce themselves and share a bit about either the context for the strongest spiritual experience of their lives or about what they have seen God do in their lives recently, and then share something about what they are currently struggling with, be it having a regular prayer time or a fracturing relationship or a health battle etc. At the second session there will be input to help them understand how a calling, prayer burden or ministry begins to manifest itself. Group members will then recall and share about the top three intercessory prayers in their lives, about the kinds of charities that they give more willingly to, and why, and about the type of injustice that spurs them most to action. From the time of sharing in the first two sessions it might be possible to see patterns emerging in individuals and in the group. If so, work with that. The main session will be about asking God to reveal more of His plan for each of the group members, and lingering in prayer waiting upon Him to speak directly to each heart. Pray for each other, and over each other, and if all else fails use the remaining time to pray against the injustices shared and for any top 3 intercessions that some of the group members had in common.

Day 4 Thursday
By now conversations at break times and during meals should be well beyond small talk. Today is creative lectio divina day. For today everyone gets a copy of the Gospel passage for the coming Sunday, and groups are made up of people with similar creative gifts. So there will be a good of musicians (vocalists, song writers, those who can play musical instruments), there will be a group of artists/illustrators, there will be a group of wordsmiths (writers, bloggers, poets), there will be a group of dramatists (actors, playwrights, dancers), a group of digital artists (photographers, videographers, meme makers), a group of cooks/chefs, and if there are any who declare they have no creative talents, they will make up the intercessors for the day. Comedians can choose whether they prefer wordsmiths or dramatists. If perchance there are potters, sculptors, wood workers, people who create scenes with Lego, or anything else ‘hands on’ (eg knitters and those who can make amazing things come out of sewing machines) then they can form a group too – if they have brought their equipment with them.

For the first session of the day, group members share about the creative talent God has given them, and what they have been doing with it (eg hobby, volunteer, career, ministry), and a blessing they feel when they use that creative talent and a challenge they face (burn out, barriers to success, rejection, finding the time to practice/hone skills etc). Pray for each other.

The second session of the day is where each group seeks God and prays through the Gospel passage in a lectio divina way. Group members share what struck them afresh about this Gospel passage. Then members talk about how they could convey that message through the medium of their creative talent, and whether they want (or feel called) to do that solo, or in collaboration with others. It is time to brainstorm, and to help each other develop the initial ideas they have been given. The cooks will each be given an amount, say $20, to go shopping for ingredients with, in order to produce Gospel inspired nibbles to be enjoyed at the night session. By the end of this session everyone should have a plan for what they will be creating in the afternoon session.

In the afternoon session the intercessors will be praying while the creatives produce what they can in the time available, together with a written explanation if necessary (eg for art, instrumental music, nibbles).

Then in preparation for the night session, the creative work that can be displayed will be arranged around the room. Creative work that requires performance will go onto whatever stage-type arrangements can be made, like a variety concert, and the nibbles provide a celebratory feast afterwards. Those with computer/technical skills will be called on to help set things up for viewing where necessary, or to help get them printed. It should be an absolutely amazing night seeing the Gospel coming alive and depicted in so many various ways and mediums. Of course, someone will need to fill the role of M.C. for the night, and someone else will need to schedule the various performances into some semblance of order.

Writers can choose whether to read out their short story, poem, limerick, blog post, or article, or whether to print it and display it instead. It may even be deemed worthwhile for all of the displays to be photographed and uploaded onto a computer, and then projected onto a big screen while the artist/creator explains his/her work. If that is done, then you would need schedule a few displays followed by a few performances, and then a very short time for conversation and continue with that pattern until all of the creative individuals and groups had presented. No performance or display explanation should exceed 5 minutes. At the end, the intercessors should be called up to take a bow, because they were the powerhouse of prayer calling down God’s creative inspiration upon everyone and obtaining the grace of creative flow. Then God Himself should get a big clap for the gift of His Word and for the wide diversity of creative talents He has bestowed upon His people.

Day 5 Friday
This is Dare to Dream day, or Vision day, or Start-Up day. For today people will need to be able to set up their own computer technology in working groups. In preparation for today the team will have needed to contacted diocesan leaders, business people (eg lawyers and accountants), local political leaders and others who have links with entrepreneurs and large donors. These people are to receive invitations to the night session. The more that come, the better.

By now there should be a good level of trust and working relationships between the conference participants. The more there is of that, the more fruitful the day will be.
 
The first session of the day is the ‘Pitch it to me’ session. Anyone who wishes to pitch a project to the group has to notify the team the night before and be given some cardboard to write out the essence of the pitch upon. People can give multiple pitches if the ideas or projects are significantly different. Each person gets no more than 2 minutes to pitch their idea or project to the entire group. But they have to be ‘big’, ie they need to be well beyond the scope of one person to achieve (funding $10K+, require an ongoing team of at least 4 people, and prayer partners). Effective pitches generally present a community need and a solution to that need.
 
Some of the pitches will be pre-existing dreams that currently seem too far out of reach, others will have arisen out of the experiences of the conference. Catholic hospices, family-friendly retreat centres, initiating a new faculty at a Catholic university (eg Australian Catholic history), a project to translate a classic spirituality text into English, setting up a travelling troupe of dramatists to perform Passion plays are examples of possible pitches.

In the break between sessions, the cardboard pitches are set up around the room. Each person is given two red sticky dots and a green one. The red dots are to vote for pitches that you think are particularly worthwhile, and the green dot is to indicate which pitch you would actively like to work on. At the start of the second session, people go and place their dots. During this time of milling around, you can ask clarifying questions of the people who gave pitches.

The more dots a pitch receives, the more likely it is that a working group for that pitch will be formed. Hopefully this process of ranking pitches will take no more than 30 minutes, less if at all possible. The number of working groups will be determined by the number of smaller rooms for those groups to meet in, with one room set aside for those who have no passion for any of the selected working groups.

Once the top ranking pitches are chosen, people gravitate to the one they wish to work on and form working groups. The rest of the session is spent in the smaller rooms doing introductions, and learning about each other’s skills and professions. Each group will require someone with themes in the influencing domain if those giving the selected pitches do not already have an influencing theme. If any working groups discover that they don’t have all the domains covered, then they need to find someone who has themes in that domain to join them.

The main session for each working group begins with prayer, followed by a more detailed pitch from the pitch-giver. Group members ask questions. Then the group decides what needs to be done to improve the pitch, and works on that. Each group will get 7 minutes at the night session to deliver a better pitch, and 3 minutes to answer questions from the floor about the pitch.

Statistics, business plans, research, graphics, budget size, possible locations, any limitations via legislation and government regulations, staffing, legal and privacy restrictions considered, plans for how to attract both funding and clients/those in need of the project will all be required in preparing the better pitch. Also needed will be information about why this project is different to others already in existence, and whether or not it could be co-partnered or grafted onto an existing entity/ministry.

Since the 3 hours for the main session isn’t a lot of time for work like this, the group leader/s need to quickly set tasks for each member. They work as hard as possible for 30 minutes on those tasks, then the group reassembles and reports, and then refines what is needed, and sends members away for another 30 minutes. After the second re-group they will need to decide whether more information is needed, or whether the group has enough to begin preparing the presentation, or to let a few pursue more fact finding and the rest begin work on how to present the upgraded pitch. Allow enough time to practice the presentation. Prepare a handful of contact cards to give away to any invited guest who shows interest in the project.

Pitch-givers are encouraged to let the original vision for the project grow, be enhanced, and even be diverted. For example, a pitch might begin as a scheme to find employment for young people, but during the work the group discovers plenty of similar schemes for that age group, however there is almost nothing for the over 50s, and they decide to keep the basics of the idea and project but change the age group for whom it is targeted.

Remember to do due diligence. Contact actual people for whom you have the vision or project. Ask them whether it would actually help them, or whether they have more pressing needs. For example, the initial project may be to improve ramp access for wheelchairs and walkers at the local cathedral, but you may find that while that would be well, good and appreciated, what they really need is trained people to help them fill out National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) paperwork.

Groups may decide to continue working between dinner and the start of the evening session.

Simplicity of presentation is better than complexity. Include what the need is, what the vision is to meet that need, why that vision is unique, and then detail that vision with plans and rationales for those plans. Don’t forget to include estimated budgets for the whole project, for each section of a project, or year 1, year 2 etc budget projections. If time permits outline the risks you are aware of, and your plans to deal with those risks. Make the vision as compelling as possible.

The night session begins with prayer, and the introduction of the invited guests. Then the detailed pitch sessions and associated Q&A begins. It would be better to have a random order of the presentations instead of a lowest initial interest to highest initial interest order. When the detailed pitch sessions are over it is time for a celebration to begin, and for invited guests to mingle and ask further questions about the pitches that most interested them. At the end of the evening, conclude with prayer asking God to bring into being those projects that most align with His will.

For those who ended up in the group without a selected pitch, they will do a similar skills and professions introduction to each other that will be led by a group leader. As part of that introduction, people will also include what topic would have motivated them to take part in a working group. Should there be any group members who have the same motivation, they will work together for the rest of the day. The rest get divided up into smaller groups that have all the theme domains covered, and then get to choose which of the non-selected pitches they would like to work on. Before the end of the main session, each smaller group presents a pitch to each other. Of them, the one considered by the group to be the best pitch will be presented as a ‘wild card’ pitch at the night session.

Day 6 Saturday
This is the final day, which finishes with Mass and lunch. The primary task of this day is to provide a time of prayerful reflection upon the experiences of the week. So after the morning praise & worship there are only two sessions.

For the first session everyone gets a small exercise book to take with them and to write down what they want to remember from the whole conference. Of primacy would be everything that they felt God speaking to their hearts. Questions that people may want to answer in this time are: What did I hear? What did I learn? What touched my heart? Where was God for me in the experiences of the week? What is challenging me? What questions do I have that I need to follow up on? What do I feel God is inviting me to do as a response to the experiences of this week?

For the second session everyone returns to the main room. This is a time to mingle with the purpose of going up and saying a personal thank you to those who helped you during the week, and for saying words of encouragement to those in whom you see great potential, or whom you have seen grow throughout the week. It is also a time to swap contact details with those you would like to keep in contact with. At the end of the session we gather for 5 minutes to stand and pray for the person next to us, that what God has done in them during this week and begun in them would be brought to perfect fulfilment.
​
www.societyofsaints.net   
Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 19 Jun 2020  

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A print friendly version is available below:
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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'.
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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.