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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But what's the definition of leadership?

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

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

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

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

Vision

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Structure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We must think about leadership differently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meetings

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

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

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

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

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

There are several different kinds of meetings.

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

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

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

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

Clergy team meetings are a bit shorter.

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

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

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

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

One on one meetings happen weekly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are 5 steps to getting there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question and Answer session

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Write Non Fiction In November : #WNFIN Day 13
​
We are living in interesting times politically. If our prophets are to be believed, it is part of a shaking by God to remove corruption so that the structures of the culture of death can be undone and the structures of a culture of life rebuilt.

In our nation a citizenship scandal has been unfolding, and several electorates are facing by-elections because their former representative was technically a dual citizen of another country at the time of his/her election. Given just how much post WW2 migration there was to this country, and how many children of those brave immigrants are now of an age to be politically engaged, it isn't really surprising. What is surprising is that no one really took this part of the Constitution seriously until now.

Out of this process three options are possible. The emergence of worse leadership, the emergence of 'more of the same' leadership, and the emergence of new leaders with good morals whom we'd be happy to vote for. What is the only way of ensuring that we get the third option – lots of prayer!

I'm desperately unhappy about the current leadership of our major political parties. I'd love to be able to vote for a political leader who had both the vision and the capability to put the needs of the weakest and most vulnerable first.

Knowing that God's providence goes before us, we have to believe that there are good leaders waiting in the wings, ones who have a particular calling from God on their lives for this very purpose. They probably don't look like much at the moment (think David, Gideon, Joshua and Elisha) but God knows that they are capable of great good. They don't even have to be believers (think Cyrus).

These are the ones we should be praying for now, the ones that have been in God's preparation rooms for a while - and if there is sufficient prayer – who will soon be in leadership. Of this we can be sure, that the enemies of God have them in their sights and are trying to keep them hidden and considered of no account.

These chosen leaders need our prayers now. They will need our prayers later too, but now is a particularly important time to pray, especially as the political landscape gets more fluid and turbulent. In fact, every time you pray for our leaders (which you are already doing as per St Paul's exhortation in 1 Tim 2:1-3) you should pray for their successors as well.

Enough talking, let's pray….

Heavenly Father each day we pray as Jesus Your Son taught us, and pray that Your kingdom may come. He asked us to pray it, so You must very much want to answer it. Forgive us for not being as passionate about Your kingdom as You are.

To usher in Your kingdom we need leaders after Your own Heart. We need the new David's, Moses's, Joseph's and Solomon's, but without the moral weaknesses that undid so much of their good work.

Only You, Lord God, can raise them up to accomplish Your whole purpose. Only You, Lord God, can bring to nothing all the delays and obscurifications of the enemy. Only You, Lord God can give them the Wisdom that sits by Your side. Only You, Lord God, can call together the support teams that they need to govern effectively, who will get them the truth, and tell them the truth and work for the best solutions for the maximum common good of our peoples.

Please send Your Holy Spirit upon them to give them the gifts and charisms that they need to lead Your people, and the ability to inspire others to goodness, and the ability to call forth and encourage the gifts and charisms of others into productive teams.

If some of them need a Damascus Road experience like St Paul, then please work in their lives to bring about a powerful conversion to You and Your ways.

Many of them have been blinded by the falsehoods promoted by the culture of death. In Your great goodness dear Heavenly Father please remove all instances of this blindness from them and grant them the clarity and beauty of Your truth.

Please grant to them the grace to be able to stand up for Your truth, no matter how heavy the pressure to give in to any unholy political party policies.

Please help them to root out of their lives any immorality and any inappropriate relationships.  Bless their spouses and their children, and bless and protect the relationships of love that bind them together.

In Your goodness please call forth teams of intercessors who will pray for these chosen leaders whom You are raising up in our days, and who will pray for them unremittingly.

Please grant to these chosen leaders the precious gift of prayer, that they may seek You and Your will for them and those entrusted to them daily and diligently. Grant to them an earnestness to seek Your solutions and strategies for the good of the nation, and to always consult You as their best and closest counselor in all of their decisions.

May these chosen leaders be given the gifts necessary to foster unity, mutual respect and co-operation between nations.
Amen.

This is a transcription of the workshop held in Rome on 1 June 2017 with this topic as part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal #ccrgoldenjubilee2017
 
The speakers were Deacon Christof Hemberger and Jim Murphy, with translations in English and Portuguese.
 
Deacon Christof Hemberger is part of the ICCRS leadership team http://www.iccrs.org/en/dn-christof-hemberger/
 
Jim Murphy is the new president of the ICCRS Council http://www.iccrs.org/en/james-murphy-president/
He is the founder and president of Vera Cruz Communications, and has been involved in youth ministry on parish, diocesan, national, and international levels. In 1992, inspired by the American Bishops' letter 'Heritage and Hope', Jim undertook a 4200-mile journey on foot across America, carrying a six-foot cross in an effort of prayer and evangelization.
 
This is the link for the video recording: https://youtu.be/H68UKXNat4E
 
Deacon Christof Hemberger: Welcome to this workshop. It is a great pleasure to see so many of you, especially – and we know this – it is very early in the morning for many of us. I want to make, use a little while, to ask, where do you come from? Asia and Oceania? Africa? Northern and Southern America? Many Brazilians! Europe? Welcome home. Welcome everyone to this workshop. It might be that some of you – sorry I forgot – Middle East? Who have never led a prayer group. With this workshop we would like to encourage you to learn how to do it. Some are leaders of prayer groups for a very long time and would like to learn how to get the group vibrant again. You will also get some tools and hints to do this. Jim and I are involved in leadership since many years. But still we are learning. And it is not, and we can never come to a stage where we can say that we know everything.
 
But we are going to use this time ahead of us to share with you what we have been learning and experiencing in the last years. I will start with some basics, some general outlines that every leader needs to know about and Jim later on will give some more practical experience.
 
No matter whether you want to start or whether you are already leading for a long time, I think the main task of a leader is to know the vision of the group. You need to have the vision clear in order to reach your goals. What is the purpose we are meeting for?
 
In every prayer group usually there is two end groups. One part is searching for a spiritual home. The people are coming and they are asking for teachings, for good prayer times, for experiences to grow in the discipleship. They are searching for 'koinonia', for community, and they regard the prayer group as a discipleship training centre for their spiritual journey.
 
But there is also a second end group, the people who are not there yet. Prayer groups also have a goal to evangelise, to make a space for those who can be brought along. Many years ago I had a conversion experience and my sister who was a member of a prayer group just told me, 'Come along'. I didn't know anything about how to live with God in my daily life. I needed teaching, I needed experience, I needed training, explanations, before I was actually able to become a disciple.
 
So when I speak about we have two end groups, leaders and those involved in prayer groups need to understand there is discipleship and the purpose of evangelization always in a prayer group. When we only focus on the first, we will start pleasing those coming for many years and we will become a cozy club. But if we only focus on the second we will not give food to those who are coming and after some time they will search for other places where they can get food.
 
Maintaining living charismatic groups means to be open for discipleship and evangelization.
 
A second aspect: Know Your Identity. 10 years ago my wife and I have moved into the village we are living now. Some man came to us, approaching us, and he said, 'Well I am responsible for the rabbit club in this village' and I said, 'What's this? What rabbit club?' And he said, 'Well, we are the ones that raise rabbits. But we are also open for those who have horses and chickens, open for all, but we are the rabbit club.' Well, I didn't have rabbits, I didn't have chickens, so I never became a member of the club. But I was thinking, why is he inviting everyone raising anything if he is the chairperson of the rabbit club? Sometimes our prayer groups look the same.
 
There is lots of space in the kingdom of God and the Church is wide and bright, but if we are Catholic charismatic prayer groups your prayer group needs to have a Catholic charismatic identity.
 
Some prayer groups have lost their Catholic identity. They do a lot of Holy Spirit things but they don't teach and live anymore Catholic identity.
 
Some prayer groups have lost the charismatic identity. They are very faithful, true followers in the Church but you can't hardly see anything charismatic in their meetings anymore.
 
I encourage you to live your identity in fullness.
 
Personal relationship to the living God. You need to teach about this and you need to live it, the reality of the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit. Teach and speak and share about this.
 
Receiving and using the gifts of the Holy Spirit. So often I come to prayer groups. Somebody is there who is sick and the people say, 'let's intercede and when we go home during the next week we are going to pray for you. No! Interrupt your meeting. Take this person to the front, lay hands on, and pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit for healing and deliverance, and for everything else.
 
Praise and Worship. In the Church the Renewal is known as the movement that is known for praise and worship. Ten years ago I was involved in the preparations for the World Youth Day that took place in Cologne (Koln) Germany. There was a meeting of many, many people in the Church and I had to introduce myself and I said, 'I am Christof, I am from the Charismatic Renewal'. One person said, 'What's this? I have never heard about this?' Another person gave the answer. 'Oh, those are the people who are always singing when they start their programs'. It is part of our identity to praise the Lord, to have praise and worship.
 
The love for the Word of God and the Sacraments. So many people say, 'After I found a renewed relationship to the Lord I suddenly understood the bible in a personal way; the sacraments became important for me.'
 
Evangelisation and Mission. If we focus on ourselves we will forget the task we have been given by Jesus. We are called to evangelise. We are called to bring in our friends, neighbours and colleagues.
 
And also part of the Catholic charismatic identity is the heart for the whole Body of Christ.
 
Why am I saying this? I say this because I want to encourage you to live your identity in fullness. If you are a member or a leader of a Catholic charismatic prayer group, make sure your program is Catholic charismatic and is seen as Catholic charismatic. Don't only know about the charisms, use the charisms. Don't only know about the personal relationship to the Lord, live the personal relationship to the Lord.
 
Some people ask, usually in those meetings, 'give us a structure of a perfect prayer meeting'. I can't. You need to find out your perfect structure for this evening.
 
But I can give some recommendations:
 
Have some time for welcome. A prayer meeting is not just a program we are running. It is a time of relationship and community. Make sure people feel welcomed. Draw in those who are new and don't know how to behave. Explain what is going to happen.
 
Usually we start with some time of praise and worship. We focus on the Lord. We give Him our honour and our glory. This helps us because we come from our daily life to focus on the greater thing that is been given to us.
 
Usually afterwards we have some time of bible study, teaching or preaching. We want to learn from God.
 
I usually ask the people in my prayer group, 'What is the Lord saying to us today?' for our situation, in our time, for the next week?
 
You can follow by a time of sharing of your experiences. Some people will have experiences with God and can give a testimony, or you can share experiences that you have been doing long ago but can help others understand what to do and how to live. I spoke about that prayer groups is community is koinonia, it is not that the leader is standing in front telling the others what to do. 90% of the things that I have learned for my Christian life I have learned by the testimonies of friends.
 
Never finish without having a time just for the Lord. Sometimes this is related or lined to the praise and worship time. Sometimes it is linked to the preaching or to the intercession time, no matter, but don't leave without having a time asking the Lord to speak to us, speak into our situations. What shall I do now personally? What do You want to tell me?
 
I would like to speak one minute about the tasks of a leader.
 
Of course we need to prepare and moderate and lead the prayer meetings. Did you hear properly? Prepare the meetings. This is some work. It is very easy to say, 'O the Holy Spirit will do everything'. Maybe the Holy Spirit is using you as a leader to do the things. You don't need to do everything by yourself and you don't need to take the tasks that are the Holy Spirit's but you need to take your tasks, and your task is to prepare, moderate and lead the prayer meetings.
 
Be an example to the others. You are not responsible for their personal lives. You are also not their spiritual directors. You are not responsible for the decisions they are doing in their personal life, but you should be a good example as a disciple of Christ.
 
One topic we could spend a whole weekend about is establish a team that can support you, and establish a next generation of leadership. It is a bit naughty when I say a good leader makes himself not needed any more from the same day he took on leadership. Those leaders after many years don't find successors have not done their job in establishing new leaders early enough.
 
A last task of a prayer group leader. You are the watchman of the vision. Keep in mind the charismatic and Catholic identity and division of your group and once in a while take some time asking yourself, 'Are we still living according to our vision?' 'Are we still open for new people to come in?' 'Do we still help others to grow in discipleship?' 'Are we still living our charismatic identity?' 'And are we still living our Catholic identity?'
 
My last thought, because I think it is essential for many, many prayer groups. The use of the charisms. Know and teach and use the charisms in your prayer group. Charisms are not medals for personal holiness. They are gifts to us for the sake of building the kingdom of God. They don't fall from heaven like apples. Ask for the gifts. Use the gifts. Make space for the gifts in your programs. Once in a while go to the music ministry and talk to them, 'How can we establish charisms in praise and worship?' Try to find out what is the charisms of my people? And find possibilities where they can bring them into the group.
 
Teach and train the gifts and their use. And ask for the charisms. Pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Foster a mature use of the charisms among your people. When you are thinking about the program of the next prayer group evening keep times of silence during the evening. So often we do this and this and this, and sometimes the Lord doesn't even have the possibility to talk to us. If prophecies and words of knowledge are coming, find a way how to discern them. Is the prophecy a real prophecy? Is it for everyone or just for a few? How do we need to react to this word of God now? One practical hint, singing and praying in tongues helps to open for the other charisms. Teach and use the charisms in your prayer groups.
 
And I am very happy now that Jim is with us. He is a very experienced person and I am very keen on listening on what he is going to say about practical aspects of a prayer group.
 
Jim Murphy: Before I begin I would just like to share a personal note. I feel it is a great honour to be speaking to you today, because I really believe in the value of Catholic charismatic prayer meetings. I believe that prayer meetings are one of the foundational pieces of the Renewal and I sincerely want to thank all of you who have invested so much of your life to building up good prayer meetings. I know many of you have invested your life into this and at times it gets difficult, but what you are doing is important and it is an honour to speak to you today.
 
I'm also honoured to speak with my good colleague Deacon Christof. He's a very good teacher and he's a good friend. Our time is very short today and I wish we could talk about everything but we can only cover a few basics. But Christof has written an excellent book* and a lot of the material he has covered today is found in his book. And this will be on the table later if you want to find out how to get it. Also you can go to our ICCRS website and find out more about our various leadership training programs, which I hope could give you a lot more information. (* 'Living Charismatic Groups: A Handbook for Leadership Formation' by Christof Hemberger, 2016, New Life Publishing)
 
Deacon Christof gave us some very important foundational aspects of vision. I'm just going to focus on two points this morning. One is how to maintain dynamic praise and worship at a prayer meeting and the second aspect is how do we give a good teaching. Due to time constraints I am going to leave out most of the theory and just talk about practical points.
 
So let's first talk about dynamic praise and worship. In my estimation praise and worship is the most essential part of a prayer meeting. To me everything flows from praise and worship. And when the praise and worship is weak everything else falls down. In this conversation when I use the word worship I am not speaking of quiet adoration before the Blessed Sacrament but dynamic praise and worship. There is absolutely a place for quiet adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, but in this conversation we are talking more about a charismatic experience.
 
So where do we start? One thing that I believe is essential to praise and worship, we need to educate people on the biblical principles of dynamic praise and worship. We have to be fair to our brothers and sister fellow Catholics, as Catholics many of us were raised using very traditional prayers. Look the prayer style of Catholicism is usually quite rote. They are more used to a traditional style of prayer. So when people join us in these very dynamic meetings they're really not quite sure how to respond. One of the first times I went to a prayer meeting I turned to the person next to me and said, 'Is this Catholic?' And I think we have to be careful, we've become very comfortable with this, but this is a new experience for others.
 
And I believe it is essential that we teach people what is the scriptural background and even in Catholic tradition where this fits in. Wouldn't you love to go to a prayer meeting led by St Francis of Assisi? So charismatic praise and worship is very much in scripture and in tradition, but that's not known by many Catholics and even some charismatics.
 
Our time now does not allow me to exactly give this teaching, but I would urge you to study on this topic. There's a lot of good material out there. As a prayer group leader you have to help people understand why we do it this way. It is not enough to lead praise and worship, but we have to become advocates of praise and worship. We have to be able to explain it to others.
 
So the first step is to be an advocate for and to teach people about praise and worship. Prepare good teachings to give your people on why we do it this way.
 
The second step is we need to get people engaged in prayer and worship. A prayer group leader is not supposed to praise and worship for the people, but the leader's job is to encourage and aid and help the people praise the Lord. A leader doesn't praise God for the people. A leader praises God with the people.
 
So how do we get people engaged? A very practical way is the physical proximity of the leader to the people. In a situation like today, because of the nature of our program, this is how things are arranged. If I was leading a prayer meeting here I'd be out there with you, and we'd all be close together. A leader helps by making eye contact with the people, by literally reaching out to the people.
 
In too many prayer groups there is a group of people leading and everybody else is just watching. We have to change that. We have to connect with the people and then encourage them and lead them. 'Come one, let's do this together'. The people are not there to watch you pray. You are there to help them pray. Don't let the group become passive spectators.
 
Now music can be a great way to help people praise God. But let me offer a caution. In some places prayer meetings have turned into concerts. The music is great, but it has almost become a performance and they're fantastic, but we all sit there and watch them do the music. It's really a nice event, but it's not praise and worship because the people are not engaged.
 
Don't just play one song after another, after another. There should be music, but then the leader should be encouraging spontaneous praise and worship. And the leader should be saying, 'Come on, come on, let’s go', encouraging people. Usually when a group of people start worshipping God we often experience praying in the Spirit, praying in tongues. Encourage people to keep going with that, because when the whole group is praying or singing in the Spirit, then they're engaged; they're invested; they're doing something. And then when that dies down we do another song and we start the process again.
 
And usually when we enter into this kind of prayer we start receiving prophetic words or scriptures, and the job of the leader is to keep all these things in balance. So when a scripture is given, maybe there is a song that is perfect as a complement to the scripture, or maybe the leader feels we should respond by standing and praising together.
 
But a prayer meeting leader has to be able to focus on many things. It's not just music. It's not scripture only. It's not a particular dynamic. All of these things are happening at once. And the leader has to be discerning this. It's a dynamic process, you can't just do it off a schedule.
 
It's also important as a worship leader to be able to summarize what the Lord is doing. Maybe there was a strong prophetic word, maybe somebody had a scripture, there is a particular song that really moved people. It is the leader's job to make all of these connections and present to the people what it seems the Lord is doing. And then encourage the group to respond.
 
There's a main principle here that we have to keep in mind. A leader of a prayer meeting has to be connected to God and connected to the people at the same time. Sometimes as a leader you just want to pray and get lost in heaven, but you are leaving the rest of us out. And some leaders are so busy keeping everybody happy they're not even paying attention to what God is doing. So you have to keep these two things in balance. What is the Lord doing or saying? But how are the people doing? And to keep these two in balance is important.
 
So let me summarize this section:
1. We must be advocates of praise and worship. We want to teach people the principles but also the methods.
2. We must engage the people. We stay close to them. We stay connected to them. We work with music and encouraging the people.
3. A worship leader must be able to manage many things at the same time.
4. A worship leader must be attentive to God but also attentive to the people.
 
Let's take a few minutes now to talk about giving a teaching. There's three things necessary to give a good teaching: Proper discernment of what teaching to give; Preparation of your material; Proper delivery of the teaching. These three elements are essential.
 
If you look at our friends with their cameras, the cameras are sitting on tripods. One of the jobs the cameraman has is to ensure all three legs are extended. If all three legs are not correct, the thing tilts over. It's the same with a good teaching. You need these three elements to make the thing stand right. We'll quickly go through these three elements.
 
The first one is proper discernment of what to teach. Why do we give teachings? Are we just trying to fill in the time? Hopefully not. We're giving teachings because we are trying to impart the word of God. We're trying to share a word with our brothers and sisters. So it is very important that we know what it is God wants us to say.
 
So how do we know what God wants us to talk about? I think there's three normal ways that we understand what to teach on. Sometimes people in authority give us the assignment. And if you are part of a group and the pastoral leadership says, 'Would you give us a teaching about this?', well then, do it. Sometimes we just get – we sense what the people need. They might need some encouragement in an area, or perhaps they need some correction. So sometimes a theme is not given to us by divine revelation but our pastoral instincts show us what the people need at this time. And sometimes, the third way, God puts in our heart what we need to teach about. An idea starts forming in your mind, and then you go to Mass on Sunday and the scripture speaks to that, and then you hear a song on the radio that fits with that very thought. God's probably trying to tell you something.
 
So whether somebody is telling us what teaching to give, or our pastoral instincts give us some direction, or we just get a sense in our heart – these are three common ways we know what to teach.
 
Now the best way to prepare your material is what I do is I keep small pieces of paper with me – an index card – and I always carry these cards with me. And I find a scripture that speaks about that teaching, I write it down on a card. I'm having a conversation with a friend and they say something that fits in with that teaching, I write it down on that card.
 
So I am constantly looking for how the Lord might be speaking to me. And I keep collecting these cards with these ideas. Then I sit down at home. I take all my cards and I put them on the table. Lord, what are You saying with all this? In my cards I have many different scriptures. I might have a particular story. And I just pray with this material. And then I start organizing the ideas.
 
One of the problems most of us have; we try to put too much material in. You can't use everything. But all these things help us to prepare our material. And then I take a blank piece of paper and just put down my key points. So when I give the talk I'm not reading all these cards, but they just help me remember what order to go in.
 
And then finally when we actually give the talk, be sure people can hear you. Be sure people understand what you are saying. Be sure to stay connected to the people. Be sincere. Be focused on Christ and then when you are done, sit down. I'll sit down.
 
(A third person then gave a rough summary of both talks, thanked both men, and invited them to give a final prayer before a final song.)
 
Christof: Thank You Lord, thank You Lord for this morning. Thank You for everyone who came. Thank You for everything we have been learning this morning. And Holy Spirit I ask You to come and to fill everyone who is here. Help us to become leaders and members of the prayer groups that You have intended us to be. Help us to be watchmen of the vision. Teach us and worship us according to Your Heart. Holy Spirit we can learn a lot of things but most important is to receive everything from You. And so we ask You Holy Spirit, Come. Come and fill this place with Your glory. Come and fill our hearts with Your presence and grant us everything You want to give to us.
This workshop took place in a church, and as always in a church we will get the final blessing and the final song.

.....................................................................................
Below is a printer-friendly edited transcript, 6 x A4 pages 

Please print it out and share this document, because it would be very hard to find a prayer group that couldn't benefit from reading it.

Let's dream for a minute about what a diocese would look like if each of its priests was in a place of ministry that played to their strengths. Less burnout. More joy. More effectiveness.
 
This is possible.

It no longer has to be a 'seat of the pants, gut feel, let's hope the Holy Spirit is inspiring our choices' set of decisions. It will still require prayer, and pondering, and skill, but the chances of getting the right match of priest to place of ministry are dramatically higher with the following tools.
 
…However you will still have to take into account musical and artistic ability, relevant hobbies, and attempt to match priests to socio-economic areas that they can relate to.
 
First Tool: Clifton StrengthsFinder – Catholic Edition. If you know the top 5 signature themes of your priests you will make better decisions. Think of them as transferable skill sets. 
 
Second Tool: Strengths based Leadership. The 34 possible signature themes can be split into 4 domains, Executing, Influencing, Relationship building and Strategic thinking. If all 4 areas are covered by a leadership team, then the place is going to hum. If one or more domain area is missing, the blind-spot areas will reduce effectiveness and cause troubles. For example, if you have two priests in a parish and neither of them has people skills (relationship building skills) attendance at Sunday Mass will fall and complaints to the bishop will increase.
 
Third Tool: Knowing how parish size impacts on the gifts the pastor in leadership needs to be effective. This gem was highly recommended by Fr Mallon in Divine Renovation. It is 14.5 pages long, but its implications are huge. A small parish will thrive with a pastor in leadership who is high in relationship building skills. A medium size parish needs a pastor in leadership with administration skills, who can do a bit of everything domain-wise. A large church needs a pastor in leadership with a drive for vision and mission, who will focus on preaching and strategy and do very little individual pastoral ministry. A very large church requires more of the same, with an emphasis on articulating vision.
 
This will make sense if we look at some mythical examples.

I grabbed a random number generator and found 5 numbers between 1 and 34, and then matched the numbers to the 34 signature themes in alphabetical order. This produced mythical priests A, B, C and D.
 
Mythical Priest A:
Harmony/R, Analytical/S, Empathy/R, Individualization/R, Developer/R
That's 4 themes in Relationship building. If this priest had to take charge of a parish, for both to thrive it would need to be a small one.
Empathy is the number one skill needed to be effective in pastoral care.
​Empathy plus Harmony means you would shine in hospital based pastoral care.
But this person has even more than that. He'd be absolutely in his element in prison ministry, and ministering to those with addictions or dealing with domestic abuse victims.
If you trained him up to spot the 34 themes, he would be brilliant at getting parishioners into the ministries that God made them for.
 
Mythical Priest B:
Belief/E, Responsibility/E, Strategic/S, Communication/I, Command/I
That's no people skills, but a powerful leader who could take on a large complex parish.
Sadly without the people skills he's not likely to ever get a pointy hat.
He would be a very good preacher. However dissuading him from erroneous beliefs would not be easy, so it would be important to give him good formation from people he can respect.
Belief, Command and Strategic are the building blocks for a good exorcist, so it would be worthwhile sending him to exorcist school in Rome to test whether he is called to that ministry.

Putting Priest A together with Priest B as an assistant would cover all 4 domains, and they could bond over analysis and strategy. They could make a very effective team, as long as it was explained to both of them that they were chosen to complement each other, and how they could best connect with each other.
 
Mythical Priest C:
Discipline/E, Connectedness/R, Learner/S, Communication/I, Maximiser/I
If this person wasn't a priest he would have the raw material to be a best-selling author.
Having a foot in all 4 domains he could lead a medium parish.
However he would shine as a faculty member of a seminary, and could write a book a year. The rhythm of seminary life would suit him, students would enjoy listening to him, he'd be the one to keep the Old Boys union going and maintain contact with past students, he'd be very good at social media, and his desire to learn would fuel the next book while the maximiser will ensure it will be full of excellence.
He has the raw material to become the next Fr James Martin SJ.
 
Mythical Priest D:
Includer/R, Maximiser/I, Analytical/S, Activator/I, Restorative/E
Having a foot in all 4 domains, he could lead a medium parish too.
But if you really wanted him to shine, you would send him into broken parishes to get them on their feet again. He'd analyze the root causes, delight in the hard work needed to make the healing happen, get parishioners involved in the process, get started quickly and enthuse people to aim for excellence and show how possible it was to achieve. It is possible that he would be frustrated in any assistant priest role, because he needs to make things happen
 
Do you agree that if these priests were given places of ministry like these, that the mythical diocese they belong to would be a couple of steps down the road from maintenance to mission?
 
Conversely, can you imagine the disaster if you sent mythical priest B as parish priest of a small parish?

​For a print friendly version....

Here's the Divine Renovation challenge – as set out in Chapter 7's musings on Leadership.

'We should all take the time to write down a one-page description of a future of our diocese, parish or ministry that excites us. Do not be distracted by the obstacles and challenges; just write down your dream…..Once you have written down your vision statement, write down your own personal purpose statement that will define your ministry (in one sentence).'
 
Having read Divine Renovation for the first time back in late April/early May 2016, recently I have been re-reading it as time permits. Having got to the part (above) in Chapter 7, it looks like a good exercise to do even though I know there is no visible hope of seeing it happen.
 
Here goes: a blue-sky wish list for my parish.
 
I want to see Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament begun and kept going, so that at any time of the day or night there are at least two people praying in the Blessed Sacrament chapel providing the open doors so that anyone, whoever they are, can have access to the Heart of Jesus when they are in distress.
 
I want to see the 30 minutes prior to the start of Vigil Mass on Saturdays as a time of testimonies from regular attendees at that Mass and prayers. To get a car park in the church grounds people have to arrive 30 minutes before anyway. That would give time for 2 x 10 minute testimonies. The first one sharing about what God's grace has done in his or her life. The second one sharing about the ministry/career/vocation that God called them to, how they found it and what good things are happening in that ministry/career/vocation. The remaining 10 minutes would have prayer teams out in the gathering area for anyone who wanted prayer for a special intention.
 
I want to see a social media ministry active and effective. It would be a ministry with several parts. One part would be dedicated to teaching people how to use social media for soft evangelization. Another part would be dedicated to regularly and consistently producing parish based 'good news' content: getting the photos and the stories from parish events and from parish people. A third part would be collecting and sharing the best Catholic content online each week. The final part would be assisting and supporting parishioners in sharing their own faith journey online via blogs etc.
 
I want to see intercession as a top priority across the board. For starters at least 10 minutes of prayer prior to the start of any meeting – be it parish council, finance committee, liturgy team, children's ministry, study groups, Lenten groups etc. Using prayer that includes scripture, begging God's blessing and guidance upon the meeting's activities, and praying for the people that the meeting serves. Without the power of God we can do nothing.
 
I want to see at least one prayer group operating each week, where people are free to come and pray their hearts out in whatever manner they wish: A prayer group that prays specifically for the parish as a whole and for each individual or family who asks for prayers: A place where people are free to dance and sing, to sob and groan, to kneel and beg, to call on God to act in their lives and in the lives of their loved ones, and to learn how to praise and thank Him too.
 
I want to see new forms of parish outreach to the community develop. It might start with once a month setting up a table in the local shopping centre and at the once a month market days and car-boot sales days that happen locally.
 
I want to see religious art with evangelistic potential celebrated. All too often I have art shows billed as religious art with barely anything worthy of the name on display. Subject matter would have to be directly inspired by Scripture, the Catechism or the Lives and Writings of the Saints. Twice a year the parish could have a regular booking with the regional art gallery for exhibition space. Then the artists (poets, illustrators, fine artists, printmakers, fabric banner designers, quilters, ceramic artists, sculptors, animators etc) with the most potential to bring people to Jesus with their creative talents could be invited to set up a display of their work, one artist per one weekend a month in the gathering area of the parish church.
 
I want to see people in the pews discovering the God given talents they have been given, and assisted to find creative ways of using them to help bring others to Jesus. Regular offerings of Clifton StrengthsFinder groups and discussions with trained coaches would make that happen.
 
I want to see the rest happen too: car park ministry; outside the doors of the church welcoming ministry (in addition to the inside the doors of the church welcoming ministry); sacramental preparation that evangelizes and converts; youth groups that really produce missionary disciples; homilies that actually touch the heart and draw listeners closer to God; encouragement of devotional practices; greater inclusion and access for those with autism, lower mobility, reduced sight and hearing abilities etc.

Yes, that was one A4 page worth.
 
My personal purpose?
The short answer is, I don't know.
Although I have more clues than at any previous time in my life, I cannot yet see how it is all supposed to come together – and that's despite working on it and bringing it to prayer for the last 9 months.

Fr Mallon's personal purpose statement went like this:
"To be a catalyst for the renewal of my parish and of the broader Church."

Over to you. Do some dreaming and some writing of your own.

​Then as Fr Mallon suggests, if you are in leadership, share it and get feedback on it and refine 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 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
 
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.
 
……………………………………………………………………
 
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?