During the past few weeks, I have been pondering what determines an authentic healthy relationship with God. Two particular conundrums have been highlighted in my life, Person A and Person B, although there are others, and there have been some online conundrums as well.

Person A has considerable time set apart for prayer on a daily basis; and is displaying devotional warmth and a noticeably higher level of reverence than the average. But has not been seen beginning new relationships on own initiative, and is very reserved in personal interactions, i.e.. a person of few words and minimal answers.

The question is: how authentic can this be if there is no observable deepening in relationships with others, and no observable outward focus in either service to others or in an intercessory prayer burden for others?

If you recall the galactic analogy, if you place God as the largest star in the centre, and yourself as a tiny star attracted to the centre, then in order to get closer to God you necessarily have to get closer to the other tiny stars; since the closer to the centre of the galaxy you are the more densely packed it is.

Person B has a substantial daily prayer routine with a somewhat regular touch of the supernatural happening.

The question is: how authentic can this be if there doesn’t seem to be a corresponding growth in reverence, in commitment to going the extra mile, and in outward focus on others. General impressions have a focus on ‘why me?’ and ‘what does this mean’?

At this point a personal stock take is necessary. Is there a daily committed time for prayer? Is there service in my life beyond friends and family? Is love and reverence for God growing? Is there any evidence of more patience, trust, gentleness etc than last year?

Person C has a committed prayer life with deep devotion, and a Mary of Bethany type focus in prayer. There is a degree of outward service and willingness to serve.

The question is: how authentic can this be if that outward service is usually either publicly visible, or at least visible to the priest, and people tend to tread on eggshells in this person’s presence lest they do something incurring disapproval and verbal reprimand?

Person D looks like they are walking the talk, have fingers in many service pies, are social to a point, and seem to have a regular prayer life.

The question is: how authentic can this be if you feel like purchasing a lottery ticket when they arrive for Mass on time or two lottery tickets if they are ever early?

Person E is a seminarian yet either comes to Mass just in time; or comes in for personal prayer early and doesn’t greet anyone. Then when Mass is over leaves without any eye contact; or heads off to a private chapel to pray alone rather than in common with others – unless the priest or someone relatively important makes a beeline to talk to him.

The question is: do they train them in seminaries to behave like this? How authentic can training for priesthood be if it actively discourages interaction with parishioners? Where is the balance between loving God and loving others?

Person F is usually a religious or ex-religious who is vastly superior to everyone else, and who can with ease make someone else feel like an insignificant gnat.

The question is: how authentic can a religious life be if it doesn’t possess the kind of humility that helps build others up, or at least treat others as befits their dignity as children of God?

Yet God loves them all, and is infinitely patient with them, always seeking to lead them along the path of greater authenticity of relationship with Himself.

Now for the online conundrums.

The biggest litmus test for these is, have they been written primarily for an audience of one (i.e. God)?

The first one is both insidious and commonplace. You start out reading reflections on a particular passage of scripture, or a written conversion testimony, or something that passes for a written prophetic word, or a topic relevant to living the Christian life. The content is useful and good until you get near the end. Then you get hit with a ‘buy my book’, ‘listen to my podcast’, ‘join my online mentorship group’ or similar. And you feel duped because what you’ve just read has been primarily a sales pitch.

The next one is easier to suspect from the get-go, and therefore easier to avoid. Because they usually have ‘wealth’, ‘prosperity’, ‘financial breakthrough’ or similar in the title. It normally goes something like: if you do X, Y and Z in that order, and exactly as I say, then God will give you everything you want. Some a little more sophisticated than that, but otherwise essentially the same. The truth is that there is no substitute or short cut for developing a relationship with God, and a relationship with God is the ultimate prize, compared to Him riches rank as dust.

After that come the ‘sow a seed’ websites, citing the scripture that says assistance to a prophet earns a prophet’s reward. As you might have already guessed, I have a problem with these. That’s because throughout Christian history God has called some to live trusting completely in His providence, only going out to beg on the streets when things are grim. When God’s ministers are doing good work, the natural impulse is to assist them. There is a significant difference between those who don’t have a ‘sow a seed’ or donation page, and those who do. With the former you know they are trusting in God, and writing as He directs, because there are no kick-backs in it for them. With the latter there’s an aspect of turning what God has asked you to do into an income stream. With that comes the temptation to write to attract donations instead of writing to attract God’s blessing; and the temptation to turn God’s anointing into a business.

The last type is insidious because it appeals either to our curiosity or to our need, making them difficult to resist. The former has click-bait style titles promising answers to satisfy our curiosity about heaven and hell, but which don’t lead us to greater love, awe and worship of God. Will you see your favourite pet in heaven? Did your favourite actor get to heaven? That kind of thing. The latter has click-bait style titles promising to do something God and only God can do, e.g. get the key to release everything the Holy Spirit wants to give you; conquer your demons and love with abandon; get success in petitioning the courts of heaven. That kind of thing. The most anyone of us can do on earth is to tell how God has worked wonders in our lives and in the lives of those we are close to. Frequently that sparks new wonders because those stories raise faith and expectancy in others. But no one can claim that they have a never-fail gifting from God. e.g. Some people are gifted by God with a charism of healing, and many do get healed, but it is always God who does the healing, and the gifted person cannot predict who will be healed and who won’t be.
​
Can God use powerfully the gifted people who are the catalysts for these disappointing online offerings. Yes He can. But approach them with significant caution and don’t make them your primary go-to websites. God will always speak clearer where the sources are cleaner than where the sources are muddied.

The second and final assembly of the 5th Plenary Council of Australia is now at its last full day of deliberations, with many contentious issues still at large. Since the last blog-post I have watched the Mass for the Memorial of Blessed Peter To Rot from last night, and the votive Mass this morning in honour of Mary, mother of the Church, and the Plenary tracker episode from last night, as well as some religious blogs from 7 July and 8 July, the press briefing from last night, and the livestreamed morning session. I have viewed the revised draft for motion 4 on women, and I looked at the voting outcomes released yesterday. I have not yet gone looking for any voting results released today.
 
I was pleasantly surprised at the revision of motion 4. There was nothing in it which raised my hackles. Certainly it is a much better motion than the one presented to the assembly on Tuesday.
 
Daniel Ang’s input released 6 July and Sandy Wallace’s input released today have caused me to look deeper at the disconnect between what’s been going on in the Plenary Council Masses in the Cathedral and what’s been going on in the Plenary Council from a plenary tracker perspective – for lack of a better descriptor.
 
Last night’s plenary tracker portrayed a bubble of reality that was quite alien to me. How come there is such enthusiasm about ecological conversion? Could it be that it’s because ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God is close at hand’ is far more demanding? I doubt that the name of Jesus was mentioned more than once at last night’s plenary tracker. That really bothers me. The way I heard the panel of women enthuse was uncomfortably like having an alternate religion proposed. Perhaps the troubling thing was a placement of the human person as a cog within the ecosystem of creation – which is very different to God’s command, ‘Be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven and all living animals on the earth’. It was couched in either/or terms, not in both/and terms, and that is very troubling.
 
But when I look at the number of federal votes for the Greens party and for teal candidates, perhaps I should not be surprised at this green-washing of the life of the Church in Australia.
 
I keep returning to the notion that if plenary members were more steeped in scripture, in theology, in living the liturgical year, and in frequent and regular use of the sacrament of penance then so many hot button issues would have had minimal support. Daniel’s observation of the tale of two councils is ringing true. How can lives more infected with worldliness than with apostolic levels of conversion truly discern? Strangely, I’m now finding myself in sympathy with the previous way of conducting plenary councils – bishops only – because at least they are all coming together with a strong baseline of shared knowledge and practice.
 
Deeply I fear that the members got it wrong yesterday. Two topics stick in my craw. The first one was making diocesan pastoral councils mandatory for all dioceses, and the second one was signing up all dioceses, parishes, schools, hospitals etc to the Laudato Si program and demanding that it happen by 2024.
 
My experience of any kind of committee is that ineffective chairmanship is rampant and that effective chairmanship is rare. Chairpersonship was just too much of a mouthful to consider using. Very few parish councils ever accomplish anything worthwhile. Witness the number of parish council members who haven’t read the minutes of the last meeting prior to the current meeting. Witness how many accountabilities are treated as suggestions subject to a better offer rather than ‘serving as if it was done at God’s orders’. Now if instead there had been a motion to invest in widespread training for effective chairmanship – that would be useful. Let’s also refresh our memories that if a parish priest doesn’t want a parish council and if a bishop doesn’t want a diocesan pastoral council, all efforts are doomed to failure. Recall also that it is usually volunteers that are sought for pastoral council positions and that very little effort is usually expended to make sure that there’s a variety of gifts among members so that it’s not top heavy with dreamers and deficient in doers.
 
Where or where do you think the limited resources of a parish are going to go if implementing the Laudato Si program has to happen by 2024? How much will be left over for the primary mission of the Church: making disciples of Jesus? Matt 28: 18-20
 
And so much for not making decisions without the input of stakeholders! According to the approved motion all parishes have to do this, and parishes certainly weren’t consulted about the Laudato Si mandate. That’s a very different thing to a bishop saying Yes, we will start a few pilot programmes in interested parishes and see how it goes before extending it further.
 
Were you gobsmacked that one of the ecology motions was unanimous among bishops? I was. Maybe they were tired and didn’t fully comprehend the implications of the Yes vote to that motion.
 
Generally there has been a relatively consistent voting pattern from the bishops with an average of 30 Yes votes and 10 No votes. Only God knows if it has been the same bishops in each voting bucket or whether it has been more fluid. But there was a strange thing happening with motions 7.4 and 7.5 where the No vote was significant and the motions barely passed. That lack of unanimity should have sent both motions 7.4 and 7.5 back to the drawing board, time pressure or no time pressure.
 
The media briefing was again instructive, answering three important questions.
 
The first was about the general content of the Rome response to the Light from the Southern Cross document, viz too horizontal and not balanced enough with vertical and a reminder that the Church decision making is very different to the ways businesses and governments do things. The same criticism could be levelled at the plenary council process, yes?
 
The second was about the risk, due to new research groups, diocesan pastoral councils, and this new three yearly roundtable, of too much new bureaucracy in an already swamped experience of meetings upon meetings upon meetings (Here’s looking at you Bishop Umbers). Since if you are tied up in meetings all the time, a pastor or bishop has nothing left in the tank to do pastoral visits to families or to be supportive to a struggling priest. The answer given was that the risk of increasing bureaucracy is always present, and it is the price paid for the chance of some of these new meeting types to actually assist in moving the mission of the Church forward. To which I want to respond, surely there must be other long-shot ventures with more chance of success that we could invest our time, energy and scarce resources in!
 
The third was a response to the general deflation experienced when reading the framework for motions for the first time, viz after all these years couldn’t we have come up with something less bland, less general and more specific? The answer was that since implementation will be across very different circumstances, city, regional, rural, remote, that anything one-size-fits-all doesn’t provide enough wiggle room to implement motions creatively according to specific diocesan situations. Additionally members had come to acceptance about the need to have less prescriptive motions.
 
This morning Bishop Bird widened our concept of Mary as mother of the Church, because we think too readily that church means only the rite we celebrate liturgy with. So Bishop Bird took us through the richness of liturgical prayers in the Latin rite, the Maronite rite, the Chaldean rite, the Melkite rite, the Ukrainian rite and the Syro-Malabar rite. Sincere apologies if I missed any Eastern rite out. The love of Mary as mother and model is deep throughout dioceses as evinced by the numbers of parishes with Marian names, and throughout all the liturgical rites of the Church.
 
Last night at Mass there was an incredibly bad use of inclusive language in the responsorial psalm, Psalm 33(34). This is the accepted translation: ‘This poor man called; the Lord heard him and rescued him from all his distress’ – which was on screen. The translation used: ‘When the poor cry out the Lord hears and rescues them from all their distress’ – which was sung. Any student of language knows that there is a vast difference between singular and plural eg. est and sunt. The former encourages the individual to seek the Lord’s help. The latter could be interpreted that God only hears when a group of poor call out to Him, and that being united in prayer is a prerequisite for the prayers being answered. These are vastly different interpretations caused by inclusive language that the literal Hebrew translation cannot support. Shouldn’t our fidelity to what the original text of God’s Word says take priority over any ideological overlay?
 
A bright point on Thursday morning was the presentation of a message stick from the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and the explanation of the symbolism of each part of it. Both the forethought to prepare such a gift and visible token of solidarity and the deep understanding of the plenary council process it portrayed were amazing.
 
Similarly amazing was the explanation by Erica of how much the smoking ceremony meant to her, and why, viz (paraphrased) ‘together we acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation who have welcomed us so warmly with the smoking ceremony when we gathered together to begin this meeting on their country. That smoke made me feel safe. It gave me courage and it encouraged me to take part in sharing, especially sharing about our first nations culture’.
 
Last night Cardinal Dew from Wellington, New Zealand was the homilist at Mass. He has been one of the official observers, and he is adamant that he hasn’t been bored during his observation of the plenary council process. Among his many observations two stood out: increase in faith of the community, increase in communion of the community: and that increase in mission of the community is the responsibility borne by each baptised person: discernment is integral to synodality.
 
When I looked at the plenary council website a little while ago, the results of the voting from today’s deliberations were not yet published.
 
Stay tuned for a response to that, and to the Mass tomorrow morning, and the wrap up press briefings and plenary tracker episode – although it is likely to be Sunday before that response can be completed.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, is taken from the end of Chapter 8 of St Mark. Between last Sunday and this Sunday (Mark 8:1-26) there has been a second multiplication of loaves, a demand for a sign, a warning against the leaven of the Pharisees and the healing of a blind man at Bethsaida. In this part of Mark:8, while they are on their way to the villages around Caesarea Philippi, Jesus interrogates His disciples.

But before we get to that, if the ministry itinerary of Jesus seems strange, well it kind of is. Why would Jesus push on to Sidon after going to Tyre, and why is He off to Caesarea Phillipi?

The answer is in the map of Israel at the time of Joshua, and where the territory of the various tribes were apportioned within Israel.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e6/a6/de/e6a6dec8f6ced5c5fcc09f40fe6df877.jpg

Tyre and Sidon are where the tribe of Asher settled, and the area around Caesarea Phillipi is where the tribe of Dan settled. In the time of Jesus these places were foreign territory, but if you were looking for descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, you would look in these places. This speaks of an incredible commitment of Jesus to seek out the lost, and of God giving a message through these missionary journeys that God has not forgotten His covenant with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, even if they have forgotten Him.

Jesus opens up this deliberate interrogation by asking ‘Who do men say I am?

The answers are interesting:
John the Baptist is one answer, recognizing that Jesus and John preached the same message ‘The kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the good news.’
Elijah is another answer, recognizing that with His miracles Jesus is on a par with the greatest prophet of Israel. Remember that at the Transfiguration, Moses represented the law, and Elijah represented the prophets.
Or one of the other prophets was the third answer the disciples provided, recognizing that Jesus carries a powerful message from God, and is a catalyst for the destiny of Israel, and this will bring Him into conflict with those who do not fear God and don’t walk in God’s ways.

Then Jesus puts them all on the spot and asks;
‘Who do you say I am?’
Peter responds, ‘You are the anointed one’.

When Israelites were hoping and longing for the anointed one of God, the Messiah, what did they expect the Messiah to be and to do?
-That the Messiah would usher in a new covenant. Jeremiah 31:31
-That the Messiah would be a prophet like Moses. Deuteronomy 18:15-19
-That the Messiah would be the Son of Man. Daniel 7:13-14
-That the Messiah would be greater than David. Psalm 110:1-4
-That the Messiah would be a descendant of David. 2 Samuel 7:12-16
-That the Messiah would be the coming one to whom the scepter belongs. Genesis 49:10
-That the Messiah would be the descendant of Abraham through whom all nations would be blessed. Genesis 12:3

When David was King, an extraordinary king who took God as His commander, Israel was united, and Israel had rest from the enemies that normally besieged or enslaved them. David carried that triple calling of priest (worshipper of God), prophet and king; and was seen as a type of the Messiah to come.

Peter and the others were likely to be hopeful of being close retainers of king Jesus in a new earthly Davidic kingdom following a swift and painless overthrow of the Roman occupation.

But Jesus starts teaching them about the Messianic prophecies they’ve never ever considered before. All of that suffering servant stuff in Isaiah, and some of that gruesome stuff in Psalm 22 and other places.

Whoever we think Jesus to be
Jesus Himself insists that God’s plan for the Messiah is rejection, suffering, death and resurrection
and that to belong to Him
and indeed even necessary for salvation,
we have to be willing to walk exactly the same path.

That’s exactly what the scriptures have foretold that the Messiah will be.

In effect Jesus is saying here we are at A, the destination is B.
You think getting from A to B will unlock lots of glory with little effort.
Whatever you think B is, the B is bigger than you can ever possibly imagine.
God’s plan isn’t earthly and temporal, it is divine and eternal.
You are thinking far too small if you are thinking about a terrestrially based kingdom.
You are thinking far too small if you are only considering the salvation needs of this generation.

Getting to the fulness of the kingdom of God is going to take total commitment from Me, the pathway is not straight forward, and it is going to require significant suffering and rejection, and yes even an ignominious death, to get there.

The requirements for you to enter into the fulness of the kingdom of God are no different.

If you are going to come with Me from here on in,
this is what it is going to cost you.
No compromise is possible.

Either you are 100% with Me, and do it 100% God’s way,
no matter how heavy the ultimate personal cost turns out to be,
or you walk away now.

I will follow God’s path for Me even if none of you stay as My disciples.

It is decision time.

To stay with Me you have to accept this path of the Cross,
you have to live it wholeheartedly.

Are you coming with Me all the way?
Or do our ways part now?
​
On your answer hangs the salvation of countless others.

​The Instrumentum Laboris (working document) for the first session of the Australian Plenary Council was released on 25 Feb 2021, and I eventually finished reading it sometime in mid-March.

You can read it yourself:
https://plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au/instrumentum-laboris/

It wasn’t an easy read, despite it being beautifully presented. Penitential, it was. Firstly it takes a very long time to set the scene and give a situational analysis of the Church in Australia. Many times I wondered if the document would ever get to the point. Secondly it uses lots of ambiguous language that feels like it was written by a combination of church bureaucrats and school teachers. It would be easy to decode for them, but not for me. I longed for some footnotes that gave situational examples to aid understanding.

In particular I longed for concrete and contextual explanation of this passage from 166:

“Not infrequently, Catholics and their family members find themselves in an uneasy situation regarding particular Church teachings or disciplines, not because they identify any less as Catholic, and not because their attachment to Christ has grown “lukewarm” (Rev 3:16), but because of shifts in cultural norms and expectations that they once relied on to support their Catholic faith. Very often, however, this tension between people’s lived experience and the teachings of the Church reaches the point where people withdraw from parishes or communities, and no longer identify as Catholic.”

Is this about going to Mass on Sundays, cohabitation, same sex attraction, blended families, or about some, all or even more than this? How do you even begin to discuss this passage without knowing what the original catalyst for the passage was? How do you begin to frame questions that ask, ‘prove to me how attachment to Christ hasn’t grown lukewarm despite being out of synch with Church teachings, disciplines and practices…by what other means can you show strong attachment to Jesus Christ (John 12:26, James 2:17-18)?’?

I admit I was struggling to reconcile the somewhat rosy view the Working Document paints compared to what I am seeing in the pews. Then Philippa Martyr’s article came up while I was trying unsuccessfully to find any online commentary on the Working Document which wasn’t a clone of the official press release. It is well worth a read:
https://gaudiumetspes22.com/2021/03/05/stranded-under-the-southern-cross-news-from-a-shrinking-church/

I found it a more accurate analysis of the Catholic Church in Australia 2021.

In particular I found her imagery of a carapace to be valuable, viz:

“I tend to see the Church in Australia as consisting of the ‘real Church’ and an unpleasant outer structure that I call The Carapace. The Carapace is like The Borg in Star Trek, if it helps. It attaches itself to the real Church and feeds off it. Its principal purpose is to employ people, and its mission is to protect the Church’s assets at all costs.”

What bothers me greatly is that the Instrumentum Laboris seems to be written by the carapace, and the vast majority of the delegates for the Plenary Council sessions will come from the carapace.

What else bothers me is that God seems to be a minor stakeholder among many instead of the One and Only opinion that matters.

Why else would there be so much virtue signaling about sexual abuse, indigenous issues, women in leadership issues, ecology, etc? I’m not saying that they aren’t important, just that they pale into insignificance against the urgency of saving souls from eternities in hell. Dealing with these things of necessity will be part of that primary mission, for the salvation of the people in these minorities, but they should never overshadow that primary mission.

Which matters to God the most?

What matters to God the most?

I put it to you that growth in relationship to Him (holiness), family (His plan that predates Scripture), and bringing people into relationship with Him (mission) and co-operating in expressing His love to others (service: which is the natural overflow of increase in holiness and mission) are what matter most to God.

On everything but service we are not doing well at all, and even our service is usually human powered service rather than Holy Spirit empowered service.

My view from the pew looks like this:

Everything starts from Holy Spirit inspired preaching. But for Holy Spirit inspired preaching to happen lots of prayer, study of scripture and sacred tradition, openness to the charismatic workings of the Holy Spirit and surrender to the workings of the Holy Spirit are necessary; and the preacher has to be able to effectively use the language and language idioms of those he is preaching to.

It is ‘hymns, hospitality and homilies’ or ‘music, ministry and message’ that either engages a newcomer and keeps them returning or turns them off for good. Generally we are mediocre when it comes to hymns and hospitality with the occasional flash of brilliance, but where we consistently fall down is in homilies.

When was the last time a homily encouraged you to pray?
When was the last time a homily invited you to go to confession? (and made it available)
When was the last time a homily opened your eyes to how good and great God is?
When was the last time a homily made you want to know Jesus better?
When was the last time a homily kept you awake and hanging on every word?
When was the last time a homily contained anything memorable that wasn’t a pre-prepared joke?

Every day I pray that God will use the words of the homilist that day to touch hearts. Often I wonder if God hears me because even I can only decode on average 3 words out of 5 from our overseas-born priests, and the most common question when Mass is over is ‘What did he say?’.

But a preacher doesn’t have to be in a pulpit. We pew dwellers are just as bad because we talk far more about parish politics, weather and medical ailments than we ever do (if we ever do) about Jesus, about inspiration we have found in Gospel passages, answers to prayers, and about living out the vocations we have been called to.

There is such laser focus on encouraging priestly vocations that you could be forgiven for thinking that vocations to family life, religious vocations, career vocations and vocations to special non-ordained ministries aren’t important at all. Yet apart from a very few exceptions to the rule, priestly vocations grow in strong families and in devotionally vibrant parishes.

When was the last time you saw any parish-based initiatives for encouraging and supporting marriages and families?

Did you know that Australia has no (nil, nada, ziltch, zero) Retrouvaille ministry/weekends for marriages in crisis?

Schools. Shudder. They are supposed to be places where the Catholic faith is taught and flourishes. Yet they are places where those who do teach the demanding parts of the Gospel are persecuted in various subtle and non-subtle ways. But these days no one in the parish knows anyone with children at the local Catholic primary school, and vice versa, and about the only person who visits both places is the parish priest and any assistant priest. What we actually have are non-government schools. At what point do we call a halt to the massive investment in schools that don’t evangelise, barely catechize and consistently churn out students indistinguishable from atheists and agnostics?

Families with faith have been choosing not to send their children to Catholic schools, many have chosen to home-school, some have chosen Christian schools, and the rest are sending their children to state schools partly because the cost/benefit analysis has swung the other way. In times past parents were willing to pay the extra cost of the Catholic school because it helped support the development of faith in their children.

The view from the pew can look very different from the view of the carapace.

An example may be useful…
In recent years the St Vincent de Paul Society went through a centralization process, and created regional hubs for furniture and other items. The people managing the hubs were happy. Some of the people in the local outlets were happy ‘it’s great, we refer them to the hub’. But those who knew how things worked pre-hub, and the people in need were not happy. Locally there used to be a room where furniture could be stored on a temporary basis. For the hubs to work, they were told rooms like these had to be stopped. The thing is, those rooms enabled society members to respond quickly when needs became manifest. With a hub, you have to send requests up, wait for decisions, and for action to be sent down, and sometimes have to follow-up the requests, all of which means many days, if not weeks, before needs get met. As for the person in need who had enough trouble asking for help the first time, now they have to travel to the hub to get help; and ask for help a second time. How many of them don’t take the extra step? For some the transport costs alone would be prohibitive. For others it was so hard to admit they needed help, it would be a long time before they attempted to admit it again. Or they would seek other alternatives with quicker responses to their urgent emergencies.

Even more seriously, the local outlet loses the opportunity to begin a relationship of accompaniment with that person in need, and the probability of needy people falling through the cracks increases. But the hub managers will only see the turnover of furniture and other items, and fluctuation in staffing levels, and never record or quantify these other losses, and will assume everything is going great guns.

Thankfully there have been moves towards decentralization again.

There are very good reasons why the Church values the principle of subsidiarity, and why any moves towards adding bureaucratic layers for co-ordination of smaller entities has to carefully make sure that the principle of subsidiarity is not violated.

Pope Francis has encouraged leaders to take on the smell of the sheep, to take time to be with those on the fringes and on the front lines. It is the only way to find out what is really going on.

An example may be useful…
A person serving at the diocesan curia has responsibilities for parish support. Most of this person’s time is spent liaising with parish staff and with parish members who voluntarily take on co-ordination roles. The parish support team puts together a Lenten discussion group programme, sends it out to the parishes. Some groups will meet every year regardless. Other groups will only form if there is active encouragement from the pulpit, and some recruitment and engagement of group leaders. Some parishioners will use the contents of the programme privately.

The parish support team will know how many programmes got sent out, and have a rough idea how many groups formed and how many participated. But they don’t usually get information on how many programmes were thrown out because they were still on the display table several weeks later, nor information about why parishioners left them there, nor information about why groups didn’t form, nor why anyone gave up part way through (individually or group). The only way you get that information is by talking incognito (without them knowing what your role is) with people in the pews whom you have never met before and truly listening to what they have to say, even if it isn’t what you want to hear. (eg. “I picked it up, but I put it back when I saw you needed to download stuff. I’m not that good with computers, and there’s no one at home who is any better at it than me, no one who could help me if I got myself into computer trouble.”)

Can you see how from a curial vantage point everything could look rosy, and better than last year? And yet from a pew dweller’s view point it could look very different indeed?

That’s why I am so worried that the Instrumentum Laboris seems to be written by the carapace, and the vast majority of the delegates for the Plenary Council sessions will come from the carapace who haven’t taken on the smell of the sheep.

A few passages from the Instrumentum Laboris caught my eye:

Passage 74 page 27
Rather, Pope Francis, echoing the thoughts of his predecessors since the Second Vatican Council, insists that an authentically Gospel-inspired renewal of the Church flows from a renewed encounter with Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit and gives rise to a ‘pastoral conversion’ of the entire Church, a renewal that is expressed in a ‘missionary option’ or ‘missionary impulse’ for making the saving love of God known in every place.

Amen. Amen. What we all need more than anything is a deeper encounter with Jesus, and a deeper encounter with the Holy Spirit. Without that, nothing, but nothing changes for the better. We can’t make it happen, that is up to God Himself. But we can make the conditions and environment more conducive for those encounters to happen. Things like encouraging private individual prayer, corporate prayer (prayer meetings, public devotions, liturgy), scripture study, reconciling strained relationships, forgiveness of wrongs done to us, getting to know each other better so as to grow in unity, self-discipline, generosity to others, encouraging more frequent visits to the sacrament of penance, and asking God (individually and corporately) to grant us these precious encounters.

Passage 123 page 41
Submissions to the Council also raised what Pope Francis, among others, has identified as the danger of an unhealthy culture of clericalism within the priesthood and in the wider Church. At its most extreme, this has been identified as a significant factor in the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. It can also undermine the mission that belongs to the entire Church and discourage the exercise of gifts within it. Some fundamental questions arise in light of this concern: What are the causes of such a culture of clericalism? What are the theological, structural, psychological or spiritual influences that can contribute to it and how might the Church better equip its clergy and laity for mission today and for increasing co-responsibility in the decades to come?

Clericalism encourages an ‘us and them’ mentality, with ‘us’ being far superior to ‘them’. Sadly our seminaries are still full of it. We have seminarians visiting parishes on placement and making the assumption that no one in the parishes knows how to use incense properly except for them. That assumption most certainly gets up the noses of parishioners who have been serving at the altar and using incense for decades. Then there’s the practice of getting 2nd year seminarians and above to always wear soutanes at Mass, even if they are sitting in the congregation. That’s visibly making an ‘us’ and ‘them’ distinction well before the vocational discernment process has scarcely begun. It is very difficult to get to ‘we’ and ‘team’, albeit with different gifts and vocational callings, if from the ‘get go’ seminarians are treated as heroic and special. For the mission of the Church to proceed, ie the making of disciples of Jesus, clerics can’t do it without laity, and laity can’t do it without clerics. We vitally need each other. It is one of those ‘both/and’ things. Mutual respect will get us much further in that mission than clericalism.

Passage 131 page 43
There is not a well-developed understanding and practice of the Church as a community of missionary disciples. The Plenary Council offers the Church in Australia an opportunity to consider carefully, and prayerfully, what steps must be taken to awaken this awareness of the missionary vocation of every Catholic, for all the baptised are called equally to live and proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

This is true. Although there are sub-groups within parishes that have this awareness eg catechists. Vatican II speaks eloquently of the universal call to holiness and the universal call to mission and so have subsequent papal documents. Encouraging us pew dwellers to read these texts is one thing, helping us to understand how to respond in our own lives is quite another since most of us have no idea what that looks like, nor what it feels like. A possible way forward is gathering and sharing testimonies of how God has used pew dwellers to make disciples, with particular emphasis on how pew dwellers came to understand what God was calling them to do, and how that mission developed over time.

Not everyone is going to be called to be an evangelist (nor to the same evangelistic mission field eg family, co-workers, young people, PSTD sufferers etc); not everyone is going to have a calling to specific works of mercy; not everyone is going to have a calling to accompany people through the RCIA process. So there needs to be intentionality about gathering a wide range of stories, and in presenting them with an openness to the multiplicity of God’s callings. It is really easy to unconsciously fall into the trap of ‘God has called me to be a preacher, it is so wonderful and exciting, therefore God is calling everyone to be preachers’, thereby putting unnecessary burdens/guilt on listeners who may be called to very different missions.

Passage 135 page 44
Underpinning such renewal of practices and methods within dioceses, parishes, migrant communities and movements must be the renewal of sacramental life and prayer among all Catholics for it is the encounter with Christ in the midst of the Church that rekindles hope and makes genuine renewal possible. This is seen in the Emmaus story in Luke’s Gospel (24:13-35) where, in the midst of the disciples’ difficulties and even disillusionment, the faith of the followers of Jesus is restored and a new future opened for them by this encounter.

Without prayer and the sacraments, there is no fuel for mission. We can’t give what we don’t have. What we most need to give are God’s love and access to Jesus. Prayer and the sacraments give us access to the infilling of God’s love, and to experiential encounters with Jesus. We haven’t done a good job of proclaiming this truth about prayer and the sacraments, by and large it has been a well-kept secret, when it should have been ‘shout it from the rooftops’ stuff. Again one of the best ways to renew sacramental life and prayer is to gather testimonies from pew dwellers who are living as missionary disciples. We need to share with each other what a difference prayer (personal and communal) and the sacraments (baptism, penance, eucharist, confirmation, anointing of the sick, marriage, holy orders) make in our lives. It is good news, in fact it is great news. All of them make a big impact. But again, sensitivity is needed, because some people feel and experience lots and some people feel and experience little even when God’s grace is just as active in both. It is all too easy for a focus on feelings and experiences to get us chasing them rather than God, and for this focus to make those who barely feel or experience anything to rate themselves as second class citizens of the kingdom of God. For this reason it is always wise to focus more on the fruits eg growth in patience, generosity, peace, trust, improvement in relationships etc.

Passage 197 page 67
It is this assurance that should encourage us and empower us to speak and act with that parrhesia, that boldness and courage, which are a gift of the Holy Spirit: We need the Spirit’s prompting, lest we be paralyzed by fear and excessive caution, lest we grow used to keeping within safe bounds. Let us remember that closed spaces grow musty and unhealthy. When the Apostles were tempted to let themselves be crippled by danger and threats, they joined in prayer to implore parrhesia: “And now, Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to Your servants to speak Your Word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29). As a result, “when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31).

It is my dearest desire that when the delegates gather for both of the sessions of the Plenary Council that they dedicate somewhere between a half day and a full day as representatives of the faith communities of Australia to imploring this parrhesia for Australia – and that they do so before they start any discussion of the Working Document. What this needs to be is heartfelt spontaneous prayer ebbing and flowing as the Holy Spirit prompts. Apart from an introduction and a conclusion, it needs to be totally unscripted. It needs to be allowing God to dredge up from the depths of our soul’s expressions of our personal, corporate and national desire for Him and for the dynamic action of the Holy Spirit in our midst, in words, songs, groans and anything else He inspires. It needs to include our leaders begging pardon of God for the ways we have failed Him personally and corporately, to include confessing our failures and our shortcomings, and asking God to step in, to take control, to take leadership and give us sure guidance and the courage to respond with an active Yes to everything He wants us to do.

Without this, nothing else will really matter.

Come Holy Spirit, Come!,
and through this Plenary Council
make of this nation Australia
the promised great south land
in complete synch with You.
Amen.

...........................................................................
​
​A printer friendly version is available below, 6 x A4 pages:

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year B, comes from the first chapter of St Mark and shows us what happened in the 24 hours after the man was delivered from evil in the synagogue at Capernaum on the sabbath.

From the people of the town we see a huge response once the sabbath is technically over. It is normally difficult enough getting the ill and the frail to travel in daylight hours, let alone the additional difficulties in travelling in twilight and in the dark; and yet they all come; and their expectant faith is rewarded.

Carefully watch what Jesus does next; because it isn’t what a celebrity would do. A celebrity would enjoy the limelight, and probably take a few curtain calls the next day, and let word of mouth bring increasingly more people to him each day.

Jesus after a very long, tiring and rather amazing day doesn’t sleep for very long, because His priority is spending quality time in prayer with the Father, in order to get grounded again in the reality of that relationship. He gets up long before everyone else, and intentionally seeks out a place of peace and quiet.

And He stays there.

And He waits there.

It is highly likely that Jesus left Simon Peter’s house with whatever travel gear He had.

When day comes we are told ‘Everybody is looking for You’. Some may have searched Peter’s house. Some may have searched Peter’s boat. Others would have looked for Jesus along the lakeside shoreline. Others would have gone looking at the market place, or back in the synagogue.

The only people who actually found Jesus were Peter, James, John and Andrew.

Why is that?

Because they had got to know Jesus enough to be able to work out His likes and dislikes.
Because they knew enough of His character to be able to go looking in the right places.

In some ways this was a test. How well did they know Him? How prepared were they to leave all familiar things behind? Would they follow wherever He lead?

After big ministry days and momentous experiences of God have you noticed that Jesus becomes a little difficult to find? It isn’t uncommon. Often the same test is placed before us. Are we following Jesus for what He can do? Or are we following Jesus because of who He is? And out of a desire to be with Him and get to know Him better?

So that’s the challenge for this week. To examine just how far we are willing to go in order to find Jesus, and to discover whether we are willing to follow Him on His terms or not.

May God help us to be faithful to Him in all seasons, when everything is going more than well, and when everything is dry, arid and lonely, and everything in between. Amen.
​
#GospelReflection   

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time Year B, comes from the first chapter of St Mark and contains an account of how the public ministry of Jesus began.

If it had been up to us, we would have begun preaching and healing straight away after the baptismal experience in the Jordan river. But Jesus has taken extra preparation time, and there must have been a decent time lapse between John’s encounter with Jesus and John getting arrested, which could have been well over 40 days.

The ending of John’s public ministry becomes the signal for Jesus to begin His public ministry.

Where does He choose to begin? Not at the Temple, not in the ancestral lands of Judah and Benjamin, but out in the boondocks of Galilee where there’s a big ethnic mix of Jews, Greeks, Romans and peoples from nearby countries and plenty of descendants of Abraham who don’t know which of the 12 tribes they belong to.

How does He begin? By repeating the message of John to repent and believe, and in the early days without any kind of team at all.

The message of repentance is perennial. If we don’t make some kind of change in our lives, then we aren’t giving God any room to work in us. How can we expect God to do something new in us, if we keep on with the same routine week in and week out? Perhaps it doesn’t have to be a big change, just something small, sustainable and regular, and over time God can lead us step by step into more of Him.

Although sometimes He does ask for the big change.

We know that Peter and Andrew, James and John, had met Jesus before. Last week’s Gospel confirms that. But when the crunch came, and Jesus more or less said, ‘It’s go time, are you coming with me?’, they had to make a complete and total change of lifestyle then and there, or miss out on being disciples of the long awaited Messiah.

Which begs the question, if you had an encounter with Jesus tonight, and He invited you to do something completely different, would you give Him an unequivocal yes, a timid maybe, or a blunt no?

Note that Jesus doesn’t start the next phase of His public ministry with a big team, but with a small team that already has good working relationships with each other.

Jesus seems to be in the business of building solid relationships, not in the business of seeking celebrity. Only solid relationships endure the tests of time and other trials, celebrity is ephemeral.

For those of us seeking likes, comments and shares, this should make us pause and reconsider our priorities, and commit to putting more time and effort into building up the quality of our face to face relationships.

For many of us the ‘kairos’ time has arrived. Many of us have been waiting for a long time for this anointed moment. May God grant us the grace to give Him an unequivocal Yes. Amen.
​
#GospelReflection
​

A Christian is someone who has accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Most of us find the Saviour part easy, and it is the Lord part we struggle with.

​This relatively short talk (34 mins) is one of the best I have ever heard on that topic:

Joe Chircop is one of the founders of the Servants of Jesus Community in Western Sydney, it is an ecumenical community, and this talk was presented in the middle of the lockdown that Sydney experienced from mid March - late May. 2020. His heritage is Maltese.
 
The first 3 mins are rather slow, as they give background to why he is speaking on the Discipleship topic. The last few minutes contain a prayer which extends to all online viewers.
 
Here is an excerpt:
 
Imagine if a young man proposed to a young woman - re marriage - and instead of giving her... and the young woman instead of giving herself she says to the man, you can have my jewellery, you can have my house, you can have my car, you can have my property, you can have my wealth: what would we think of that? We would think that's a bit strange. But actually Jesus is asking us the same thing, but we often say, well I'll give You my tithe, I'll give You my house, my talent or whatever, but refuse to give Him our selves.

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

I am blogging about this talk because I want to be able to find it again, and I am hoping that you might want to find it again too. All too frequently the things we share on social media get submerged and rarely found again.

I see this talk as a great resource for anyone assisting those who have recently accepted Jesus as their Saviour, and for those assisting others on their way to the fullness of the Christian life. As we all know, it is possible to get stuck along the way, and this video will go a long way to helping people get unstuck. It is short enough to be played at a Youth Group or Connect Group as a discussion starter.

Why? Because it often isn't easy to have a conversation about the truths this video contains, and I have rarely heard them expressed so clearly and in an easily understandable way.

But there's another reason I am blogging about this talk, and that is our responsibility to share with others the good things we have found. All too often we come across a great book, podcast episode, twitter thread, newspaper article or video link, and we do nothing to pass that good stuff on to others. 

It doesn't take much effort to write a review of a book and post it online at Amazon, Goodreads or elsewhere. It doesn't take much effort to like and share a podcast episode on Facebook. It doesn't take almost any effort at all to like and retweet a twitter thread. It is normally only a matter of using a search engine to find an online version of the newspaper article and to then share it on social media, or to take a photograph of the article and share that instead. It is rather easy to share YouTube videos on social media, and even easier to click the like button or to add a positive comment.

And yet so few people think to do so.

Your challenge today, should you choose to accept it,
​is to determine which content had the most positive impact upon you and your life during the past 7 days, and to then share it with others in at least 2 different ways, and with at least one of those ways being through social media.   

​After wading through the first third of the Congregation of the Clergy’s Instruction on Parish Renewal, I came across Fr Michael White’s blog on the Parish of the Future, http://nativitypastor.tv/the-parish-of-the-future/ which includes discussion on this Instruction.

He inspired me to attempt my own report on the Instruction, which I had already half begun to think about. Why? Because I’m finding the document hard to decode without some examples to apply it to.

Here is a copy of the Instruction in English, 27 x A4 pages in length:
Don’t worry, it isn’t as quite as much reading as that; the last 8 pages are references for footnotes. 

We all come at these Vatican documents with different lenses, so I will disclose mine. I have lived in both city-suburban and regional parishes, but not yet in a cathedral parish. I have visited parish churches and cathedrals in many parts of Australia and in some overseas locations.
​
I was part of a covenant community at the time they were applying to be recognized as an Association of Christ’s Faithful. Because of this experience, I understand the tensions between an organization that gathers and serves beyond a parish’s boundaries and the parishes where the members of that organization regularly worship.

I also understand, first hand, how it is possible to be members of more than one parish simultaneously, eg weekday parish vs weekend parish; the parish you go to when you are rostered on vs the parish you go to when you are not rostered on; the parish you go to for most things vs the parish you go to for confession; and in these pandemic times and in times of chronic ill health, the parish you live in vs the parish/es you visit for live-streamed Masses.

This would also be the case for those who belong to one of the Eastern rites of the Church, but who also attend the Latin rite. Ditto for those who attend a Traditional Latin Mass regularly but also attend Novos Ordo Masses. Then there are those who attend Masses as part of a national chaplaincy service (eg Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino etc) as well as local parish Masses. Similarly there would be members of the Anglican Ordinariate who from time to time would attend a local parish Mass or non-Ordinariate Mass when on holidays.

The Instruction begins by referencing Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium 27, and this Instruction could be considered a response to that papal challenge.
“I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with Himself.”

The traditional view of parish, in living memory, is situated in a specific geographical location and ministers to the people who inhabit that location, and where you would expect most people to be baptized, married and buried from the parish in that location. In modern society this lifetime identification with a single location is now more the exception than the rule.

It also makes building sustainable ministries quite difficult. A pastor of an inner city parish expressed the difficulty to me something like this: As an inner city parish he had lots of couples who had moved in to be close to work in the CBD, but by the time he had got to know them, they had received an interstate or international transfer with work, or had moved out of their apartments to a location in the suburbs more conducive to bringing up their first child or welcoming their second. The average length of stay of these couples was 3 years. By the time you got to know them, found a fit for their ministry passions and talents, within 6 months they were gone. When the ‘bricks’ keep on moving, it is hard to build anything.

In this context, section 9 of the Instruction makes sense:
9. As a living community of believers, the Parish finds itself in a context whereby the territorial affiliation is increasingly less evident, where places of association are multiplied and where interpersonal relationships risk being dissolved into a virtual world without any commitment or responsibility towards one’s neighbour.

Not all parishes and pastors are equal, and people do vote with their feet if it is convenient to do so. While parish leadership may consider parish loyalty a virtue, in reality many parents choose to attend the parish that has the greatest chance of engaging their children (children’s ministry, youth group, better than average preacher, better than average music, convenient time, ample parking) and adults go where they feel they are receiving the most spiritual nourishment even if they have to travel 30-50 mins away to do so. The concept of staying within the parish boundaries to receive sacramental ministry is quite foreign to many, especially those who don’t live in rural and outback locations.

I do know of current experiments where non-parish faith communities have been given permission to have chaplains and to administer sacraments to their members. What I can’t remember is whether that non-parish faith community was linked to a television-and-parish-mission ministry or whether it was linked to an ecumenical covenant community’s Catholic fellowship. Not that it matters too much, because I can see the logic in bringing someone into sacramental participation among the same people who evangelized them rather than sending them to his/her local parish where they have no personal connection. It also makes some degree of sense that if the person to be initiated into sacramental life has taken on the sense of mission and is growing in the charisms given to that non-parish faith community, then receiving the sacraments within that community will strengthen and support that vocation. Obviously, a non-parish faith community would have to be of substantial size to receive this kind of permission, and would have to demonstrate processes of keeping in communion with the universal church.

But we also live in an age of online communities and movements. Think of Bishop Barron and Word On Fire and of Fr James Mallon and Divine Renovation. It could be argued that they lead far more than the diocesan and parish responsibilities entrusted to them. With their online content, and offline content, they have attracted many people from across the globe who look to them for spiritual nourishment and who have formed online communities of shared faith.

It seems to me that if you are feeding God’s sheep, online or otherwise, and those sheep engage with you in a substantial way, eg sign up for email newsletters, follow on social media, participate in on-going online discussions (eg Alpha, Bible Study, mentorship, online training course, then you have ipso facto pastoral care for them until such time as they have been successfully integrated into an in-real-life parish community. It further seems to me that this Instruction is acknowledging that this pre-evangelism, evangelism, catechesis process is taking place outside the traditional parish model, and also giving it the green light to be explored and developed further.

At minimum, if by sharing the Word of God with people online or offline, we are feeding them, then we should also be praying for them consistently and regularly, even if we don’t yet know what their names are, nor where they live. And this applies as much to lay people and religious, as it does to those ordained to be pastors.

Here’s what the Instruction actually says:

14. With the Parish no longer being the primary gathering and social centre, as in former days, it is thus necessary to find new forms of accompaniment and closeness. A task of this kind ought not to be seen as a burden, but rather as a challenge to be embraced with enthusiasm.
 
16. The Parish territory is no longer a geographical space only, but also the context in which people express their lives in terms of relationships, reciprocal service and ancient traditions. It is in this “existential territory” where the challenges facing the Church in the midst of the community are played out.

18. Ecclesial membership in our present age is less a question of birthplace, much less where someone grew up, as it is about being part of a community by adoption, where the faithful have a more extensive experience of the Word of God than they do of being a body made up of many members, with everyone working for the common good.

These are some other excerpts that caught my attention

24. In these times, marked as they are by indifferentism, individualism and the exclusion of others, the rediscovery of brotherhood is paramount and integral to evangelisation, which is closely linked to human relationships.

25. A Parish must be a place that brings people together and fosters long-term personal relationships, thereby giving people a sense of belonging and being wanted.

27. The Code of Canon Law emphasises that the Parish is not identified as a building or a series of structures, but rather as a specific community of the faithful, where the Parish Priest is the proper pastor.

29. The Parish is a community gathered together by the Holy Spirit to announce the Word of God and bring new children of God to birth in the baptismal font.

I think these excerpts give us permission to think about parishes as groups of sheep under a shepherd, and to loosen our focus on parish buildings and sharpen them on relationships; relationships between pastor and parishioners, and between parishioners who are on a discipleship journey through pre-evangelisation through to missionary discipleship.

What a very different place/community our parishes would be if the commitment to building long term faith-sharing relationships was normal and had some primacy in our structures of accepted/cherished values!

The Instruction has to speak in terms that are universally applicable. It is possible that they had the concept of a personal parish in mind. If you want to know what that looks like in practice, read this article about this parish in Pittsburgh USA:
https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pittsburghs-newest-personal-parish-shines-light-on-the-black-catholic-tradi

The team at Divine Renovation also did a 5 part video series discussing this document. It is worth watching/listening to.
Hopefully this link gets you to the playlist for the full 5 parts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpDOJiw6wP4&list=PLqZfwqi7RxBDzEYiTzvJ0DITKyuJbN7OV

The Instruction also goes into some detail about what is, and isn’t, possible according to Canon Law, and the various ecclesial structures other than the traditional parish which are considered legitimate. That section takes some ploughing through, but it is useful information for everyone to be familiar with. Many of these non-traditional structures are quite common in places considered to be mission territory, and I recognized some of them from my studies in early Australian Catholic history and from conversations with a missionary priest resident in South America.

If God is bringing about something new and more pastorally effective in this post-Covid era, then the recommendation about putting new wine into new wine-skins applies. If the familiar structures are no longer suitable for the mission, then we need to be open to different structures, and to be willing to explore them, as the Holy Spirit leads. This Instruction functions as high octane motivation power to get that exploration and innovation started.

May God bless, protect and empower those who are called to take the permissions given in this Instruction seriously, and who called to be pioneers of the new things God wishes to come forth in this new era.
​
Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles, pray for us.

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

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

Ron Huntley (RH): Good morning.

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

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

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

The Three Phases of Renewal

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

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

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

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

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

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

Senior Leadership Team

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

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

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

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

RH: That's an understatement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Healthy Conflict and Trust

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Process not Programs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Three Able's of Ministry

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

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

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

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

FJM: Healthy things grow and bear fruit.

RH: Amen.

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

And finally transferable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Workshop 4E – Who do we think we are? Models of Parish that help or hinder our mission.

This workshop was led by Lorraine McCarthy, co-ordinator for Alpha in a Catholic Context, and a spiritual director with many years of pastoral associate experience behind her.
You can find her on Facebook and Twitter .

Working out who do we think we are is an important question, because we cannot communicate a clear vision or mission without agreeing about our purpose and identity.

Then we can ask 'Who do people outside the church think we are?'

Lorraine showed us a very good video-clip prepared by the diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and the Any Given Sunday Project about the various reasons people give for not coming to Sunday Mass.

***Hopefully access to the video-clip link will be restored soon www.anygivensundayproject.org

They included: 'I've got to get my life together first'; 'They're hypocrites, who only care about money'; dress code; nervousness; 'I don't believe everything you do'; 'It is only for wimpy girly men'; 'My past is an issue'

We were invited to chat about these reasons, and any others we could come up with.

We have to build a big bridge of trust. Outsiders no longer look favourably upon us as a church.

Before we begin to welcome, we have to break down those barriers.

Trust is not the same as an active personal faith, but it is a step in the right direction.

We were then given three questions to chew on:
•Have you seen evidence of negative attitudes in people on the fringes of your parish?
•How is a bridge of trust built?
•Name one step your parish can take / does take to build bridges of trust in your community.

There is a difference between being a welcoming community and being an inviting community. Building trust has to happen off church property, eg on train trips, down at the footy club.

Who do WE think that we are?

The Church's mission is given in Matthew 28:19-20
Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And look, I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.'

Making Disciples is the core mission statement of our parish.

Pope Francis encourages us in Evangelii Gaudium 25

I am aware that nowadays documents do not arouse the same interest as in the past and that they are quickly forgotten. Nevertheless, I want to emphasize that what I am trying to express here has a programmatic significance and important consequences. I hope that all communities will devote the necessary effort to advancing along the path of a pastoral and missionary conversion which cannot leave things as they presently are. “Mere administration” can no longer be enough. Throughout the world, let us be “permanently in a state of mission”.

Models of Practical Ecclesiology: The Presumptions that hinder our mission

Parish as Social Club
We might see parish as a place for community building, and for leisure and social activities, but we have to ask whether in doing so we are building Christian community. Socialising and Christian Fellowship are very different. Socialising is getting people of like minds together, and excluding those who are 'a little bit different'. Socialising can tie up facilities and resources. Fellowship leads to people saying, 'look how they love one another'.

Parish as Funeral Home
Funerals are an important part of the provision of pastoral care. People with little or no church affiliation expect a funeral Mass and the use of parish facilities for refreshments afterwards. It takes some 6-8 hours for a priest to prepare for a funeral. If he has an 8am Mass and a 10.30am funeral, he has no time and energy for anything else. Funerals, although necessary, have the potential to cripple the timetable and energy of the priests, staff and people of the parish.

Parish as Museum
We have a fixation on the parish buildings and maintaining things of the past, the outward forms of our faith. 80-90% of parish finances can be spent on maintaining, insuring, heating and cooling buildings. The clustering of parishes that is going on means that some parishes have sets of presbyteries, churches and halls. Some of the funds tied up in buildings could be released for more staff or more modern facilities. Are our buildings meeting the needs of our current parish identity or are we doing the equivalent of marching around with pom poms on our feet like the Greek Presidential Guard – relics from times gone by?

Parish as Bank
When a parish is following a maintenance model, its primary focus is on maintaining the flock. Concurrent with this will be a focus on debt reduction and having money in the bank as a buffer. As a parish's average age of member increases, pressure is on to save now to make it through future times of financial aridity. But Jesus Christ calls us to a kind of 'venture capitalism'. If you are asking members to give of their resources to aid the mission of the Church, then if that money is saved in the bank rather than spent on the primary 'making disciples' mission of the Church –something stinks. Often we play it too safe, too careful. When a strong vision is presented, people will buy-in and donate. Disciples are raised up through relationships not through buildings, and you need the parish staff to enable the relationships.

Parish as a School
For many parishes their main missionary and financial focus is the parish school. It is not unusual to see a nice school adjacent to parish plant (church, office. meeting rooms, presbytery etc) that is in poor repair. Some parishes are contributing $30,000 per annum as well as the labour of parish staff members to keep the local parish primary school open for business. How did we get to this situation when the example Jesus gives in the Gospels is of teaching the adults and blessing the children? Traditionally (at least in living memory) we've been teaching the children and blessing the adults! To follow Jesus our teaching priority should be adults not children.

Parish as a Soup Van
In this model the parish exists to provide services to the parish members and to the community. Such a model risks seeing individuals categorised through the specialised care that they need, and not as people called and gifted to serve God's mission.

Evangelii Gaudium 183
Consequently, no one can demand that religion should be relegated to the inner sanctum of personal life, without influence on societal and national life, without concern for the soundness of civil institutions, without a right to offer an opinion on events affecting society. Who would claim to lock up in a church and silence the message of Saint Francis of Assisi or Blessed Teresa of Calcutta? They themselves would have found this unacceptable. An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better that we found it. We love this magnificent planet on which God has put us, and we love the human family which dwells here, with all its tragedies and struggles, its hopes and aspirations, its strengths and weaknesses. The earth is our common home and all of us are brothers and sisters. If indeed “the just ordering of society and of the state is a central responsibility of politics”, the Church “cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice”. All Christians, their pastors included, are called to show concern for the building of a better world. This is essential, for the Church’s social thought is primarily positive: it offers proposals, it works for change and in this sense it constantly points to the hope born of the loving heart of Jesus Christ. At the same time, it unites “its own commitment to that made in the social field by other Churches and Ecclesial Communities, whether at the level of doctrinal reflection or at the practical level”.

We are called to witness with both our words and our actions.

Evangelii Gaudium 200
Since this Exhortation is addressed to members of the Catholic Church, I want to say, with regret, that the worst discrimination which the poor suffer is the lack of spiritual care. The great majority of the poor have a special openness to the faith; they need God and we must not fail to offer them his friendship, his blessing, his word, the celebration of the sacraments and a journey of growth and maturity in the faith. Our preferential option for the poor must mainly translate into a privileged and preferential religious care.

We have to do both together, practical care and spiritual care for those in need, especially the poor. But a parish should primarily be where competent apostles are formed and sent out to bring Jesus Christ to the world through acts of love and mercy. At least some of our energy and resources have to be used to form people to use their gifts. The more apostles we send out, the more all that good stuff we are called to do is multiplied.

At this point workshop participants were invited to discuss the following question: Do you see echoes of these models operating in your own mindset or in your parish?

Archbishop Porteous: 'Evangelisation is not an ecclesial marketing campaign. The Church does what she does because Jesus has changed our relationship to everyone.'

Parish as Photocopier
This is a model for evangelising, discipling and missioning. Evangelisation is the work we do to draw people in, just like the photocopier draws in paper. Everything we do has to have the capacity to draw people in. Discipling is what we do in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA), in schools, in sacramental preparation. Through the catechesis and sacraments people are transformed in Christ, just like the photocopier prints, copies, fold and staples, our task is to imprint Jesus on hearts and souls through their involvement and formation in the parish. Just like you can't get the ink off the photocopied paper, the transformation is meant to be permanent. Missioning is the sending out of apostles. In a photocopier, the paper that comes out the other end is designed to be a message distributed to many. Likewise, the parish is designed to send forth its members to spread the message about Jesus, the Son of God.

This kind of cycle is how the Church (and parish) works best. A healthy parish looks like this, with all three parts working properly. Are our parishes overheated, jammed or gathering dust?

Who wants change? Yes, everybody does.
Who wants to change? Nobody does.

What are the characteristics of a mission-driven parish?
•It is united in how it understands mission
•It regularly talks about mission
•It has multiple experiences available for those at pre-evangelisation, kerygma and catechesis stages
•There is a clear, simple path for discipleship, which is visible and understandable by everyone.

Stages of trust and curiosity
-are where pre-evangelisation is used
Stages of openness and seeking
-are where the kerygma is presented
Stages of discipleship and apostleship
-are where catechesis is offered

The game plan or discipleship path looks like this:
Invitation, Alpha, Alpha team member, Connect group member, Ministry group member, Discipleship group (to each year learn something) and Worship

All parishioners are expected to participate in the game plan at their level of interest.

The culture of discipleship contains an expectation of growth, where the relationship with Jesus and the faith community is nurtured and sustained.

Let's make Pope Francis' dream in Evangelii Gaudium 27 real:
I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channelled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. The renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion can only be understood in this light: as part of an effort to make them more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with Himself. As John Paul II once said to the Bishops of Oceania: “All renewal in the Church must have mission as its goal if it is not to fall prey to a kind of ecclesial introversion”.
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My response

This workshop highlighted what the missing link is: trust. By and large parishes are doing better at greeting and welcoming…but that only works if a newcomer has the courage to enter the door of the church. Too often we sit and wait for them to come, and forget that the first word of the Great Commission Matt 28:18-20 is Go as in 'Go, get 'em'.

So the question becomes, how do we get an outsider to go from thinking of church going folk as weird aliens steeped in stupidity and superstition and a danger to children to thinking of us as people just like them finding real help from God in the struggles of life? It is not going to happen through a letterbox drop or an ad in the local newspaper, it has to be living person to living person. Good quality testimonies on YouTube have their part to play, but won't reassure a viewer about the type of person they would meet if they showed up at church. That's where the dog walking lady who lives on the same street and stops and chats has an infinite edge, if she mentions she goes to church and once in a while says, 'hey, would you like to come too?'.

'Building trust has to happen off church property' and by extension where you naturally find lots of people'. That means we need something to precede kerygma opportunities like Alpha. St Paul Street Evangelisation teams are one way of doing this: http://streetevangelization.com/ . Having a table at the local once a month market stalls is another. Renting vacant space in a busy local shopping centre and setting up an area of prayer and rest, with a corner to listen to personal stories and offer intercessory prayer for needs revealed is something else to consider. Entering teams in local fun runs and walkathons for charitable causes is an option, as is getting together contingents for the public celebration of days of national significance (eg. a lone priest at the local dawn service on Anzac Day will make a much bigger impact if there are 30 parishioners with recognisable name badges with him, who mingle and chat with people they don’t know before and after the ceremonies).

The image that keeps coming back to me is of a car with the motor running, and the wheels turning, but not touching the ground. Unless the rubber of the tyres makes contact with the street, the car will go nowhere. Local parishioner to local person conversation that includes content about prayer, faith, Jesus, and the benefits of worship as a united community is what will get the rubber hitting the road...it might take a few times to gain traction…but that's what will get the missing link of trust active again.

I've seen all these models of parish (except the photocopier) in action. Chances are you have as well.

Parish as social club is a tricky one because generally we have to get to know each other first before we are comfortable to talk about what God has done for us, and is doing with us. Having a culture that expects one to lead to the other, and facilitates it; that's the goal to aim for. Beware of the subtle forms of exclusion: locations difficult to get to by public transport, functions with a cover charge that people on a very tight budget could not afford.

Parish as a funeral home is unavoidable, firstly because burying the dead and praying for them are acts of mercy; secondly because they are moments of truth. Depending on how the family of the deceased is treated, they will either grow in openness to God and parish or they will shake the dust from their feet and never look back.

Parish as museum, parish as bank, parish as a school and parish as soup van are part of our commitment to those of the past who built them up, and part of our commitment to those of the future who will benefit when we are long gone and pushing up daisies. The issue is whether scarce resources are being managed with a balance between maintenance and growth.

Surely we would all laugh at the business owner who didn't have budgets for advertising, public relations, professional development, and product research and development. Without them he'd he would see no growth and sooner or later the business would be insolvent. Likewise we can no longer view budgets for pre-evangelisation, kerygma, and adult catechesis as optional luxuries; they have to be looked on as essential costs of doing 'missionary discipleship' business. Granted, those budgets might have to start small and grow gradually, but they have to start!

I do really like the parish as photocopier analogy. It is very good for helping people understand the making disciples process; highlighting why each part of the process is absolutely necessary and working out which part of the process their God-given gifts have equipped them to serve in most. In this model, let's not forget where the electrical power comes from: co-operation with the Holy Spirit and lots of intercessory prayer. Even the best photocopier will be useless unless the connection to the Holy Spirit power source is switched on.
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In the next issue will be notes from the homily from the third Mass of the conference with Cardinal Wuerl, archbishop bishop of Washington presiding.