Mass, Saturday 19 Jan 2019, CCRNSW Retreat

Fr Hugh Thomas CSsR was the celebrant for Mass during the #CCRNSW retreat weekend. You can learn a bit more about him here and here.

I include the notes from the Mass because so often the readings for the day amplify or underline themes that have been in the talks, as does the homily. To exclude them would be like serving a dinner without a quarter of the main ingredients.

The readings were taken from Saturday Week 1 in Ordinary Time, Year II, and the proper of the Mass was for Saturdays in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The first reading came from the Letter to the Hebrews beginning, 'The Word of God is alive and active'. The Psalm response was, 'Your Words Lord are Spirit and life'. The Gospel came from the section of St Mark where Jesus calls Levi to follow Him out of the customs house.

Fr Hugh Thomas
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The Word of God is something alive and active. Jim has been giving us the Word of God this morning: Zechariah, Nehemiah, Haggai, Maccabees. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal has brought to us the importance of the Word of God; all of it is precious. Vatican II reminded us of the words of St Jerome, 'Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ'. Is the Word of God still as important to you as in the first days of your baptism in the Spirit? We still need the Word of God every day.

We are all familiar with the Gospel scene. Levi (or Matthew) being a tax collector was despised by decent people. They considered tax collectors to be crooks, and hated them. There is a famous painting of this Gospel scene by Caravaggio. Pope Francis was inspired to take his motto as a bishop 'having mercy and choosing' from this painting, 'The Calling of St Matthew'. Jesus is pointing at him, and Matthew is looking up in amazement: 'Me??' Because of the mercy of God, and still He chose me.

There is some mud sticking around – we all have this – no one can pretend we haven't, and yet we are chosen. Of the billions of people in this world, how many of them know God? Of them, many may know God, but don't know Jesus as Son of God. We are so blessed and chosen. Are you better than them? No. Some of them might be more honourable than us. We are not deserving, yet by His grace he has taken pity on us, chose us, and says, 'Follow Me'.

Matthew invited all his mates to have a big meal with Jesus. What's He doing mixing with this crowd? 'The sick need Me'.
We are all sinners here. Now we've got to go out and spread the fire. It doesn't require a soapbox, but people down the street are in need. We ask Mary to help us receive His message and to live it so to set our city and state on fire.

Session 2, Saturday 19 Jan 2019 with Jim Murphy, president of ICCRS

This is not a conference, but a retreat; so slow down and relax.
In Session 1 we had a look at the historical perspective. I encourage you to read Haggai, Nehemiah and Zechariah. What I've given you is but a snap-shot.

In them are a handful of themes or principles, with universal application.

The first is the sovereignty of God.

Human beings, due to original sin, have a hard time trusting God.

Before the original sin came the original lie. We were created in perfect love, with nothing to hide, with dignity and the strength of relationship. God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening, in a relationship of intimacy. Death, suffering and sickness are not part of God's original plan.

The original lie tapped into our desire to stand on our own two feet – just in case God doesn't come through for us. Maybe the most honest prayer in scripture is 'Lord, I believe, help my unbelief'.

We all fear, worry and doubt – despite seeing God's miracles. How is that?

Every sin, big or little, has in common choosing self over God, built on the foundation of pride. It happens when we choose 'What I want' over 'What God says'. God, have mercy on us.
Why is it hard to trust God? Will He be there for me next time?

When cancer strikes, when a loved one is going through a hard time, we struggle with this on both personal and community levels. When we are afraid, and desperate to find an answer, the temptation is to set up our own power base. Giving in to this temptation leads to failure, because pride comes before the fall. In trying to bring order into the chaos of our lives – if we don't turn to God – we get ourselves into troubles.

Trusting God is counter-intuitive. It goes against our instincts to want to manage our troubles. It is actually a lot like sky diving. Sky diving instructors drill into their students, 'Don't look down at the ground, you have to look up'. If you look down at the ground, you will instinctively bunch up, bunching up leads to broken bones. Don't bunch up.

Instinctively when in trouble we tend to pull in to a tight ball. When something or someone touches a raw nerve we all pull in, it is a natural human reaction. God says, 'Look at Me instead'.

You have new laws about slowing down when passing emergency vehicles with flashing lights. In other parts of the world, you must change lanes. The laws are to reduce accidents caused by vehicles veering into emergency vehicles. Why? Because we tend to move towards what we are looking at.

What are you looking at? Your past, your brokenness, your failure, whatever grinds your teeth. Whatever that is, you are heading towards it deeper and deeper. We have to set our eyes back on the Lord. We have to look at our problems against the backdrop of God's great love. When we focus on God and worship God, therein lies our healing.

We were built to praise and worship God. More healings happen during praise and worship than at healing services.

Helen Heller, who was physically blind, said: When you look at the light, the shadows fall behind'. Even if we feel nothing, it is still the right thing to worship God. 99 out of 100 times, when we praise and worship God amazing things happen.

Let us turn our eyes back to God. God can do so much in a twinkling of an eye.

The book of 2nd Maccabees was written about a 150 years before Jesus. It was written to encourage the Jewish people not to give up against the Greeks, and to not give up on God. In chapter 1 some of that encouragement comes from celebrating the re-dedication of the temple, the anniversary of Nehemiah dedicating the altar and fire, and recalling what God did back then.

When the Babylonian deportation took place, a few of the priests took some of the sacred fire from the altar, and hid it secretly in the hollow of a dry cistern. It had been requested by God that this fire never go out. Only 2 or 3 people knew where this hiding place was.

Many years later, 70-100 years, when it pleased God – in God's time, Nehemiah began the search for the sacred fire. He got the descendants of the priests who had hidden the fire to go look for it in the ruined city. They did find the hidden cistern/well, but there is no fire. Muddy water is all there is to find. Remember, this fire symbolised the presence of God, it was a sacred fire that had burnt for hundreds of years since the time of Moses and Aaron. The 'fire' is gone. Their hearts sink.

Yet Nehemiah, who is not a priest and only a lay man, is inspired. He tells the priestly descendants, 'go get a bucket and scoop up the muddy water'. That's faith. Then he tells them to prepare the altar, and to put the sacrifice on it. So far, so good. Then he tells them to do something absurd. 'Take the muddy water and pour it over the altar and the sacrifice. Just do it'. So they have a new altar covered in mud. Then Nehemiah says, 'Let's wait. Let's wait for the Lord.' So they wait, looking at the pile of mud.

Then at the hour of sacrifice, suddenly out of the mud….a little wisp of smoke. The fire is back! The sacrifice is being offered. They are gobsmacked, and begin to offer the prayers of petition, sacrifice and offering. Wow! We can do nothing without You! Then the priests begin to sing the hymns.

Nehemiah ordered the rest of the muddy liquid to be poured upon stones, and a flame blazed up. But the light cast from the altar was brighter, another light brighter that all these fires, not set by them but by God, a supernatural light that out-shined everything else.

God can do the miraculous in our lives. Sometimes we feel that the fire has gone out and all we have left is mud. It is never too late for God to bring light back into your life. There is still fire coming into the mud and mess and dead stuff in your life. There is still the Spirit of God bringing healing, redemption and freedom. God's plans are for our welfare and a future full of hope.

A friend of mine was driving home from his mistress's home to his wife, quite happy with his life. At some point he reached over to the glove-box, and heard on the radio station, 'My friend, you need God'. He started sobbing for 30-40 minutes, and realised that his life was actually mud. He said, 'Then my car filled with light. I knew I was in the presence of God, who loved me and who was bringing fire to my mud'. That's when God moved.

Don't ever underestimate the power of God when all you have is mud and it is too late. Stop saying 'it's too late', and don't say it anymore.

A fire is coming, of healing and mercy. You do have a future full of hope – not confidence in your mud, but confidence in God's fire. It is coming to all of us.

Maybe we have dumped our mud on the altar, several times and we are waiting. How long did Nehemiah wait? How long would you stand with Nehemiah? How willing are you to stand before Him and say, 'I'm at a complete loss of what to do, I'm at a loss'? How long? We have to ask ourselves this; how long before you write it off as a failure?

Daniel was crying out and asking God for help. The moment God heard your prayer God jumped into action. So why the delay and the anguish? Why don’t you do it right now? Why prolong my agony? Our sense of time and God's sense of time are different – we don’t see the divine perspective. God is never too quick and never too late.

'If you had been here our brother would not have died'. Are we able to get off Chronos time and get onto Kairos time? Doing that means believing that all things are working for good for those who love God. As humans, we want things and we want it now. But we are not God, so we need to choose to believe.

It feels like an eternity between pouring the mud and the time of fire. Those that wait upon the Lord renew their strength. Waiting is one of the greatest disciplines of the Christian life. Waiting says: that I know my Redeemer lives, whatever He does it will ultimately be for my benefit (through the waiting may be with clenched teeth and without feeling). It is a choice, to believe.

God is in charge. He knows our personal and communal situation, whether we see it or not. He is already on His way, according to His divine timing and His divine will. I love it the days I feel it; I proclaim it the days I don't feel it.

Your mud is part of your story, surrender it to Him who can change the ordinary bread and wine (which represents us) at Mass into the body, blood, soul and divinity of His Son Jesus.
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My thoughts

It is so hard to believe in the fire when all you have is mud and ashes.

Why we have to go through these valleys of death befuddles us, but it seems to be God's pattern to have this 'dead as a dodo' stuff before resurrection.

If Jesus had come while Lazarus was still alive, his healing would have been an ordinary miracle. But Jesus let them go through the death, the burial, the morning and grief, and only then did He give them the most extraordinary miracle. If you were able to choose, which miracle path would you select? Are you glad Jesus chose the latter? Are you willing to put up with the extra pain to receive God's extra gain, and the higher and wider purposes that go with it?
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The two images, of the sky diver looking up and of the muddied altar waiting for God's fire resonated strongly with everyone gathered at Pennant Hills, and many took advantage of handing over their mud to God through the sacrament of reconciliation over the 2 days of retreat.

This #CCRNSW retreat weekend was​ held at St Agatha's Pennant Hills 19-20 Jan 2019, with around 200 people attending.

Jim Murphy is the current president of ICCRS (International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services). You can read a bit more about him here. He gave all five of the talks at this retreat weekend.

These talks were recorded on video, and should be available by contacting the team at http://www.ccrnsw.org.au/ .

These notes are only a rough summary /transcription of that first talk. 

Session 1, Saturday 19 Jan 2019
I am delighted to be with you here today. I am happy that this is a retreat and not a conference, an opportunity to come and rest in the presence of the God. He has a word for the Church, for the world, and something personal for you. It is a privilege to experience God. We will take it nice and slow and easy.

The theme for this weekend is a quotation from Zech 4:6
"Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit says the Lord"

We sing about this verse, but God has a bigger context for it. So I will give you the context and story behind this verse. To understand it you need to know about the captivity of the Jewish people in Babylon and the restoration of God's people when they came home.

In David's kingly line some of them were good and some of them were bad. Regularly God sent them prophets to call them back in line with His ways. Sometimes He sent foreign armies as a chastisement; although that looks like punishment, it was actually used to bring the people back to God. Sometimes even more drastic measures are needed. So the Assyrians came and took some into captivity and then when the Babylonians came and took over the Assyrians they took over Judah as well, and dragged them off to captivity too. This was some 600-700 years before Jesus. The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, there was destruction everywhere and the city was wiped out – an unimaginable loss – and the people were scattered everywhere.

Once in captivity the people began to think, 'Why did we rebel against God?' During those 70 or 100 or 150 years of exile other people came in to occupy the land. Then along came the Persians to beat up the Babylonians, and God uses the Persian king to set the people of Israel free. 'You can all go home now'. Amazing! Israel did nothing to regain their freedom. It was the Spirit of God moving in the heart of an unbeliever to make it happen.

Many problems do not have human solutions. God is the master of our destinies. Everyone's life is in the hand of God.

Zechariah was God's prophet for these times, but there were other characters too. Another prophet, Haggai, lived within a 100 years of Zechariah. Haggai's message was, 'It is time to rebuild the Temple, do this first, then build your own homes.'

The task was to rebuild more than just the physical Temple; it was to rebuild the worship of Almighty God. It is not about us, it is about God. When He is No.1 – everything else lines up. Worship God first, and then let Him take care of us. Let's get our priorities right.

Zechariah's main message was a message of restoration, of hope and healing.

There were two governors, Nehemiah and Zerubbabel, they weren't prophets but good men, practical men. They had to figure out, God has spoken – what are we supposed to do in response? What is God's responsibility? What is our responsibility? How much do we sit back? How much are we to be active? Somewhere between the 2 extremes is the right mixture. We are supposed to co-operate with God. It is a mystery of trust and work.

Ezra the priest, and Joshua the priest, had spiritual responsibility for the people.

It took teamwork between the prophets, the secular lay people going with the vision, and the priests, to offer sacrifice, to co-ordinate worship, and to get the people back on track.

There are had different callings and charisms, as Paul reminds us in the Body of Christ (eye, ear, feet) – diversity. What do we have in common? The worship of God. As Pope Francis says (cruxnow.com 11 Nov 2016), 'Do not confuse unity with conformity'. Our unity is in Christ. In the mind of God, diversity makes us strong.

There was a whole process to rebuilding the city. Sometimes work on the city went forward, while no work got done on the temple; sometimes work went forward on the temple, but the worship was lacking. It happened in dribs and drabs. Activity…stop…activity…stop. It was a process, like life, that gradually happens.

Growing closer to God is a process. Progress is not always forward due to human weakness eg two steps forward, one step back. God is willing to transform us incrementally.

At times the people rebuilding the city got discouraged again, and frustrated, and began complaining again, and slipping away from the Lord's path again.

Believe in God enough to forgive you your own failings.

The hardest person you are going to have to forgive is yourself.

Incremental growth, with the constant struggle it requires, has lasting change. Fast growth can be ephemeral. We have to let God be God, and let Him do it His way in dealing with our issues.

Keep in mind the big picture, even though we haven't got the whole story.

That is why prophecy is so important.

What promise has God made to you?

When we lose the big picture we start getting discouraged and wanting to give up.

He wants to give us a big dream to capture our hearts, minds and imaginations – because He doesn't want us to give up.

What work of restoration is God doing in you and in your life?

None of this is an exact science.
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When all the talks are transcribed and blogged, a printer friendly version will be provided.
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My thoughts

Initially I found this interesting, but profoundly discouraging. Why? Because I have been waiting for any kind of progress in any direction for so long, that I didn't want to hear that it might be a Sagrada Familia/Antoni Gaudi-like project that takes 3 or 4 or 5 generations to complete to transform our parishes and dioceses to where God wants them to be. Especially when I have words from international prophetic sources saying increase, acceleration, and harvest ringing in my ears. An extraordinarily compelling vision is required, as in the Sagrada Familia, for each generation to continue working according to the vision. We certainly need God's vision for the work of restoring our parishes and dioceses to health, and yet I suspect that all we have at the moment is desperation for change, any change that might improve the situation, and not much vision and divine direction. To obtain this, we need to gather, and humbly seek God's vision for our local situations in prayer, and reflecting together on the bigger picture given us in the documents of Vatican II and other papal encyclicals, together with the Scriptures. Seeking such a vision won't be a short project either. Perhaps the Australian plenary council process will go a long way towards achieving this.

It has been a little over 2.5 years since I wrote the blog-post 'Towards a Diocesan Social Media Policy'. In that time it has continued to be the most read post of this blog. Perhaps it tapped into a need, and perhaps it needs a bit of an update.

What you may not have known is that the aforementioned blog-post started out as a communication to my then bishop 3.5 years ago. Did I get any response? I think it may have been passed on to someone in the curia who still has it in an in-box somewhere.

But I knew that this wasn't just a local diocesan issue, so I scrubbed the communication of local identifiers and that's how the blog-post came to be.

Given that the blog-post has been read so often, and that there haven't been any comments or private messages about it, in all likelihood it has been read by frustrated social media apostles like myself and not by any movers-and-shakers at diocesan level.

So for you, dear fellow social media apostle in the trenches, this update is for you. I'll go through the original blog-post and update it, and then at various points I'll do the controversial thing and point you to examples of people doing a really good job of soft evangelisation via social media.
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I continue to believe that it is time that something was done to promote what I call 'soft evangelisation' at a diocesan level, as well as at local parish level.

'Soft evangelism' is using social media to provide reminders of God to the unchurched. The aim is to get trickles of good Catholic content into the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and RSS feeds of people who live in the diocese; so that among the Aunt Acid jokes, pet pictures and holiday snaps would be an article about the Pope's latest homily, an image of the mother of Jesus, and a photo from a local parish event. Things that people can easily flick through, and opt in for a read if they wish, but which even for that very brief moment are reminders that God exists.

Soft evangelisation has the capacity to plant seeds of faith that one-to-one evangelisation or parish evangelisation can later reap.

Current Situation

By and large our social media reach is very poor. It doesn't help that the majority of people in the pews don't have a social media account. However it goes a long way to explaining the disconnect between those who actively practice their faith and those far out on the fringe of 'spiritual but not religious' or 'practical atheism' because they aren't rubbing shoulders together either physically or in cyber space.

Many parishes and dioceses have improved their websites over the last 2.5 years to make them more user-friendly for mobile devices, adding in Twitter feeds from Pope Francis (@Pontifex) and uploading parish bulletins, and including a page for new parishioners/visitors/inquirers. Mostly these necessary improvements are happening in urban areas, and sadly there are still many rural and outback parishes without websites.

Yet when it comes to Facebook, very few parishes have a presence, and much fewer parishes have an active presence.

However just about all the schools do have an active Facebook presence because it is such an effective means to get information about changes to routine into the hands of parents, teachers and students ( eg. the school excursion bus for Year 4 is running 30 minutes late; the Reds vs Greens soccer match for under 15s has been cancelled due to wet weather.) The good news is that the necessary expertise is available very close to just about every parish.

As I think Brandon Vogt once said, 'If St Paul was alive today, where would he consider to be the modern Areopagus?' Considering the global possible outreach for minimal effort, social media would be the answer.

This is no longer 'optional extra' stuff. In the world-scape we live in today, any entity that doesn't have an online presence does not exist. Bishops need to insist that parishes have online active presences to 'keep the digital light' on for anyone the Holy Spirit is moving along the path to conversion of heart and mind. That insistence needs to be backed up with resources; computer hardware, internet connections, people expertise, help desks, information how-to packs etc.

Some parishes have begun sending out parish bulletins by email, and this seems to be a very good innovation, as well as being very useful for building up a database of contacts for when urgent information needs to be sent out (think bush fires, road closures, rescheduling of Mass times due to emergency illness of clergy).

Why do Facebook?

Facebook is very good for getting out messages to local people. I really need you to hear that. These days it is even better than putting a press release in the local newspaper.

There are 2 ways this is true.

The first is that for a small outlay of money a parish can get Facebook to put prepared material in front of Facebook users by postcode. The average parish normally has between 1-3 postcodes within its borders. Where do the people most likely to respond to a 'Catholics Come Home' initiative or to an invitation to the next RCIA program? Yes, in those postcodes. Prepare the material well, get it proof read by a handful of unchurched people for like-ability and removal of churchy-jargon. Upload it shortly before the Saturday vigil Mass, and then invite parishioners over that weekend to find it, like it and share it.

To understand the second way you need to unpack how Facebook works. The average person on Facebook has over 200 Facebook friends. Some of these will be family, some will be friends, some will be co-workers, some will be influencers/celebrities/organisations and some will be other parishioners and people they play sport with or do hobbies with. Possibly a third of them will live within the parish postcodes or in nearby suburbs. The more people in your Facebook network who like, share or comment on the same Facebook post, the more you are likely to see it in your Facebook feed. Due to this, a single message about pre-Christmas Reconciliation times could have a large reach, especially in the target postcodes, if it was liked by even 10 parishioners; and it would get seen by well over a 1000 people who don't have access to the parish bulletin and who would never think of looking up a parish website.

Granted, many of them won’t act upon a message like that this year, but if you back it up with prayer, some will act on it next year when they see the message again, and more will act on it the year after, if you keep sending the messages, getting parishioners to like/share/comment, and backing it up with prayer. Even getting an extra five parishioners intentionally using Facebook for this kind of soft evangelisation could double the impact of that message in the parish postcode area.

Why do Twitter?

Because Twitter is where the thinkers, and the deep thinkers are. There are plenty of extremely witty people, too. Twitter is where people share well written articles that have the potential to change political policy and social opinion. If you are passionate about pro-life issues, God's plan for marriage and family, the freedom to preach and practice religion without compromise, and many other Gospel-based values, you need to be on Twitter to support those on the front lines with your likes, shares and comments.

Very early in the proceedings of the 2014 Proclaim Conference Bishop Ingham got up and shared what at the outset seemed to be an innocent ice-breaker, 'Tweet others as you would like them to Tweet you'. It was far more than that. Those words reverberated throughout the conference, and are the words people remember from that conference far more than any of the other content. Only after many months did the penny drop that the only way to do this was to actually have a Twitter account – and use it.

Apart from a great message, reliance upon team work, prayer and the Holy Spirit, what else do the Divine Renovation people from Halifax, Canada have going for them? Ministry team leaders who tweet, and who like, share and comment upon each other's tweets. It gives their ministries enormous global reach, and huge encouragement to those on the journey from maintenance to mission in our parishes and dioceses. Visit @MacLorik, @CoachRobinson1, @frsimoncc, @colautta, @ron_huntley, @FJMallon, @LauraORourke, @divreno, @Tanya_Noye, @K8Robinson and the rest of them to see what is possible if you have even 10 social media tweet-leaders in a parish.

Many urban dioceses now have a social media – photographer team that shares photos, and information about the bishop's activities (eg World Youth Day, ordinations, school openings, official statements etc). They tend to have an inward focus.

Even in social media we have to lead by example and be heading towards the right mix of inward focus and outward focus, because without outward focus we cannot be the missionary disciples we are called to be. The Archdiocese of Toronto is leading the way. @archtoronto produces very high quality infographics on topics like Lectio Divina, the seasons of Christmas, What is Advent? etc as well as simultaneously honouring deceased clergy and giving funeral details, sharing Prayers of the Faithful, announcing Days of Confessions, and all the regular stuff. They are worth studying. Consider liking and sharing their content.

Here's a list of people on Twitter who greatly impress me.
@frpatrickop He has a very good mix of story, images, articles, and video on life as a priest, with musings, blessings, encouragements, simple prayers and thanksgivings. He has hold of the kind of faith that gently attracts and doesn't forcefully proselytise.
@jkuebbing is a Catholic mother and journalist, sharing her experiences of living faith and trust in God in the midst of family life. What she writes and what she shares are always worth the time to stop and read.
@ArchbishopGomez of Los Angeles, his tweets are always worth reading
@BishopZubik of Pittsbugh is also well worth following
@Pontifex for Pope Francis's inspiring daily tweets
@DisabilityJ supporting faith and access to churches for disabled and abled alike

Why do Instagram?

Because Instagram is primarily where the young people are. If you want an insight into how young people think – you have to be there. If you want to have a hope of connecting them into your parish, deanery and diocesan activities, you need to broadcast it through Instagram as well as your other regular channels.

Instagram is also where many of the creatives are: musicians, artists, illustrators, photographers, craft-workers etc.

Instagram has advantages over Twitter because you can write a short article. It has advantages over Facebook because you can see posting history easier and there appears to be no limit for the number of hashtags you can use.

On Instagram you can post short video, multiple photographs, and text. Each post must have an image. Unlike Twitter and Facebook that work better on large screens than on small screens, Instagram is designed specifically for mobile devices. There is a growing trend of people posting on Instagram first and sending secondary versions of those postings to Twitter and Facebook.

It comes into its own particularly at World Youth Day time, when through hashtags you can follow several pilgrimage groups, and get real time coverage of major events from many different perspectives. For me World Youth Day is a major opportunity to discover new social media apostles and start 'following' and supporting them.

@archie.will (a.k.a Archbishop William Goh of Singapore) is very good, uplifting and inspiring.
@srjulia (a.k.a. Sr Julia Mary Darrrenkamp), is a wonderful example of sharing her joy in living a consecrated life and gently inviting us into how wonderful a relationship with Jesus and His mother is.
@frgoyo (Fr. Goyo from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles) shows us faith with a sense of humour, and gratitude for the ways God is acting in people's lives.
@frjasonsmith from New York is also impressive.
@ingamae is providing excellent content to help end abortion.
@litcatholicmemes for doses of humour that contain life giving truth.

Why blog?

Because that's where the longevity is. Have you ever tried to find that great tweet, meme or photo on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram? Even if you can remember who posted and a relevant hashtag, they are still very hard to find, and almost impossible if it over a week old. What's blogged stays blogged and findable by the browser search-bots. Your best content needs to be blogged to give it the longest and widest reach.

These days there are several places offering free technology to set up websites, (eg Weeby, Wix) that have templates to 'choose, drag and drop' and include blog web-page options.
With Weebly, and possibly with some of the others, you can have multiple editors. For parishes and dioceses this means you can give person A responsibility for uploading parish bulletins, person B responsibility for uploading accounts of recent parish events on the blog, person C responsibility for keeping the up-coming-events news up to date etc – and you don’t have to wait for a web designer to schedule time to do it for you.

To have a glance at what's out there, http://topcatholicblogs.com/ is a good place to visit. Aim to get on, and stay on, that site. It requires 6 months minimum of blogging, with a minimum of one blog post per month, staying true to Catholic teaching, be Catholic content, and have a link somewhere back to the TopCatholicBlogs website.

The better the content, and the more frequently and regularly you post to your blog, the more chance it has of succeeding. But it takes perseverance. It takes about 50 blog posts for the browser search-bots to flag you as worthy of notice, and it takes a minimum of 2.5 years to find your style, rhythm and audience, and often a lot longer.

Go for promoting the good, the true and the beautiful. Of course it is easier to grow using controversy or click-bait titles and lists, but that doesn't do much long term good to anyone. Ranting is better done elsewhere, if at all. Take Eph 4:29 as a sure guide, 'Let your words be for the improvement of others, as occasion offers, and do good to your listeners, otherwise you will only be grieving the Holy Spirit'.

You can bet that if you write something particularly good (and this applies to all social media), the first thing you will attract is not praise but a troll. A troll is someone who lurks online for the purpose of starting an argument. It is far better to ignore a troll than to 'feed' them by engaging with them. The only exception to this rule is if you sense that they are genuinely seeking truth, in which case you take the conversation private as soon as possible (eg email).

Connections

Apart from priests and deacons, who preach the Word of God mostly within church walls, those believers who are intentionally using social media for evangelical purposes are the front line troops in the culture war and battle for souls. They deserve the name 'social media apostles'. The vast majority of them serve God in this ministry without any monetary reward at all, despite the many hours it takes to produce and prepare content to upload each posting. These are dedicated warriors and it is more than time that they are recognised as such and publicly honoured, supported and protected at parish, deanery and diocesan levels. Now is the time for co-operation to increase between the bishop's communication team and these social media apostles who can get the bishop's messages into the ears of those that the regular media channels cannot.

Many of them have been lone rangers for a very long time, and they have the skills and the experience to get a worthwhile message out very effectively. It is time that they were officially commissioned by the church for this purpose.

It isn’t difficult to do; it just takes a bit of medium range planning and good communication. (Yes, I know that is hilarious, but with God all things are possible).

A bishop and his communications team should be in regular contact with his bloggers, just like a general should be with his captains. No blogger likes to be micro-managed, but give them a vision for what the bishop wants to achieve and themes for various times of the year together with cogent reasons for that timing, and they will astound you.

For example, if you know there is a political election up ahead and there are one or two topics that are important in that context (eg funding for schools, protection for the seal of the confessional, programs to reduce the incidence of domestic violence etc), get the bishop, his theologians and researchers and the bloggers together as early as possible to brainstorm together how to raise these topics for public conversation and how to share the wisdom of Catholic teaching on those topics in fresh and creative ways. Provide background documents to read, banks of images that are open source and relevant to the topic, and lists of online content for private research. Ask for one post of content a month, on which ever topic speaks to them, until the election is held. The same goes for other things that can be seen coming, eg referendums, plebiscites, Royal Commissions, legislation on pro-life issues coming before state and federal parliaments, diocesan year of Marriage and Family, Year of the Refugee in the universal church, whatever the next Papal document or Bishop's Conference document is to be about.

The more you get to know your bloggers and other social media apostles, the better you can tailor the prepared resource material. For example: A blog that normally does book reviews is going to need good books on the planned topics to review; a blog that usually does scripture meditations is going to need scripture references relating to the planned topics; a blog that comments on quotations from Pope Francis will need references to the planned topics from the speeches and writings of Pope Francis. Of course, your bloggers and social media apostles will still do their own research too, but it sure helps to know where to look, and to have a smorgasbord of excellent content to chew through rather than having to start the research from scratch. If the resource material is very good and the topics are compelling, your bloggers will catch the fire and spread it, and possibly write a whole series on the topic.

Many dioceses have graphic designers on staff. Grant your bloggers and social media apostles 2 hours a month each of your graphic designer's time. That's brainstorming time, idea wresting time and production time. So often the content is written and then a blogger spends just as much time trying to find an image to go with it, an image they have a concept for. Give that concept to the graphic designer and you will get a quality image in a fraction of the time spent previously doing fruitless internet searches. The graphic designer gets some short term wins, and a bit more variety in his or her day, and that's a win-win scenario for everyone. Your bloggers will soon learn that if they want to get an image produced within the 2 hours, then they need to prepare very clear concepts, and any associated text to be used in the image, and allow time for the designer to suggest better solutions or adjustments that will have the same impact but require less time to produce.

Bringing your social media apostles together has other benefits too. If you know someone personally you are far more likely to naturally like, share and positively comment on each other's social media content. I cannot stress enough how crucial this mutual encouragement is. Most social media apostles get so little in the way of positive feedback, particularly on the long lonely road before their content receives widespread recognition. Lack of encouragement is why so many give up before that wonderful moment of 'traction' is reached.

The other benefit is the sharing of technological information, 'tricks of the trade', helping each other bypass common pitfalls and increasing efficiency.

Most social media apostles will welcome topic suggestions, and will definitely welcome resources, as long as they are free to spin it their way, in harmony with the authenticity of their blog.

Good resources would also include access to diocesan image banks for images upon which copyright has already been paid, and information on effective ways of producing memes to go with the text on social media channels. Attaching a relevant quality image to a social media post significantly increases the number of clicks that post receives.

Plan – Step 1 Find your front line troops

One way is to use social media and print media (email, Facebook, Twitter, website, diocesan newsletter etc) get the word out that the bishop wants to connect with his social media apostles. A better way would be to pay attention to who has already been liking, sharing and commenting in useful ways on the existing diocesan social media channels, and who also have existing social media channels of their own, and sending personal invitations to these people. That won't catch them all, so also do some searches using relevant hashtags too (eg name of diocese, name of bishop, recent big diocesan event/conference; #YearOfMercy etc).

Plan – Step 2 Get them together

Initially a Saturday at the diocesan offices would be best, to enable the maximum number of social media apostles to attend. On Saturdays workers are usually at leisure and Mums can find someone to look after the children. Start the day properly with Mass, after registrations, a welcome and a vision for diocesan social media have been presented. First session is on using social media to evangelise. Second session is an overview of how various social media channels work, with a maximum 10 minutes per channel (just because you are proficient in one of them doesn't mean that you know how the others work or what the possibilities are). Third session is where your social media apostles each get 2-3 minutes to introduce themselves and their blog/Twitter handle/Facebook page etc and what they are trying to achieve with it. Some will be more focussed on apologetics, others more focussed on theology, bible study, vocations or family life etc. Fourth session is where people get split up into groups based on social media channel, (bloggers and tweeters, Facebook users, Pinterest and Instagram, Podcasts and YouTube) and learn from each other. Fifth session is re-presentation of diocesan vision, presentation of the diocesan media plan for topics, distribution of free resources, blessing and commissioning. NB Only get people who are actually proficient in evangelising through the various social media channels to lead sessions, and make attendance free.
This is the baseline from which you can build.

Plan – Step 3 Do it again regularly

Aim for four times a year, and make sure you achieve three times a year. Subsequent Social Media Days should have opportunities for feedback at diocesan level and individual level about how things are going (statistics, reach, followers, comments, trends, troll management etc). Take time to pray for each other too, and for God's blessing and guidance upon the development of this apostolate and for God's grace upon the followers of the social media channels and for whatever the next 'can see it coming' media challenges are.

If you start now, and get this moving, the next time an emergency situation hits, you will have a well-trained army ready and willing to spring into action at short notice.

Consider this hypothetical scenario: the bishop of a neighbouring diocese has been called to court to answer allegations of a serious nature. The secular press is having a field day, with op-ed pieces only considering guilt and not innocence, and spinning the story as darkly as possible. If the diocese can put together evidence for the innocence side of the story, or at least context to permit the benefit of the doubt, and then get it into the hands of your social media apostles, the chances of the positive side of the story being told to the community dramatically increase. The chances, too, of a fairer trial, should it ever come to that, dramatically increase as well. However if you don't gather evidence and context, and don’t have a prepared social media army, the community will only get to hear the sensational bad stuff and act on it.

I know I need more examples of lay people to follow social media-wise – I have them, I've just run out of time to include more of them here. I may get an opportunity to add them in later.

Let's pray

Lord Jesus, You know just how urgently teams of social media apostles are needed to spread your gentle yet powerful light one ray at a time. We confess that we have collectively been dragging our feet when it comes to these new ways of spreading Your good news. Please send Your Holy Spirit to encourage Your weary social media apostles, to refresh and reinvigorate those who were doing so well but gave up, and to connect them together for the greater and far more effective plans You have for them. Touch the hearts of bishops and their advisors that they may begin to grasp Your possibilities for this apostolate, and run with it in step with You. Please raise up intercessors who will specifically pray for and spiritually defend these front line troops of Yours. We ask You to inspire Your social media apostles to write words and prepare content and images that will touch the hearts of those who read them and impart profound encounters with Your love to them.
For You. Lord Jesus, nothing is impossible. Amen.
​
St Paul, missionary apostle, pray for us
Mary, Virgin Mother of all the children of God, pray for us.
St John the Baptist, whose cries in the wilderness moved the inhabitants of Jerusalem, pray for us
St Francis de Sales, patron of both bishops and journalists, pray for us
.......................................................................
Interesting lay people on Twitter to follow or study

@VanessaComninos
@Keithhinton8
@oranparkparish
@Lorraine_McCart
@mrslbright
@VermD10
@CatholicNerdy
@margaretfelice
@suzannewalsh
@ColletteBP1

Notice how individual they are, the themes about which they post, and how well their posts can be appreciated by insiders and outsiders alike.

​Come with me as I tip toe among the tulips of memories near and far that show the extent of the 'closed system' mentality that the majority of our Christian communities have. What must the good God think when from His vantage point He sees each closed system and the treasures within each that should be shared for the good of all and the advancement of His kingdom?

These are not in any particular order.

A conversation with a Seventh Day Adventist about how they could see value in 24 hour/7 days a week prayer, but not sure how to get it started or keep it going. Then over a year later listening to a Baptist so excited about what God did through the Morovian Christian community and their 24/7 prayer over many decades. More recently there is the International House of Prayer in Kansas City https://www.ihopkc.org/ that broadcasts 24/7 prayer (or more accurately live worship music). Yet none of them know about the 5th century monastic movement in Constantinople led by St Marcellus Akimetes where with three groups the Divine Office was chanted 24 hours a day. They were called the 'non-resters'. A little later in history with Odo of Cluny in the 10th century there was a revision of the Benedictine Rule to emphasise the praise of God perpetually (24/7). Various religious orders, mostly contemplative ones, continue to practice 24/7 adoration of Jesus present in the Blessed Sacrament (eg Tyburn Nuns). In more recent times there have been perpetual adoration chapels set up in parishes, with massive increases in conversions and vocations arising from them. If you are on Twitter visit the 23 Dec 2018 post of @frpatrickop and the vocations that have come out of 20 years of perpetual adoration in his home parish.

They are all responses to 1 Thess 5:17, 'to pray without ceasing', and there is much we can learn from all of them. Can you imagine God's agony when the on-fire community of Methodists in a capital city starts working towards 24/7 prayer when around the corner there is a chapel of perpetual adoration that has already been going for 4 years?

So much more could happen if we join together rather than expend time and resources 're-inventing the wheel'.
​
Have you wandered into a Christian bookstore recently? I went into a rather well stocked one recently and gave them a list of Christian authors that I had found online. Only about 2 out of 10 were on the shelves, maybe because my list had prophets and non-denominational church leaders with international reputations on it, and the store was more geared to evangelistic resources and family ministry – and apart from the bibles, the only other title that would have been found in a Catholic bookstore was Brother Lawrence's 'The Practice of the Presence of God'. So we have a Christian bookstore largely ignorant of the charismatic/pentecostal dimension of faith, and both ignorant of the swathes of classic Catholic spiritual literature that has withstood the test of many centuries.

Could you imagine what might happily happen if the three groups shared their 'best of the best' with each other, or at least allowed a bit of cross-pollination to occur? Thankfully Amazon Kindle helps that happen for me when birthday and Christmas arrive.

Then we have the Christian talk show hosts on radio, free-to air and paid television services, and via YouTube channels and some of you may have heard of Sid Roth, Larry Sparks, Glory of Zion, Cradio, EWTN, Benny Hinn, God TV, The Catholic Guy, The Journey Home, and there's plenty more. The guest speakers tend to come from a community of people who listen and read each other's stuff. Very little in the way of cross-pollination occurs.

I was encouraged at the Divine Renovation conference 2016 and the inclusion of Lee Kricher's input and the presence of pastoral leaders from other Christian communities in attendance at that event. More of this needs to happen, using either the biblical 'Test all things, hold on to what is good' 1 Thess 5:21 or the more modern Fr James Mallon CASE strategy 'Copy And Steal Everything' from other churches that is working and producing missionary disciples of Jesus.

Any closed system that doesn't get fresh input goes stale.
​
Twenty years ago the then Fr Porteous (now Archbishop) made sure that at Conferences and Summer Schools there would be speakers from outside the Covenant Community systems. He brought in noted moral theologians and scripture scholars and bioethicists, local and international, even bishops noted for orthodoxy and not for charisma, so that we could hear the same truths dressed in different language and with more rigorous insights and thus ground our faith in deeper and richer sources. One year we even had input from the Eastern Rites of the Church. However today I notice that in many places this commitment to fresh input is missing. Yes it is cheaper to use 'home grown' speakers, or speakers who have visited several times in the past, but the growth, the fresh perspectives, the outcomes of having a different mirror held up to your lived experience to reflect upon, that only happens when there is fresh input. Each speaker, no matter how anointed, only has a finite amount of revelation from God to pass on to others.

Variety and cross-pollination in moderation is crucially important.

We need it all, the evangelists, the apologists, the intercessory prayer warriors, the catechists, the theologians, the bible scholars, the prophets, the entrepreneurs in new forms of Christian ministry, the worship leaders, the song-writers, the artists, the social media apostles, the workers of mercy, the talented administrators, the hospitality teams, those with healing and deliverance ministries etc. Anything missing diminishes us as a whole, and each part needs to have fresh input and encouragement on a regular basis.
​
Dear God, may the walls of mutual ignorance come tumbling down soon!

We can only write about what we know, and if you feel like you are in limbo, then know that you are not alone and that I am there with you.

What do I mean by this? Definitely not the classic undefined place between purgatory and heaven, but the state of having no purpose and no direction in the midst of situations well beyond your control to fix and no visible escape hatch: an agonising place of waiting for God to show His hand.

I take a little comfort in the verse and response that begins Morning Prayer, viz
V. O God, come to our aid.
R. O Lord, make haste to help us
– because it indicates that many others of our brothers and sisters in past generations must have felt the same way. Firstly that they were in significant need: and secondly that they felt that God was more than a bit slow in showing up to fix it.
Amen? Amen!

The Psalmist in Psalm 12(13) seems to feel the same way too:

How long, O Lord, will You forget me?
How long will You hide Your face?
How long must I bear grief in my soul,
this sorrow in my heart day and night?
How long shall my enemy prevail?

I think it means we are entitled to ask God what His purpose is in permitting us to undergo this agony of seeing nothing but ashes as the fruit of our efforts (efforts we honestly felt He wanted) and nothing but defeat, decay and distress compounded by dysfunctional leadership around us.

It only makes it worse when people say, 'don't worry; be happy' or remind you that we are supposed to be bearers of Gospel joy, and that it is the joy in our lives that attracts others to Jesus.

About the only thing this limbo situation makes us do is increase our willingness to do anything, absolutely anything, no matter how far-fetched or distasteful, to get out of it.

And still heaven appears to remain silent to our pleas.

How is it so, that the God who tells us that the fields are ripe for harvest has us kicking our heels doing absolutely nothing? Doesn't He realise that making us feel side-lined makes us feel even worse, and unwanted and of no use?

We groan with the Psalmist in these verses from Psalm 42(43):

Since You, O God, are my stronghold,
why have You rejected me?
Why do I go mourning
oppressed by the foe?

All we have to go on is that this must be normal, since St Peter says (1 Peter 1:6-7):

Even though you may for a short time have to bear being plagued by all sorts of trials, so that, when Jesus Christ is revealed, your faith will have been tested and proved like gold – only it is more precious than gold, which is corruptible even though it bears testing by fire – and then you will have praise and glory and honour.

(P.S. It doesn't make me feel any better, either.)

How on earth this is evidence of His faithful love, kindness and goodness is a complete mystery!

​Let us remind Him that even if to Him a thousand years is no more than a day, we don't have that long on earth, and would He please remember us before there is nothing left of us to resurrect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But what's the definition of leadership?

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

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

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

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

Vision

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Structure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We must think about leadership differently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meetings

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

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

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

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

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

There are several different kinds of meetings.

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

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

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

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

Clergy team meetings are a bit shorter.

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

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

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

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

One on one meetings happen weekly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are 5 steps to getting there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question and Answer session

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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