Session 4, Sunday 20 Jan 2019, with Jim Murphy, president of ICCRS

This session began with an invitation to people to share what from yesterday's input resonated most with them.

Jim Murphy

God speaks to the community and He speaks through the community.

Things can be very unfair and unjust, and that's real, but we have to avoid a victim mentality. Remember the bear in the cage? We have to change how we see ourselves.

Some years back Jim met a girl who had been very badly treated for 7 years by her mentally ill mother, chained up and neglected. He asked her, 'How did you forgive your mother?' She answered him by pulling her sleeves back to show the damage still remaining on her arms and wrists and said, 'If I did not forgive her, I would still be in her chains'. This girl became a person of forgiveness and mercy. It is not easy to do. It doesn't mean forgiveness is easy to do. We need grace from God to do it. The only influence we have is on our own hearts.

Do you remember the 3 beliefs from yesterday: Restoration, Role, Providence?

Principle no.1: God is number 1. Either God will do it, or it isn't going to happen.
Principle no.2: The reality of opposition. Ultimately God always wins. Hold onto that.

God is calling you and I to build. 'Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain'. Psalm 127:1

Stop doing things for God. Start doing things with God.

If you think of any New Testament miracle, you would be hard pressed to find one that didn't require the practical assistance of others.

We see the obedience of the servants in filling the water jars at Cana, and we see faith as they bring the dipper to the boss of the wedding feast. When did the miracle happen? Was it after the jars were filled, or was it when the dipper was being taken?

Then with the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes to feed some 40,000 people, the 2 fish and 5 loaves didn't belong to Jesus. He blessed and broke the loaves and fishes, and handed them to the 12, who each walked out to the groups who sat ready.

When Jesus goes to raise Lazarus from the dead, someone has to roll back the grave stone, and others have to unbind him.

There are a few exceptions.

Jesus prefers to work in the context of His people.

God wants us to be part of His work.

We need the power of vision to do the work of building. The book of Zechariah contains many visions, promises and hope for that purpose. I encourage you to read Zechariah and Nehemiah.

Nehemiah showed a special motivational gift in his speeches to the people. Some people have this gift of giving vision to others.

A modern example is how Churchill spoke to the people of England when things were bleak indeed in 1940, 'We will fight them on the beaches….' etc. This gift changed the situation from bleak to determined and hopeful of victory. Napoleon put it another way when he said, 'a leader is a person who deals in hope'.

We need to restore vision in 3 ways.

•The vision of God: Many have a distorted vision of God, so we need to share with them the true vision of God.
•The vision of self: People need a true vision of who they are in Christ. Treat them like a child of God, whether they see it or not.
•The vision of the world situation: Most people don't really get it that they are in a massive battle between Light and Dark.

Nehemiah's vision enabled the people to rise up and start building, and he brought order and teamwork to the process. He set one group clearing the rubble. He set another group rebuilding the north gate. Another group were sent to rebuild the south gate and to watch out for lurking enemies. Another group were given the task of getting the eastern wall up quickly.

Everybody had a specific job to do, which allowed them to focus on their own job and to do it well. We need to marshal our resources like this. The gift of administration and organisation is far from mundane.

This concept of the diversity of work in the re-building means that we don't have to worry about the other projects that the designated groups are doing.

Everyone has a gift, something to give and to contribute to the work of restoration.

And it doesn't have to be a charism.

On a trip to the Middle East, and an Islamic country, I came across men with a 1967 Ford Galaxy. We were able to bond over our shared love and appreciation of this car. They were surprised that a Christian was as car-mad as they were, and this was a 'meeting point' the Holy Spirit used to enable me to talk to them about Jesus.

You are more than your charism; your personality, your temperament, your hobbies, your work can all be 'meeting points' that the Holy Spirit can use to bring people to God.

Each person is essential, not only for what you do, but crucially for what you are.
………………………………………………………………………….When all the talks are transcribed and blogged, a printer friendly version will be provided.
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My thoughts

God wants us to work with Him. It is His preferred way of doing things. But of course, we have to wait for Him to initiate and invite us in. It doesn't work if we start off ourselves and expect God to catch up.

Isn't it a breath of fresh air to hear how important gifts of wise administration are, and how they help the other gifts to work at premium capacity?!

As long as there is a God gifted person in the leadership/gift-co-ordination role, then that frees those called to do works of mercy to concentrate on assisting those in need, while the evangelists do the outreach and the teachers and pastors do the discipleship.

It might also stop us loading each other with guilt for not being gung-ho at everything. Have you noticed how evangelists want everyone to be great evangelists, and prophets want everyone to be great prophets, and preachers want everyone to be great preachers?

It is OK to not be the same. It is OK to have different callings from God. We should be helping everyone to find their unique God-given calling; and not assuming that if God has been calling me in this particular direction that God is calling you in the same direction too.
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Every gifting has levels: there's the ordinary level that God can call upon anyone at any time to exercise; there's a ministry level or area where a charism is frequently used by God; then there's an office level for gifts recognised by the community as having far more than local reach and authority (city, regional, national, international)

Session 3, Saturday 19 Jan 2019 with Jim Murphy, President of ICCRS

The story of God's people is also our story and my story.

The first theme, putting the Lord No. 1 is essential. Our God can do the impossible. Regularly we go down to Mexico to minister to people in the rubbish dumps. We took 418 food bags with dried goods in them, and 650 people came, and they all collected food bags. He multiplies food. Don't ever tell God what He can't do.

If God is the main thing, then we should be a deo-centric culture, with praise and worship at the heart of all we do. There is a danger in ministry where we let ourselves get busy doing things for God and neglecting our personal time to be with God. The main thing is God. Try not to let the secondary role become the primary role.

Is my whole life deo-centric, built around Him, in all aspects?

When God is at work, you can bet money there will be opposition from the enemy of humanity (that's what St Ignatius calls him).

Zechariah chapter 3 gives us an example of this opposition.
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing at the altar of the Lord, with satan standing beside him accusing him. The angel said, 'May God rebuke you'. Joshua was standing in filthy garments. The angel said, ' Take off his filthy garments and clothe him in festal garments and a clean mitre. See, I have taken away your guilt.'

This is very similar to the story of Isaiah saying, 'Woe, is me, I have unclean lips', and an angel taking a hot coal from the altar and touching Isaiah's lips with it to remove his guilt.

Joshua represents not only himself, but also the people. Standing beside him is the father of lies, the accuser of the brethren, dumping accusation upon accusation upon Joshua. Be aware of this tactic of accusations. The purpose of them is to increase discouragement and hopelessness, often by playing tapes of past hurts and failures back in your head. They don't even have to be of past sins, any stupid comment of condemnation will do. God wants to remove the old and replace them with garments of celebration and marks of office.

God wants to remove that brokenness and clothe us in righteousness and to equip all to do the work of the Lord. This is God's desire for each man, woman and child. Everyone has a call and a vocation. There are no spectators in the kingdom of God. Everyone has something they were literally created to do.

The Lord silences the accusation, then God removes the gunk. He gives you your true identity and dignity. The evil one wants us to look down, the Holy One wants us to look up.

People often start acting out what they believe about themselves. Teachers look forward to school photo day, because that day being dressed up for the photo the students treat each other differently, and act differently.

In Texas there was a great teacher who left her cushy job and went to teach in a school for troubled kids. Before starting, the teacher asked to read the basic files on all who were to be her new students. In those files the teacher discovered that all of the new students had very high IQ's, genius level ones. So when the teacher met them for the first time the teacher was gushing, 'How excited and privileged I am to be working with you this year. I am going to push you. This is going to be a great year. There will be extra work for you, but you are so capable of it.'

Sure enough the year was transformational for these students. They discovered that they were capable of more than they ever dreamed they could be. What were hoodlums were changed into stars. It was only a long time later that the teacher discovered that it wasn't IQ scores in those basic files, but locker numbers (183, 184…). This teacher treated these students in a way that helped them find who they really were.

Do you treat everyone around you like a genius?
Do you treat everyone as a child of God?

Some years back I was in youth ministry at a parish, and there was this really difficult kid. I didn't like him at all. But God said, 'I want you to hang out with this kid more'. So I did. Then one day this kid says to me, 'What are you doing? Are you trying to change me? I am not worth your time. My Dad has told me I am nothing and will never be anything.'

Be mindful of how we treat others. Don't be an unwilling accomplice of the evil one.

God wants to restore the true authentic image of His will for us.
Take it on faith, whether you feel it or not.
God is bigger than the opposition.

Let's look at another kind of opposition. When Nehemiah brought the exiles back there were all kinds of other people living in the Holy Land. There were a whole lot of people who didn't want the Israelites back, and who exhibited hostility and enmity, overt and subtle towards them. No one was happy to see them come back.

For a host of reasons there are people who will oppose what you want to do, for all kinds of motives. Even our friends will oppose and resist.

Nehemiah did an interesting thing, he ordered the people to do two things. The first one was for everyone to sleep with their weapons in their hands. Then he set half the people to building the wall, and the other half to shielding and protecting the builders.

So this kind of opposition is dealt with in 2 ways; we carry our own weapons and one half of the group protects the other half.
You have a responsibility for your own life- only you. It is really easy to slide into a victim mentality, and very hard to get out of it. It is easy to stay trapped.

There was a new zoo in Germany, custom built habitats without cages and separated by moats. The bear exhibit had been created to delight the bears as much as Disney world delights children. To populate the zoo, the zoo was buying up circus animals. They found a circus bear who lived in a cage, and spent most of its life going 5 paces forward and 5 paces backwards. The zoo was so excited about this bear seeing the habitat for the first time that they called in the video cameras. They opened the cage, and the bear looked out, and then paced back and forth in the cage. The bear had to be lured out of the cage with bits of meat and a cattle prod. Now this massive bear was out of the cage for the first time since it was a small cub. What did the bear do? It still kept going 5 paces forwards and 5 paces backwards. The bear might have been out of the cage, but it was going to be much harder to get the cage out of the bear.

Even if you were dealt a bad hand in life like that bear, it is not the end of your story.

What are the weapons Nehemiah wants us to sleep with?

There are 5 things that together lead to spiritual prosperity:
Prayer
Scripture
Sacraments
Community
Service

These are the 5 normal ways God works in our lives. You will languish without them. They are the weapons we need to fight for ourselves.

When I am a victim, the whole world is about me. Serving helps us see the needs of others.

If you make these 5 things part of daily life, they are the best weapons for self protection.

We need this sense of belonging to each other. If half of us build and half of us protect, then we get it done together.

Gossip and criticism, we all fall into it.

Do you realise that each time we talk about each other and have a joke at each other (especially about that other person's weakness) we paint a target on them, and we are not protecting them. In fact we are giving the evil one the GPS co-ordinates of their weaknesses.

We are called to bear with each other. As long as we are alive, we will misunderstand and hurt each other. The trick is, what mechanism do we have to talk it through? We can get past this if we ask the Lord.

We have lots of superficial relationships. We don't know how to deal with disagreements. Something goes wrong, and people are not seen again.

Reconciliation comes from the Latin: re for again, con for with; cilia for eyelashes. When you are at odds with people it is hard to look at them. It is the human condition. Find a way to be reconciled to one another. What can't be done humanly can be done spiritually.

Say I have a problem with pride. Everyone knows about it except me. Wouldn't it be good if someone stood between satan and me, and stood in a spirit of prayer, fasting, compassion and mercy? Will you cover me instead of expose me?

Jesus did that. Jesus died for us in the weakest area of our lives, the places that drive our nearest and dearest nuts. Will you stand with Jesus there?

Doing this lets God help people to see their faults rather than letting satan know where those faults are. It is such an important principle!

Opposition during restoration. The people who came back with Nehemiah got discouraged and overwhelmed. They began the work of restoration, days, weeks, months, years of it. At some point the people just got tired and discouraged.

There are times when we too go through the motions without enthusiasm. It is OK that we get tired and weary. It is OK to say, 'Lord we are tired, we need restoration, renewal and refreshing'. God has got to stir something up that we just don't have.

Together let us seek how to turn back to the Lord and find the pulse and fire again.

God wants us to have that enthusiasm again, but we must ask for it.

Nehemiah's builders started fighting each other – which wasn't real smart given they had enemies on every side – but it is a normal human tendency. We feel freer to be meaner towards the people that we love. Why is that? Under pressure we start snapping at each other.

The Lord pleads with us for unity and for us to love each other. We have enough opposition out there, we don’t need the internal stuff.

Even as they rebuild, the people start to go back to their old ways and to go off track again. How do we hold up the vision of what God wants, aware of the gap of where we have fallen to? There is tension between 'what God wants' vs 'where the people are'. Sometimes God says, 'stir them up and correct and rebuke them', and sometimes we need to gently walk with and accompany people.

May the Holy Spirit give you guidance about how to cover that gap. You can't yell at people to change – that doesn't work. You can't lower standards either – that doesn't work.

Nehemiah began the restoration work with provisions from King Cyrus. However sometimes the supplier ran out of supplies or the enemies cut off the supply chain.

Know this: If God has given you a project to do, He will give you the means to do it. It may not match our ideas of how it should look, but He will give you all you need to do the job according to how He wants it to look. If things you think you need don’t come, then they may not be needed. Trust in the provision of God. His plans are not always as flowery and ornate as we like to imagine them to be.

Dare to dream that God wants to do a work of restoration in His people.

If you believe in God's plan of restoration, do you believe that you have some role in that plan?

If God wants to do a restoration work, can you believe God will equip His people with all that is needed to do the job?

Pray about these three things:
God is doing a work of restoration.
In some way, you play a role in that restoration.
God will give you and us all that is necessary for that restoration.

Let them percolate in your heart. Tell God about the one you have the greatest trouble believing.
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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

Do you get the impression that the work of restoration that God wants to do is bigger and more extensive than we can imagine? It is much bigger than our parish's plan for this year. It is much bigger than the diocesan 5 year plan. It is about bringing a whole civilisation back to Him, and making it Christo-centric.

We can't do it alone; we can only do it in co-operation with God and as a community.
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The restoration work occurs under battle conditions, and can only go ahead if our personal spiritual weapons are battle ready and if we protect each other. Every builder needs a prayer warrior-intercessor. How we treat each other and talk about each other matters.

The Gospel for the weekend of 9/10 February 2019, 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C, is taken from the beginning of Chapter 5 of St Luke. It tells the story of the miraculous catch of fish that St Peter experienced, but it is much more than that. It is also the story of Jesus going fishing for a big fish (Peter) and the series of mission-aptitude tests Jesus put him through before he was accepted. It also has a lot to say about what Jesus might be doing with many of us it this season of grace.

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

The scene opens with Jesus loitering along the lake-side one morning. Gradually a bit of a crowd gathers and He begins to preach to them, but they aren't the main event today, Peter is.

So Jesus preaches while He waits for Peter's boat to come into shore.

We can take it for granted that Jesus and Peter already knew of each other, most residents of a small lake-side town do. Peter may have been sufficiently curious about this new preacher to pull in to shore where he could do things at once, wash and clean the fishing nets and surreptitiously listen to Jesus.

Now Peter and his crew (see, he already has leadership skills; tick) have been out fishing all night and they have caught nothing; absolutely nothing.

To get a better understanding of this, reading the Wiki Bible page on 'Fishing in the Bible and the Ancient Near East' is invaluable.

Here are two very useful excerpts from it:

There are three main components of a net; the head rope, the netting, and the foot rope. The head rope or “lead” rope is a thicker rope at the top of the net that usually has cork attached in order that this would be the rope closest to the surface of the water. From the head rope the net itself is attached. This net can vary in size depending on the targeted species of fish. A much smaller mesh net would be required to catch sardines, whereas a larger mesh would be used for larger species of fish. This netting material would be composed of smaller diameter line weaved in such a way to make many small squares. At the bottom of this mesh netting would be attached the foot rope. The foot rope would be of a similar diameter as the head rope, but attached to it would be stone weights. These weights would ensure that the foot rope would be the rope at was the closest to the bottom, thus stretching the net between the head and foot rope.

The Cast-Net is a type of net circular in shape, measuring from six to eight metres in diameter. There is no head-rope on this net; however, it does have the foot-rope that is attached to the outside diameter of this net. Attached to the foot-rope there are weights attached, to allow the net to sink quickly. As the name may imply this net cast or thrown by a single person either from a shallow area or water or from a boat. As this net is cast it spreads out and lands on the water like a parachute, descending quickly trapping any fish that are underneath of it. After the net is on the bottom there were two approaches to retrieving the fish from the net. The first way was that the fisherman would dive to the bottom and retrieve the fish individually placing them in to a pouch. The other method for retrieving the captured fish was to dive down and gather the foot-rope and bring up the catch all at once.

So the fishermen would head out at night, using the moonlight to help locate shoals of fish, and use a cast-net or a trammel net. They would wait for the net to sink, and then one of them jumps overboard to locate the foot rope and bring it back to the boat, and then the whole crew would use the foot rope to haul the net in. Each pay-out of the nets took time. The diver had to be fit and be a bit on the fear-less side.

Most people if they had 2 or 3 hours of fishing like this with no result would write the night off, go home get some sleep and try again the next night. But Peter and his crew fished the whole night long and caught nothing. Each time they got their hopes up, and each time they were disappointed. Are you getting an idea of Peter's capacity for endurance and perseverance? (tick) Are you impressed that the rest of them didn't mutiny? (tick) Are you also wondering what was so important that they needed a good catch of fish that night and were willing to do whatever it took to get it? Me, too. There was something extra specially important about the need for this catch of fish to be good.

The disappointment, dejection and tiredness of Peter and his crew would have been glaringly obvious, and yet they all had enough discipline (tick) and professionalism (tick) to clean and wash the nets before heading for the bliss of sleep.

Jesus knows all this, and still He does this very Zacchaeus-like thing – He gets into Peter's boat and asks if He can use it as a pulpit. Great! Now it is going to be even longer before Peter can head for snooze land. Yet Peter does it, are you impressed with his generosity? (tick) This was very much 'going the extra mile', wasn't it?

Now Jesus has what He wants, a captive audience in Peter. I think we can be very sure that when Jesus was preaching from the boat, that His primary focus was on what would touch Peter's heart and His secondary focus was on the crowd listening.

'Yay, Jesus is wrapping up His talk, maybe I can get some shut-eye now.' Uh-uh. Jesus asks even more of Peter. Jesus asks Him to go back to the fishing area, (more rowing!), and to go out into deeper water than Peter was comfortable diving in. This is, according to Peter's experience, a most futile endeavour, and yet Peter now has enough respect for Jesus to call Him 'Master'. Peter states his objections, and goes against every one of his instincts, and gives it a go. That's even more generosity (tick) and bravery (tick).

Jesus is still in the boat. If you had set up such a huge 'gotcha' for Peter, you would have wanted to see Peter's reaction first hand too.

Over the side of the boat Peter goes to get the foot rope, and there's fish! Hold on, there's lots of fish. Gulp. These fish could sink the boat!!!! Can you imagine the frantic panic that overtook Peter then as he tied to get the attention of his mates way off back on the shoreline?

Mind you, why were his tired mates still lake-side? Did they care enough about him to keep watch, or were they fascinated by this latest harebrained activity and wanted to see what happened, or a bit of both?

So there's a lot of 'Can we make it out of this alive?' thoughts crowding out the thoughts of the catch of fish, until the other boat comes to help. Now there's two boats at sinking point.

Archaeological finds suggest that Peter's boat was around 9 metres long, 2.5 metres wide and a metre deep. A rough estimate would then be 7 cubic metres of squirming fish per boat.

At last the 'Are we going to have a watery grave' crisis is over, and the size of the fish haul penetrates Peter's brain. Jesus did this? Where's Jesus? Sitting among the 7 cubic metres of fish, enjoying Himself to the full, with an incredible smile and total joy.

Peter slip, slop, slides over to where Jesus is on one of the rowing benches. He can't get to Jesus' feet, there's so many fish, but he can get to His knees. Peter's gobsmacked response is 'Leave me, Lord, I am a sinful man'. Jesus has gone from 'Master', to 'Lord', a term of divinity, in Peter's vocabulary. Jesus has all of Peter's heart and all of Peter's attention.

Mission accomplished.

Now, only now, does Jesus reveal Peter's new mission as a fisher of men. Peter has passed all the pre-mission aptitude tests, here is Peter's promotion.

They still have some qualms getting back to shore with these two dangerously full boats, but they get there. Full to the brim, just like the water jars which contained the miraculous wine. Just enough to fill; not enough to overfill.

And how does this relate to us?

Have you been working away at something with no results for what feels like forever?

Then Jesus might have something very special in store for you; but it is going to ask more of you when you feel like you have nothing left; and maybe more than once. It is going to include getting out of your comfort zone and doing something at His orders that on the surface of it makes no sense whatsoever. You may feel swamped and like you are even on the brink of losing everything, including your life, but it will be worth it.

It all comes down to, 'Are you willing to keep on saying Yes to Jesus, no matter what?'

That is what will get you through to the other side, from desert, to break-through to new mission-mantle.

Keep that look of joy and approval on Jesus' face before you, to keep you going.
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St Peter, pray for us, we are going to need it big time.

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.
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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
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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'.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Above all, trust in Him and don't fret. He knows what He is about, and how to achieve the greatest good.