I was given my first parish as a reasonably new priest just three short weeks before the devastating Christchurch earthquakes. For Kiwis it was a big parish—a Mass count approaching a 1000 people on the weekend. It was a contented parish, well organised, it had some money in the bank, its biggest age cohort was the 60-75yr olds. A small group of people tended to do the majority of the work, it had a large representative parish council, and an enthusiastic but inexperienced parish priest—me.
When the earthquake struck, this parish burst into life. Good people started doing good things. I personally had multiple funerals to attend to, I had a large team of volunteers bagging emergency food parcels every evening. I had lots of men and their trailers towing barbecues into the worst affected parts of Christchurch to help feed people without electricity. Our main church collapsed into a pile of bricks, but a little steel-framed box of a church also in the parish became our liturgical home and it hummed with activity. Masses were full to overflowing. The ongoing aftershocks, the shifting ground and the uncertainty that this brought, led people to return to their faith.
I left that parish seven years later. Interiorly, I was a broken man. You see, over those seven years things had leaked away. The urgency left us, apathy shifted back in. I didn’t receive complaints, I didn’t receive suggestions, I didn’t receive many requests for anything much at all. We just drifted off to sleep again, happy enough I suppose.
The bishop asked me to take on a smaller semi-rural parish after this, but to be honest I was feeling a bit beaten. Yes, we are custodians of the greatest love story ever told—but so what? I started searching around, I wanted an answer to this riddle. It wasn’t that I hadn’t worked hard, it wasn’t that I lacked endeavour. It wasn’t because I had a parish full of dull people—no, they were good Catholic people.
I felt a failure as a leader, I questioned my own formation. I experienced the devastating loneliness of the Sunday after first Holy Communion Sunday. I woke up to the fact that I had sacramentalised hundreds and hundreds of young people, but I had failed to evangelise them and their families.
So, I arrive in my new parish, and if you are not a parish priest you won’t know this, but I went over to the main filing cabinet in the parish office, and when I opened it up, out slid all these clear files with previous parish renewal programs and restructuring plans. Oh dear. Then I had a little moment of grace, someone told me about a parish here in Australia that was having a time of renewal. I found their email on the internet, and wrote to them. Could they spare me 30 minutes on the phone to share a bit of their story with me. Graciously they said yes.
I remember that phone call quite vividly. The parish is Springfield in Brisbane, and I got my first surprise when the camera started up on the zoom call to Fr Mauro, because he wasn’t alone, he had Vanessa with him. Vanessa was a part of their SLT, they went on to tell me. They have put into place a collaborative leadership strategy. Collaborative leadership—what a thought.
The next hour was hugely important for me, (yes, we went way over time). They painted a picture for me of what parish life might look like. Fr Mauro was clear that collaborative leadership, leading from a team, had rescued his priesthood. He remained firmly the parish priest, but he also came to know the gifts and talents of his parishioners and they were put to work.
Vanessa was outstanding. I could see her passion, I could see her excitement, I could see her sense of what might be possible if we shift our focus away from maintenance to mission. You know above all, that phone call showed me that parish renewal can and does work. After wandering my way as a priest through a decade and a half of parish life they said to me, “Try that door.”
Things moved pretty quickly from that moment. It seemed to me that this notion of a renewal of missionary endeavour is an anointed one. Increasing docility to the Holy Spirit, the best of leadership, and the primacy of evangelisation—the three keys to parish renewal just seemed to make sense. So, I got going on the journey, and better than that, I managed to get a group of brother priests for some of the main parishes in Christchurch to start on the journey with me.
This is a supernatural project, you see if we are going to be on mission in this world, a world that so desperately needs to hear the Gospel, it’s not what we take with us on mission. It’s who we take. And here is the good news—it’s our job to make a decision for Christ, the strength and the power to become missionaries will come from him. You can’t fake this work of renewal.
Leading from a team is a beautiful thing—to my brother priests out there, don’t be afraid! Put together a team that loves the church, put together a team that has been converted, put together a team who will help you.
Cast a vision that is bold, and a mission that is fed from the heart of the church. Trust in the program that has been with the church since the beginning. There is no substitute for Scripture and sacred tradition. It’s the way in which this is communicated which is the key.
