"The word apostolicos comes from apostolay in Greek, which means ‘to send' and the Latin translation of that word is ‘missionary', so to be an apostolic Church means to be a missionary Church, which means to be sent," Fr Mallon told The Catholic Weekly in a recent online interview.

The Divine Renovation approach is aimed a revitalising the missionary intention of parishes in the service of the new evangelisation, including practical ways to go about this process.

"That means to go out from ourselves, not stay in ourselves. Pope Francis says when we stay in ourselves, we become a sick Church, a self-referential Church, in itself, of itself and for itself.

"Going out on mission means going out to evangelise and going out to serve the poor. We're called to make disciples, but we're also called to clothe the naked and visit the prisoners. As someone once said, we go out to the last, the lost and the least."

"The giftedness that resides in any given parish among the laity animates the baptised laity for [this] mission. In contrast, parishes that make their primary purpose caring for the sheep never go fishing because even if they want to they never have time left", Mallon said.

"Parishes who put mission first also do a good job of looking after the sheep because if you're missionary, you're raising up other believers, and the gifts for caring are not just with the ordained; they're within the baptised."

"The ocean is teeming with fish, and Jesus has already said to put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.

"But most Catholic parishes are like fishing boats tied up in the harbour. We paint them and maintain the engine, and we have card socials and coffee socials and bingo in them - we don't go out, we stay in the shelter of our harbours because of fear, indifference, anxiety, uncertainty - and we don't actually obey the commandment of Jesus in a very real way."

"There is no trade-off between growing the faith of our people we have and the call to evangelisation to those we don't - our faith grows through mission, by being sent," he said.

"Like the first apostles in the Upper Room, we may be scared, unsure, not fully formed, but in the Spirit of Christ, we find the courage to embark on mission like those apostles of the Book of Acts who changed the world and the Church through their courage."

While obeying Christ's call to "go make disciples" should be good enough reason to strive to do so, Fr Mallon points out that it's also necessary for the survival of parishes.

"If we don't move to a missionary footing, there's not going to be a Church because the Christendom model of Christian faith being passed via traditional means of family, school, and parish is all gone," he said.

"The spiritual osmosis process that used to happen stopped working because the world around us has changed, and so if we rely on that methodology, all we're going to get each year is smaller and older."

Having advised parishes and dioceses around the world, the Canadian priest says he is seeing the most growth in the UK where the Divine Renovation Ministry is working closely with around 14 per cent of all Catholic parishes.

"There are amazing stories in Canada and the US as well, and parishes in Australia which are very supportive as is the whole Archdiocese of Sydney," he added.

"One of the most powerful stories is of a small parish outside of Christchurch in New Zealand.

It had a church attendance of 500 people each weekend, and last Easter, they baptised 13 adults who came to the church through Alpha.

"It's incredible that this fruit is being produced in even a small rural parish."

Key to parish renewal is leadership from the pastor who has the support of his bishop.

"If you don't have a leader who's got the fire in his bones, it's never going to happen because even with that and also being willing to stay the course, it's hard. It's one of the most difficult things you can do in your life; it's not quick, it takes time.

"Not everyone will go with you; there'll always be a segment of people who absolutely refuse. But the aim is to take most people with you.

"Every time you clarify, you attract and repel, people say, ‘Oh my goodness, I don't want to be a part of that, but other people say, ‘Wow, I want to be a part of that'."

Mallon said his current pastoral role, spearheading an amalgamation of five struggling communities in Nova Scotia, has put him back in touch with the reality of getting parish renewal efforts off the ground.

The "cares of the sheep" can choke efforts at renewal, he said.

"It's the pull of maintenance, and I don't mean maintaining buildings. Most of our parishes are very inward-focused, and there's a gravitational pull towards the centre, whereas mission is about turning outwards," he explained.

"Even for me, who is pretty motivated and passionate, I still need to fight to give even 10 per cent of my energy towards the most important things.

"Sometimes it's the cares of the sheep, the demands of maintenance that strangle the impulse for renewal out of you. I speak to priests all the time, and they're getting crushed by the burden of everything they need to do. It's tough.

"But imagine for a second if we could see many parishes mobilise like this; this is our dream at Divine Renovation Ministry.

"We'll know we're successful when we're lost in the crowd when people no longer talk about us.

"That's our goal, and that's beginning to happen."

• First published in Catholic Weekly. Republished with permission.

At present, the engine running parishes is running low - at about five per cent capacity.

That's what Canada's Fr James Mallon, author of "Divine Renovation — From Maintenance to a Missional Church" and member of the Global Catholic Alpha Board, told around 100 participants at October's Divine Renovation (DR) Aotearoa conference.

At the Hamilton diocese-facilitated Zoom conference, Mallon challenged listeners to dream big - to imagine a parish were running at 60 per cent engine capacity or better.

The ability to unleash the full potential in the Church is found in the People of God, but it doesn't often happen Mallon said.

He then set out a broad overview of the DR framework for turning parishes from "maintenance" to mission. Now operating in 75 countries, Mallon introduced DR to New Zealand at a national priests' assembly in 2018.

DR is not a programme, but a model of parish operation, he said. It is a concrete way of implementing Pope Francis's vision for his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium.

"Some of our best churches do a really good job of saying to people on the outside, you can come in, whereas really what we need to do to be a missionary church is, we have to say to people on the inside, you should go out."

If a parish adopts a missionary posture and allows it to be normalised into its culture, eventually that parish's identity is transformed and becomes a missionary.

Mallon said the three "keys" for Divine Renovation are represented in its new logo.

The first is being open to and utilizing the power of the Holy Spirit.

The second is the "primacy" of evangelization. Mallon said for many parishes, if they address evangelisation at all, they "mush it together with catechesis.

"Guess what happens? Eighty per cent of the energy gets put into catechesis and 20 per cent into evangelization.

"If you want to turn a parish missionary, you have got to over-invest, you have to go to disproportionately invest in evangelization, in adult evangelization". The DR approach encourages parishes to use a tool of adult evangelization, such as Alpha courses adapted for use in the Catholic Church.

"What matters is that you have a tool that is accessible for adults, that is directed at adults, and is accessible to people who don't go to Church, who don't believe."

The third key is developing leadership and training people for it.

"Someone once said that leadership is the gift that unleashes all the other gifts," Mallon said. "And yet we don't train leadership, we don't train priests to be leaders. And we have to offer some leadership..."

These three keys make all the difference, he said.

The Eucharist is the "keyring" in this imagery, linking all the others, being the source and summit of the Christian life. But the Eucharist itself is not the 'locus of evangelization'.

"The Eucharist is not the Church evangelizing," Mallon said.

"The Eucharist is the Church at worship.

"If you actually use the Eucharist successfully to really be a front-line evangelizing tool, you have probably squeezed it to the point where it is not recognizable. That is my conviction.

"The Eucharist is built on a presumption that you believe certain things, that you belong. There are a lot of presumptions there that simply don't apply to your average non-Churchgoer, non-believer person."

Summarising his talk, Mallon said DR is a framework: it's about taking the values inherent in that and putting them to use.

• Michael Otto is the editor of NZ Catholic. First published in NZ Catholic. Republished with permission.
• Image: YouTube

According to Fr James Mallon, it does not have to be this way.

Mallon, a Canadian priest, last week spoke to New Zealand's diocesan priests in Christchurch to explore what he calls "Divine Renovation."

The present century demands new models of ministry and new ways of engaging with society, he says.

"Divine Renovation exists to inspire and equip parishes to become missional."

The "Divine Renovation" programme exists through its network for parishes.

According to the Divine Renovation website, the movement has a goal to inspire and equip 35,000 parishes to become missional and within 10 years to bring 2 million people to Jesus.

Parishes who join the network are coached to move from "maintenance" mode to mission engagement.

As well as coaching, parishes can avail themselves of books, videos, conference workshops and retreats.

Divine Renovation also offers a free Podcast and its own YouTube Channel where the team explores leadership and parish renewal, and invites guests of the podcast to share their experience and expertise.

Mallon says "Divine Renovation" does not have all the answers, but it has many of the right questions.

"We've experienced first-hand what it's like to be a missional parish," he says on his website.

Mallon, along with the team at St Benedict Parish in Halifax, transformed their parish into a vibrant community of missionary disciples.

The national assembly of diocesan priests is held every five years.

The week's programme provided priests with a way to openly reflect on and discuss their own experiences in ministry and how pastoral life might be "renovated."

Sources

• Supplied
• James Mallon (Twitter)
• Divine Renovation
• Image: Supplied