At the Spirit caf

Renewing the parish: 5

To support new fire parishes need small groups. But how to form them? The director of Catholic Evangelisation Services explains the CaFE programme

OUR parishes need to become communities of proclamation. That many are not is evident from a bald statistic deduced from figures in the Catholic Directory for 2002: for every 1,000 Mass-going Catholics in England and Wales in 2001, only 4.5 new members entered the Church. Clearly, it is not enough to receive the sacraments each week, and to repeat the routines. People need to meet Jesus and be breathed on by his Spirit.

I know this from my own personal experience. I lapsed from the Church at the age of 14 and spent 10 years experiencing all that the world had to offer. In my mid-20s, addicted to hard drugs and in a desperate state, I crawled back to the Church seeking help and healing. The sacraments, a loving community, good liturgy ? as important as these things are to me now, they would not have been enough for me then. I needed to experience the ?fire? of Pentecost in a personal way. And I did, from a group of Catholic parishioners who dared to run an evangelisation and renewal course. It was by hearing the clear message of the Gospel, preached with faith, and the challenge to respond personally to Christ as an adult, that the process of transformation and healing in my life could begin.

With a small team based at the Westminster Pastoral Centre in London Colney, I began in 1996 to try to ?bottle? this experience, initially by promoting the Alpha course and other similar resources. But we came up against a harsh reality: the culture in Catholic parishes in Britain is often unable to sustain new life. This has been the experience of countless people who join the Church through the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) programme: they often have intense journeys of faith in their temporary small group, but find after being received at Easter that they cannot easily continue on those journeys because in the wider parish community there are no similar small groups ?fired by the Holy Spirit? ? as Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O?Connor described them at the beginning of this series. People cannot say ?yes? in isolation; to live it out, they need the support of a community. This is at the heart of the Church?s story, yet it is seldom realised in parishes.

This was confirmed for me by Cardinal James Stafford, president of the Vatican?s laity council, whom I met in Rome in 1997. He painted a dramatic picture of parishes in northern Europe as lukewarm; as he put it in an article in L?Osservatore Romano, ?the spiritual needs of many Catholic lay people are not being met through the traditional institutions of the Church?. He challenged us to learn from the new church movements and to develop teaching resources for ordinary Catholics that could at the same time help to produce small groups within parishes able to sustain and nurture the new life. Also in Rome we met Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, the charismatic Capuchin Preacher to the Papal Household, who spoke passionately to us of the need for Catholics to drink from the deep wells of the Church in order to be empowered for mission. ?Come to England?, we said, excited; ?we will film you, and put out your videos for use in small groups around the country.? To our amazement, he agreed, and 12 months later gave a retreat at Ratcliffe College in Leicestershire. We put his talks on seven videos and advertised them in The Tablet. We were inundated with orders from countries throughout the English-speaking world.

The feedback was even more startling than the take-up. Large numbers of Catholics, we heard, were meeting together to watch the videos, then sharing reflections with each other and praying in response. Clearly we were on to something. Our Cantalamessa viewers had shown us how videos could enable Catholic parishes to develop a culture in which people discuss and share their faith in an informal, caf?-type atmosphere, and gradually come to a deeper relationship with God and with each other. Over the next five years ? with much hard fundraising ? we filmed eight more video series. Then, last year, with the encouragement of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O?Connor, we launched CaFE ? Catholic Faith Exploration ? which brings together the video series into a flexible, open-ended ?process? of parish renewal.

The response has been overwhelming. More than 600 parishes in Britain are now running CaFE, and many hundreds more are using the resources in different ways: as a parish mini-mission, for the RCIA, or to help prepare for the reception of sacraments. Usually around 60-70 parishioners turn up ? perhaps 20 per cent of the parish ? but we hear of parishes where just under half of the Massgoers attend. Barely a day goes by without our office receiving an urgent request for video series to use with teenagers, which we are now working on.

What is it about CaFE that works so well? From our expanding piles of feedback forms, certain recurrent themes suggest that there are common factors in successful parish renewal.

First, format and environment are fundamental. Videos, as the creators of the Alpha course know, suit modern life. The Gospel is an unchanging message but the packaging has to be ?reshaped with boldness?, as Pope Paul VI said in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi. Well-made videos, with colour, multimedia, drama and humour, are accessible, and easy on the eyes and ears. The best way to teach is through a good live speaker, but the worst way is through a bad live speaker. Somewhere inbetween comes a good video.

Then there is the hospitality. A warm, welcoming caf?-style environment is created with tablecloths, candle and a glass of wine. Many people do not associate church with such a welcome, which helps to build the bridge from Sunday to Monday.

But while people seek community, a place where they can be themselves and share their journey with others, they live in a culture hostile to belonging. CaFE introduces basic communities gently ? it has been described by one priest as ?small groups by stealth? ? over the course of a year, divided into three seven-week ?terms? or modules.

During the first batch of seven talks ? ?Knowing God Better? ? people simply gather together and get to know each other without any threat of commitment. Without them realising, they begin naturally to discuss their faith; they watch the videos, and move around freely. They do not have to answer questions and can come and go as they wish. Later, when it comes to the second series of talks, ?Exploring the Catholic Church?, they are asked to stick with one group led by trained facilitators.

At the end of the third series later that year, ?Catholics Making a Difference?, participants are asked how they can make a difference as a group. They might choose, for example, to put CaFE on again from the beginning for other parishioners, or for parents at the local Catholic school; or to take action for justice in the world; or to form groups meeting in homes (there are other video series they can watch). The key is for them to reach out somehow, so that they become evangelistic, rather than just holy huddles. In this way, CaFE allows ordinary lay people to be inducted into small groups while gradually assuming greater responsbility for the parish.

One parish priest who testifies to that sense of responsibility as the major fruit of renewal is Fr Bernard Massey of St Augustine of Canterbury?s in Bristol, which uses CaFE. Renewal happens, he believes, when ?people realise it?s their church. It?s their parish. They need to take ownership, and say, ?this is my church?. Some people can?t be active, but they support through prayer and giving encouragement. An old lady congratulating a teenager on her playing at Mass ? that means a lot?.

Fr Massey?s parish has grown by 25 per cent in the past six years. He cannot say how much of this growth is attributable to the work two years ago of the Sion Community, a charismatic group which organises parish missions, and the programmes ? including CaFE ? which followed. But he believes they have been crucial in changing the culture of the parish. He sees a strong growth in the sense of community and of spirituality in the parish, which has become more evangelistic, more geared to mission. People began getting involved, he says, and seeing that the impossible was possible. They realised they could move projects ahead without waiting for his say-so, or for him to do it. In his parish there is a new freedom for the Spirit to act. ?If growth is based on solid foundations?, concludes Fr Massey, ?the Lord will look after you.?

But renewing the parish is not, ultimately, about numbers. It is fundamentally about the dynamic of the Spirit entering lives, creating a culture of fire and proclamation. This was the experience of the apostles in Jerusalem who after Pentecost left the room for the street, who went from being a community of memory to becoming a community of proclamation.

I did not know, all those years ago, how that experience could be reproduced: the Spirit, after all, cannot be bottled. But now I hear often from people who, after watching the videos, realise that God adores them; and, knowing that, promise to pass on that message to their children and to ensure others hear it. And then I have the joy of realising that another upper room ? just like the first one, in Jerusalem ? has just emptied into the street, via, of all things, a caf?.

For more details about CaFE (www.faithcafe.org), contact David Payne on 01727 822837 or e-mail (info@faithcafe.org).