Last week Holly, Sr. Kathleen, Fr. Thom and I had the opportunity to attend a conference called the Global Leadership Summit (GLS). GLS is hosted by Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago and broadcast live to almost 400 host sites, including Grace Chapel in Lexington, where we participated. It’s a big conference--about 260,000 leaders worldwide--and we heard and saw and experienced a lot of big ideas in those two days. The conference was about leadership, not about big churches per se, or even about church growth, but it was hosted by a really big church, several of the speakers were pastors of really big churches, and many of the host sites were really big churches. And one of the major takeaways of the conference for me personally was an understanding of how little churches become big churches through faithfulness to God’s vision.

I think I had the impression that many really big churches got to be that way because their leaders set out to build big churches, perhaps out of ego or ambition, and they had the skills to make that happen. As a result of the Summit, I came to understand that many of the largest churches in the country started out not with a desire to be big, but with a deep commitment to be faithful to God’s will. These churches grew and grew, and continue to grow, because God has blessed their efforts to be faithful to his vision for their community. When a church is faithful to God’s vision, God blesses that church with abundant growth. God wants his Church to grow, because God wants his love to reach to the ends of the earth.

In the first reading for this Sunday, Joshua tells the Israelites that they have to choose which gods they were going to serve: “Decide today: whom will you serve?” It’s easy for us to dismiss this question as irrelevant to us, to think that strange gods are a thing of the distant past. But it’s a question we have to take seriously as a community. We have to ask ourselves if we as a community are faithfully serving the real, living, true God, the God who expects us to be fruitful, and who promises that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we will move mountains in the service of his Church (Mt. 17:20).

In their book describing their experience of trying to apply some of the wisdom of intentionally growing churches to a Catholic parish in Maryland (Rebuilt: Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, and Making Church Matter), Fr. Michael White and Tom Corcoran put it this way: “God’s will is growth; God expects us to be fruitful. So, if we’re not fruitful, don’t we have to stop and consider if we’re really being faithful? If we’re not being fruitful, don’t we need to evaluate what we’re doing wrong, learn more about where God wants us to go, and if necessary, do things differently?”

The local church is nothing less than the local incarnation of God’s plan for the salvation of all the world. As a community, we have to get clear about all the ways in which we are not yet all that God dreams for us to be. We have to be willing to see and address the differences between the community we are now and the community God wants us to be. This process will require a great deal of humility, openness, and courage from all of us. It’s not easy for us to acknowledge our shortcomings, or to face up to the ways that we need to change. But it is such an important part of being a real community of faith, of faithfully serving the one true God.

We need everyone in our community to be part of this process, and there are so many ways to join the conversation. Two great opportunities are coming up soon: on Monday, September 14th, at 7 pm, the New Roads Books Group will gather at St. Joseph to discuss Rebuilt. Get yourself a copy of the book--it’s a fascinating read--and come join in the discussion. On Thursday, October 1st, we will have an event to launch our collaborative pastoral plan, a three-year plan to grow in faithfulness to God’s will for us. Stay tuned for details. And in the meanwhile, let's all join together in praying each day that God will help us to see and be faithful to his vision for our community.  

~Rachel

Take your next step: Spend a few minutes reflecting on what God desires for our community. What is one way that we as a community might need to grow and change in order to be faithful to God’s dream for us? Share your response by adding a comment here on our blog.

I recently went on my annual week-long retreat, a time of quiet, reflection, and prayer. The type of retreat was a directed retreat, in which the only time you talk is during a 30-minute period, one on one with a spiritual director. With the director, you share what happens during your prayer and are offered some guidance on what scripture to pray with during the next twenty-four-hour period. I look forward to retreat with great eagerness and with a thirst for solitude, much like a runner thirsts for water upon completing a marathon.

The funny thing is that despite the anticipation, it often happens that the first days are a struggle to reach interior quiet. The not-talking is the easy part. Quieting my mind and spirit is something else entirely. So often, I get edgy and restless and annoyed that I can’t get into a prayerful frame of reference in my time frame. That’s the thing. There are two kinds of time: chronos, or the time that exists as subdivisions of our days, weeks, months, and years and Kairos, God’s time, the time in which the Spirit of God is at work in us. More often than not, the two times do not match up. On retreat, I see the days passing swiftly and effectively say to God: “You better hurry up. Time is ticking away and if something is going to happen, it better happen soon or retreat will be over.” In my best moments, I know that God can do what God wants to accomplish in me whenever God wants. “It,” whatever “it” is, can happen in an instant. So what’s there to worry about? In truth, nothing. But to get to that place of trusting the power of God working in me, doing more than I could ever ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20), I not only have to be externally quiet, I have to empty myself of my agenda, be still, and wait upon God. In God’s time, when I am open to God’s desires for me, God touches my heart. It may be that involves my letting go of pressuring myself, acting or thinking as if I am the one that does the transforming, or recognizing that God simply wants me to be in his presence, or to recognize that I am loved, as imperfect as I am.

The desires that we have for a deeper, richer, more trusting relationship with God are rooted in God’s desires for us. After all, Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel: “I have come that you may have life and have it to the full.” The fullness of which Jesus speaks, that I seek in my retreat and that many of us desire (though we may not name it) has nothing to do with money, possessions, status, power, or prestige. Rather, it is all about a deepening, intimate relationship with God, one that is nurtured by spending time alone with God, in quiet, in prayer, in love with the one who can make it happen.

~Sr. Kathleen

Take your next step: Each day, find a quiet corner in your home or your garden. Spend ten minutes with God alone and ask God to draw you into a deeper relationship with him.