Course designed by an American evangelical

OTTAWA (CCN)



A Catholic couple here has been holding seminars designed by an American evangelical they hope will take off in Catholic parishes the way the Alpha Course has.

Bob and Edna Du Broy are cradle Catholics who got involved in the charismatic renewal in the 1980s. Many Catholics at that time went to Protestant sources for teaching and ministry, as did the Du Broys, but they never felt tempted to leave the Church, Edna said.

Instead, through the teaching they received, they came to better understand their Catholic faith and to grow spiritually, she said.

One ministry that had a big impact on them is that of Colorado-based teacher named Craig Hill, founder of Family Foundations International. Eight years ago, Edna heard about his Empowering Relationships seminar. She decided to go.

The seminar consisted of recorded lectures on DVD and intensive small group ministry. The combination of the Craig Hill videos with the ministry by trained facilitators brought “huge revelations,” especially in the area of “overcoming offences, and what I do when I feel offended,” said Edna.

“The biggest revelation was I could get rid of that offence instantly by repenting and God would get rid of that dagger in my heart,” she said.

Up until experiencing a Craig Hill seminar, Edna said she had heard lots of good teaching, and “would feel great, but nothing changed in me.”
Weaknesses and flaws kept her going to confession over and over for the same sins, she said. “I didn’t know why I did what I did.” She hadn’t internalized the message about forgiveness. “It’s in all the Catholic teachings,” she said. “Why is it such a problem for us to forgive?”

“You always learned as Catholic you must forgive, but until Craig, no one taught me how much it hurts me not to,” she said.

She returned home and told Bob.

“She was very excited about it. It was just palpable,” Bob said. “She even discovered that she lost some weight! The [emotional] baggage she lost from her shoulders physically made her lighter. We didn’t doubt this was possible.”

Bob took Craig Hill’s Overcoming Anger seminar in 2011. “Apparently, this is a hard seminar to start with because it really confronts a lot of inner turmoil.”

“For me, it was a tremendous revelation,” he said. “It’s not confrontational, but it exposed some things in my heart I wasn’t aware of before.”

Bob had not thought of himself as an angry person, but the seminar helped him become aware of some areas that needed healing. The seminars are for anyone “who wants to get closer to the Lord and get rid of some of the baggage they might not even be aware that they have,” he said.

“It’s amazingly quick how this process gets to the root of a problem and allows God to do the surgery,” he said. “I had received prayer ministry for a year to deal with an unresolved father issue I had. He was still alive and the prayer counselling allowed me to do amazing things with my father, like say, ‘I love you.’ But I found a seminar with Craig Hill could heal my heart to the same extent in only one weekend. We have studied and even been trained in other approaches to Christian inner healing, but we’ve found nothing as effective as the wisdom and small group dynamic of these seminars.”

People can gauge whether they need healing by reactions to offences or stress that are inordinate–where you lose sleep, or get depressed, or resort to addictive behaviour, Bob said. “If there’s a response that is outside healthy limits, it is evidence of a wound in the heart that needs to be addressed.

Bob and Edna got to meet Craig Hill in 2012 when he came to Ottawa to host a Family Foundations International conference on the marriage covenant. They acted as his drivers so “it gave us a lot of time to chat in the car.”

“I made the observation to Craig: he’s more Catholic than he realises!” Bob said.

“His theology of covenant and his view on the life-long battle for the soul are consistent with a Catholic perspective. And like Catholics, he believes children are a blessing to be welcomed in every marriage” he said.

In the seminars, during the prayer ministry, with facilitators trained to ask the right questions, “The Lord reveals the root, gives the person the grace to repent and to renounce the root, and then the Lord gently ministers healing,” Bob said.

In the small group ministry, the other seminar participants who are witnessing are asked to be in prayer, Bob said. Only the facilitators will guide the ministry with open-ended questions, encouraging the person being prayed for to “sincerely listen to the Lord.”

“People are often surprised the Lord will speak to them,” Bob said. “He will reveal to them a lie they are believing about themselves and lead them to the truth. The lie is usually about their destiny and their identity.”

Craig Hill teaches something every Catholic should know from experiencing the Sacrament of Penance, he said. “He says that you can ask God for forgiveness directly, but a confession to another person not only reconciles us with God but brings healing.”

“We as Catholic facilitators take it one step further,” he said. “We tell Catholics they can use the ministry session as part of their examination of conscience. In Confession to a priest, they can repent for believing lies about themselves, for condemning their parents and other sources of offence, for making inner vows, or for making an idol out of resentment. Additional graces come from the sacrament and the healing process continues.”

For many Catholics, it is a revelation that carrying resentment and bitterness is sinful, he said. They don’t realize this is displeasing to God.

Three years ago, Bob and Edna trained to be coordinators. Since then, they have run seven seminars at a Catholic church in Ottawa. “We really feel God wants us to bring this healing into the Catholic Church,” Bob said.