Talks will be livestreamed to 20 satellite loctions April 15-16

OTTAWA (CCN)



When Michael Dopp and his team organized last year’s New Evangelization Summit in Ottawa last year, he tried a conference model that had not been tried in Catholic circles before.

The event, featuring top Catholic speakers like Scott Hahn and Ralph Martin at a main location connected to 20 satellite locations livestreaming the talks, was a success beyond their expectations.

In fact, the main conference site was sold out two weeks in advance, so many people were turned away, or had to travel to Cornwall, Ontario, the nearest satellite site.

This year, the Summit April 15-16 will move to a larger venue at the downtown Westin Hotel. Dopp said he is hoping for 35 to 40 satellite locations. As of the end of January, he had 29 sites confirmed.

Dopp, who founded Mission of the Redeemer Ministries to equip Catholics for new evangelization, modeled the Summit on the massive Global Leadership Summit put on by Willow Creek Association, an evangelical ministry outside Chicago.

The Global Leadership Summit is expected to reach 260,000 people through its August 2016 conference at sites in 875 cities in 120 countries, according to its website.

“It’s successful because they bring in the best, big names, people who have good messages,” Dopp said. “We have those in the Catholic Church but the challenge is we can usually only bring one into a conference and that’s it for your budget.”

The summit provides a platform for speakers far greater than the 300 or so participants at a conference sponsored by a parish, he said. “Having host sites allows us to reach so many more people.”

The Global Leadership Summit not only prompted Dopp’s vision for the summit, but also Willow Creek helped the organizers with the technical challenges of working with the host sites. “It worked exactly the way we hoped,” Dopp said.

“I’m indebted to them for inventing the model and thankful for their gracious assistance in our being able to replicate it,” he said.

The major work goes into the main conference, lining up the speakers and so on, but adding host sites is relatively simple, he said.

“My hope is that by 2020, it’s the leading Catholic conference in the world on evangelization,” Dopp said. “By increasing the number of participants and the number of host sties, in five years we can be talking about tens of thousands of people we can reach.”

This year’s summit includes popular author and speaker on Saint John Paul II’s Theology of the Body Christopher West; Forming Intentional Disciples author and speaker Sherry Weddel; and convert and philosopher Peter Kreeft.

Joining the summit via video link from Rome, will be the preacher of the papal household Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa. Canadian speakers include Dopp, Catholic Christian Outreach co-founder Angele Regnier and Ottawa Auxiliary Bishop Christian Riesbeck.

Dopp said he is especially excited about Weddell, who may not be a household name like Scott Hahn, but whose work is “really valuable in parish renewal.”

Like last year, the goals of the summit are threefold: to inspire; to form; and to connect Catholics for becoming missionary disciples.

Dopp said the feedback from last year’s summit was “incredible.” Not only did people report they enjoyed the summit, organizers have heard stories of attendees who went on to start Alpha courses at their parishes, or develop evangelization teams.

The summit is “an effort to re-centre the Church on the urgency of the Gospel,” Dopp said. “It’s not just a nice thing we do because it’s fun and because Jesus makes us feel better. There’s an authentic urgency to it because there are eternal consequences, because there’s a spiritual battle we face and the choices we make in this life matter.”

Information about the summit is available and newevangelizationsummit.ca. Dopp said the technological requirements for host sites are simple and most parishes already have the kind of equipment needed. If a parish can already exhibit a YouTube video, it can run a host site he said. Otherwise, the summit organizers will tell a potential host site what equipment they need and where to buy or rent it.