Speaking requests followed the release of priest’s book

OTTAWA (CCN)



When Father James Mallon and his Halifax, N.S., parish organized a June 13-14 conference on parish renewal, they were shocked to find its 500 places sold out by the end of April.

Based on Father Mallon’s book “Divine Renovation: From a Maintenance to a Missional Parish” that laid out the experience of parish renewal at St. Benedict’s, the conference is a response to the overwhelming requests for visits and speaking requests following the release of the book, Father Mallon said.

“We’ve hit a nerve,” the priest said. “The essential working model of parish life is the same as it was 50 years ago. It’s not about changing doctrine, it’s about closing the gap between what we say we believe and how we live it, how we live as a church.”

The Divine Renovation Conference added another hundred places, which were sold out by mid-May.

The interest is worldwide, Father Mallon said in an interview. Fourteen people registered from Australia, 12 from the United Kingdom, 15 from France, 250 from the United States. Delegates came from Austria, Spain, Mexico, Colombia. One hundred came from Atlantic Canada; and 30 participants were from non-Catholic churches. “I think this is important,” Father Mallon said. “We can learn from one another. No one has it completely figured out.”

The conference gave Father Mallon a chance to launch his next book: Divine Renovation Guidebook: A Step-by-Step Manual for Transforming Your Parish. The publisher, Novalis, sold 300 copies there.

Father Mallon described it as a “how to” book for pastors and leadership teams, while his first book was a “proposal, meant to stir things up and get conversations going.”

“Our hope is this: if every diocese could have a few parishes that can model what health looks like and can in turn serve to model renewal to the parishes around them, models of healthy churches in every diocese-that could spark renewal that could sweep across the world,” he said.

The point of the conference was to show people how ordinary the people at Saint Benedict’s are, he said. When people see the people of his parish, the priest said he wants them to “not be overwhelmed by us but by God. People will see, ‘if they can do it, we can do it.'”

When Father Mallon was assigned to Saint Benedict in 2010, he asked Archbishop Anthony Mancini for permission to make the parish into a “pastoral laboratory.”

The parish had recently built a new church after amalgamating two previous parishes. When Father Mallon arrived, the people there “had the sense finally all the changes are finished.”

Father Mallon brought a message the changes were only beginning. “You can’t come into this beautiful building and do everything the same or we’ll be downsizing again in a couple of years.”

He met “tons of resistance. When you change something people get upset.”

“Hundreds of people left and joined other parishes because they didn’t like what we were doing,” Father Mallon said. “Hundreds have come to Christ. Hundreds have been converted, and hundreds of people who were not going to church are now coming to church.

Father Mallon admitted he had to develop a thick skin. “How often we thwart parish renewal by whoever makes the most noise?” he said, noting his book and the conference dealt with how to stay the course despite push back from what is often a small minority of naysayers whose “primary concern seems to be themselves and their own preferences.”

“What’s interesting to me is everyone wants change, even these grumpy people,” he said. “If you say, ‘Do you want a healthy and growing parish?’ Yes, ‘Do you want a parish relevant to your grandchildren and young families, that evangelizes, that goes out to the poor and disenfranchised? They say, ‘Yes.’

“As soon as you try to do these things people get upset,” he said. “They want change but they don’t want to change.”

Saint Benedict’s offers four Masses every weekend that attract about 1600 to 1700 people. More than half are involved in ministry; forty-five per cent are involved in discipleship, Father Mallon said. “It’s amazing. It’s a dream come true.”

The parish runs Alpha programs and channels people into small groups so they can continue growing in the faith and learning to be missional disciples. “You get a lot of life transformation in Alpha,” Father Mallon said.

At Pentecost, when 12 adults came into the Catholic Church, Father Mallon also offered an opportunity for everyone who could say, ‘Jesus has changed me in the last 12 months,’ to share their news.

Over the course of the weekend, 107 people came forward, he said. “In the five and a half years, we have had 352 people say Jesus has changed their life.”

“Jesus does change lives,” the priest said. “Everyone who encounters Jesus has life transformation when they truly encounter him. It’s a beautiful thing when you have that kind of testimony.”

“In the end, a transformed parish comes about when enough people in that parish have been transformed themselves by Jesus,” he said. “Transformed parishioners leads to a transformed parish.”