Would you like to come to Alpha?

August 17, 2022

Would you like to attend Alpha?

Then ‘shut up’ to give the invitee time to respond.

That was the simple advice from Melinda Dwight, one of the presenters at the Leadership Training Day – “Keys to Leading Parish Missionary Renewal”. The event, on Saturday 13 August, 2022 was organised by the Melbourne Archdiocese. Representatives from our Parish leadership groups (PPC, PFC and Alpha) attended and were inspired by a range of speakers.

One of the highlights was the presentation from Rev Fr Pierluigi Vajra, Parish Priest of Our Lady of Lourdes, Rockingham, Perth – “Our Journey in Parish Renewal”. The main ideas the group took away from Fr Pier’s talk were:

With every intention – pray!
Focus on the weekend Mass
Focus on growing; and
The Priest must say ‘No to fruitless things’

What was interesting about their journey is that when they embarked on their Parish renewal mission “Divine Renovation 2018”, their greatest asset was “inexperience”. That meant they had no agenda - in other words, they started with a blank page and their starting point was "Our inexperience is our greatest asset". Four years later, using a range of Divine Renovation tools, leading out of a team, and changing Parish Culture, they have a completely different parish. Both Fr Pier and his associate Fr Vijay were born overseas and speak English as a second language.

Another great presenter was Ron Huntley, Fr Rene’s own Divine Renovation Coach. He described the Leadership Iceberg. The model presents that our ability to transform lives (the fruits of our labour) is dependent on the:

Effectiveness of our strategy and tools, on the surface; and
Quality of our culture, structure, leadership and vision; and in particular every individual’s willingness to recognise and share their encounter/transformation stories of how Jesus Christ transformed your life.

However, it was Melinda’s humorous presentation that was most timely, given we start our Spring Alpha program on the firstday of spring September 1. Thursday 6.30pm in the Our Lady’s Small Hall. Melinda says often we ask people if they’d like to come to Alpha and then we talk about how we understand all the excuses they may come up with (late, busy, difficult time etc…). Her advice is to first pray, think about the person who you would like to invite, pray, and ask them the question. Then shut up to let the person and God do the rest. So, on that note:

Are you coming to Alpha?

Photo: Frank, Fr Pierluigi, Angelo & Helen