No to Alpha? Yesterday evening, our All-Staff Meeting took place here at the Center. We presented our annual priorities. Our leadership team had discerned them durding the recent annual offsite. Of course, it is always dangerous to accompany the year’s objectives with the subordinate clause „we discerned this in prayer.“ With that I can end any discussion in a Christian group. God has spoken. End of discussion. And it’s not like that. What we can say is what happened. We can say it was amazing how the leadership team members had these three topics come up. And that not knowing that it was that, what the others also felt God was asking. They are: missionary spirit, the „weekend experience“ and inspired teams. Originally, we wanted to give the whole thing the title „All in. For Jesus“, but then, thanks to the advice of the advisory board, we decided against it. All in for Jesus is the basis of everything we want to do anyway. So, the wording of the three annual focal points may not be Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie, but I hope that they will shape us this year and help us grow as a Church community, preparing us for the move next year.

Missionary spirit. „Evangelization is primary, prioritary and preferential (for the Church).“ (John Paul II). „The preaching to those who are far from Christ is the first task of the Church…What would happen if we really took these words seriously? We would simply recognize that missionary action is the paradigm for all the work of the Church.“ (Pope Francis).

So the first thing. As someone once said, „Making the main thing the main thing is the main thing.“ I remember at a conference a few years ago, Johannes Hartl projected a picture of a woman. She was shaved bald. Styled and dressed in a way that you don’t often see in a church. And he asked the question: How would you react if someone like that walked through the door of your church? And that’s the thing we felt at the annual offsite: missionary SPIRIT, not missionary activities and actions. The latter will follow. But first and foremost, it’s about our, about my and your heart. If we love, if I love people. If I love those „who are far from Christ“. Not in theory. But in practice. Where is my heart? When our heart is on fire, mission almost takes care of itself. PLEASE, read the testimony of Agnes from the BeFree. She hits the nail on the head.

The „weekend experience.“ „Sine Dominico non possimus“ – a play on words from the Latin. This was the response of the martyrs from the year 304, who were discovered by the authorities of the Roman Empire while celebrating Sunday mass in the catachombs. They knew that this was punishable by death. But they met anyway. Celebrated mass anyway. „We cannot live without the Lord and Sunday.“

It was these Christian communities that transformed the Roman Empire from within. A true community of saints. They met on Sunday to live by the power of the Lord, to praise God and to live in true fellowship, inflamed by the Spirit, encouraging and exhorting, inspiring and challenging, building up and supporting one another. And „when they had prayed, the place where they were gathered together shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they proclaimed the word of God boldly.“ (Apg 4, 31) Practically for us that means focus on the experience around the Eucharistic Celebrations at the weekends. That here be a place where we live community, praise God, create a space where people can be touched by the Lord, where we invite those who do not yet know Christ and, God willing, they experience his transforming love.

Inspired teams. We want to be a place where we and others grow in discipleship and leadership, in order to change the world for the better. What applies to the large community of our church as such, also applies to the smaller communities of the teams, the small groups, but also the ministry teams, such as Host Teams, Music Team, Kids Ministry Team and so on. Jesus is at the center, the Eucharist is the fire that ignites, and where we ask in the 2nd Eucharistic Prayer in the 2nd Epiclesis: „Let us partake in in the body and blood of Christ and let us become one through the Holy Spirit.“ The Eucharist urges us to become one with one another in love, to live deep relationships and to kindle his passionate love for the world in us. Concretely we want to continue to build up dynamic teams in which „everyone values others more than themselves“. „We must not live for ourselves. Each of us should show consideration for our neighbor in order to do good and build up (the Church), for even Christ did not live for himself.“ (Rom 15:2-3)

We do not want to tell our Congregation what to do practically to make these goals happen. That’s not our role. We are all this Congregation. We are saying that this is the direction we are moving. I hope and pray that they will be on board, get involved. And I hope also that we all can inspire and pray for each other, no matter if one is part of our Church community locally or united to us from afar. These three terms „Missionary Spirit, Weekend Experience, Inspired Teams“ will come to life if we all fill them with life. I hope that we let the Spirit ignite us more and more, so that we become more and more what we are meant to be. Not a Church that has a mission, but is a mission. „If you become what you should become, you will set the earth on fire.“ (St. Catherine of Siena)

God bless!

Fr. George

P.S. Yes it’s true. We don’t do Alpha anymore. At least for the moment. „Alpha Youth“ on the other hand: YES!  It is going great. The marriage alpha and relationship alpha and parenting alpha too. But not the normal course. If you would like to know more details, please contact us. But in short: we dont continue programs because we’ve always done them. It’s about the people. Not about the programs. Recently we have noticed that this program is no longer helping us to pick people up so that they can experience Jesus and embark on a path of discipleship. In the past, we have taken a two-pronged mission approach. We had one main focus on Alpha and the other on the weekend. We now want to focus primarily on the weekend. But not as an alpha replacement. It’s about the missionary heart of our Church community.