Emily describes her call to be a "door opener" inviting others in to experience the transforming love of Christ...
Jacqueline Marie | March 4, 2022
Emily Sit would define herself as a door stop.
From the function of the pews to the beauty of the stained-glass windows, the church building is a metaphor for the diversity of the gifts of the people that make it up; the people who transform it from a building to the Church. Just as each support beam and every floorboard are needed for the building to be whole, so too, the Church: people individually gifted, collectively called.
And Emily is a door stop.
Emily is a parishioner at Our Lady of Fatima (OLoF) in Auckland, New Zealand. Her passion for mission is one of the threads of the greater tapestry that the Holy Spirit is weaving within her parish and diocese. Stories of renewal overlap in this region – reenforcing that her calling is both individual and part of the larger story. The volunteer Alpha Coordinator at OLoF and the General Manager of the St. Francis Retreat Centre, Emily has an infectious laugh and the entrancing energy of a hummingbird.
She first heard about Divine Renovation (DR) when she was living in East Malaysia and went to an Alpha Leadership conference in Kuala Lumpur where Father James Mallon was streamed in for a breakout session. She saw his collar and was startled to see a Catholic priest leading the session. His message of moving from maintenance to mission resonated with her deeply. It was what she had felt stirring in her own heart and she wanted to take this message back to her own community: in 2020 She returned to her home diocese of Auckland and, due to the pandemic, stayed.
Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Auckland, New Zealand.
Providentially, her parish priest, Father Austin, who had recently come to OLoF, was a step ahead of Emily — not only had he heard about the book (Divine Renovation: From a Maintenance to a Missional Parish), but he was about to meet online with a group of his brother priests in the diocese with Auxiliary Bishop Michael Gielen. Bishop Gielen has had a long-standing connection with Divine Renovation, and his own passion for evangelization.
With a fervent desire to be a fly on the wall, Emily asked if she could join the discussion and was invited to partake.
Emily reflects on her passion for mission “I really want to be a part of that because our priests still need us.” She states that the movement towards being a missional parish has yielded “so much fruit” at OLoF, already. They have just started their third Alpha course and things are shifting. She describes it as people who were silent finding a voice, turning to one another, and sharing their love of Jesus, voicing the unspoken passion that has existed inside them. Or in the case of one new Alpha team member, who now plays her guitar and formed the Alpha Music group, give voice for the first time to that love. “I think it is actually people finding their voice…” or rather that they have “found their voice with Jesus”.
Emily describes her call to be a door opener inviting others in as they walk through to experience the transforming love of Christ. She reflects, “I think this is my pain – I’m meant to be at the door,” which means patience and sitting with the discomfort of people’s struggle and doubts, waiting at the doorway instead of leaving them in the dark.
Emily shares the poem I Stand by the Door by Rev. Sam Shoemaker to describe this posture:
Men die outside the door, as starving beggars die
On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter.
Die for want of what is within their grasp.
They live on the other side of it – live because they have not found it.
Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,
And open it, and walk in, and find Him.
So I stand by the door.
A door stop. A window. A pew cushion. The people of God, the Church, hold the door, let in the light and provide comfort for the weary, all playing their part in the mission of reaching a broken world with the love of Christ.
[1] Shoemaker, S. (1978). “I Stand By The Door”. In I Stand by the Door: The life of Sam Shoemaker. Helen Shoemaker. Word Books.
