When he was placed at Holy Spirit Parish, Father Dave was told by a couple of local priests:
“Don't expect anything to happen in Darwin.”
Jacqueline Marie | August 20, 2025
Six years ago, Father Dave stepped into the role of parish priest for the first time. As a member of the Missionaries of God’s Love, his vocation had been focused on formation for novices. But now he was in Darwin, Australia, at Holy Spirit Parish.
Darwin is a remote city nearly 4,000 km from either Melbourne or Sydney. It holds 53% of the Northern Territory’s population, yet has fewer than 200,000 people.
When he was placed at Holy Spirit Parish, he was told by a couple of local priests, “Don’t expect anything to happen in Darwin.”
Father Dave explains, “It is very remote,” and has its own unique culture. People who are immigrating to Australia often move to Darwin as they get an advantage by going to remote places.
Father Dave says, “40% of our parish has been here for less than five years.” As people move on to other cities, the parish turns over – and so do many of the volunteers and parish leaders.
Father Dave knew about Divine Renovation: Father Chris Ryan, a brother MGL priest, had been applying the principles of DR at St. Declan’s in Penshurst for years and has a thriving missional parish. Despite knowing the principles of parish renewal, “this was my first gig as a parish priest,” Father Dave says. Admittedly, he “knew it purely in theory.”
So, he went into coaching, “working out the practical application” of what leading renewal in a parish looks like. Father Dave feels, “Divine Renovation has given us a roadmap… it’s not simply a model that you apply, because it recognizes that every place is very different.”
“We worked with the coaches to recognize how Holy Spirit [Parish] is quite different, it’s a very transient community, it’s very multicultural, it’s got its own particular challenges. But it’s about looking at how we can take the principles of DR and apply it to our own location.”
“Divine Renovation has given us a roadmap... it's not simply a model that you apply, because it recognizes that every place is very different.”
Father Dave said that once he started the renewal journey, he discovered, “there was just this hunger in people… I think they really wanted something more… there was this real sort of hope.”
For Father Dave, the desire for evangelization drives renewal. “I didn’t just want to go through the motions of parish life. I’d seen the power of people experiencing that encounter with Jesus and really hearing the proclamation of the gospel.”
“The disciples were mending their nets when Jesus called them…” Father Dave connects the metaphor to evangelization, “these holes in our nets, we know they’re fish coming, but we don’t actually have the ability to catch them. So, we need to get our community together and really get things in place so that we can welcome people.”
When he arrived, the Mass experience felt like “a service station.” He recalls, “everyone kind of clung to their own little cultural groups.” Now, through a focus on hospitality, “people suddenly have an opportunity to share their culture with everyone else, and they became really proud of it.”
“Suddenly people were volunteering for ministries in the parish. People that would never open their mouth at church, never, never talk to anyone — they now felt they wanted to contribute something.”
Ruschelle, a member of Fr. Dave’s Senior Leadership Team (SLT), has been attending since 2013. Born and raised in the Philippines, she previously worked in Singapore before moving to Darwin. She says, “I’ve seen the difference…there really is a shift.” She adds, “I really love being a Catholic, so it doesn’t matter how the church is, I would go.” However, she remembers originally saying, “this is ‘Holy Spirit Parish’, but seems like the Holy Spirit is not here.” She credits the Missionaries of God’s Love, “the MGL came and it they are so into the Holy Spirit…However, there was no structure. I think that’s what Divine Renovation did.”
"Five years later, we're in a situation where the whole culture has changed in the parish.”
Ruschelle says, “I can really say that Divine Renovation is really effective.” She says that while Father Dave’s openness to embrace mission mattered it ultimately didn’t come down to needing a priest to be a certain cookie-cutter shape for renewal to happen: “This is not about Father Dave,” she continues, “there’s a movement and I believe it’s really prayer, and openness of the priest and having Divine Renovation as a guide.”
She has personally felt the cultural change. In 2018, she was already a long-term parishioner serving in the church when she was diagnosed with cancer, but she says, “no one in the parish helped me.” Rushcelle found the opposite to be true now. Recently she ended up in the hospital with an appendectomy and had a massive outpouring of support from the parish community.
Evangelization has been one of the drivers of cultural change at Holy Spirit Parish. Father Dave shares, “We’re getting a number of people who were just encountering faith for the first time. Particularly out of that group of young adults that had a really big experience through Alpha.” Father Dave is seeing people experience “real conversion.”
“We’re seeing a lot of people just popping up, wanting to come back to church,” he says. “What really makes me hopeful is the fact that we’re actually in a situation now where we’ve got parishioners who can walk with them.” Focusing on discipleship and raising up leaders means that there is now a foundation to lean on, Father Dave says, “There’s a base of people who have been on this journey themselves and are willing to now walk with other people in the faith.”
Establishing a leadership team, starting Alphas and bringing the parish into the vision of becoming missional: “there was this real hunger under the surface… It’s kind of gone from strength to strength since then. Five years later, we’re in a situation where the whole culture has changed in the parish.”
