"Looking back on this first year of parish renewal – it has been a lot of work but also one of my most fulfilling years as a priest."
Father Ivan Boyle
Contributor, Parish Priest at St.John the Baptist, Uddingston, Scotland
I have been a priest for 30 years.
I arrived as Parish Priest to St. John the Baptist, Uddingston, a lovely, large parish in the suburbs of Glasgow, in January of 2022. In October of 2023, our Diocese of Motherwell got together its clergy with the help of a very talented lay management specialist, Adrian, to examine where the diocese was, is and is going. It was a story of great faith and blessings but also steady measurable decline. It was pointed out that we as a diocese were not actually running out of priests or even money, but we were running out of people.
And so, the diocese launched a renewal program called ‘Project Wellspring’. This project had 4 main pillars, one of which was parish renewal, and I volunteered St. John’s to be a pilot parish. I had no real idea what that meant but knew we had to do something.
I had not actually read anything about parish renewal programs but just felt called to do something. Adrian had read about many of the programs out there and was even trying to tailor some of them for our situation here in Scotland and suggested Divine Renovation (DR). So, I went off and ordered a copy of Divine Renovation: Moving your parish from Maintenance to Mission by Father James Mallon.
"It was pointed out that we as a diocese were not actually running out of priests, or even money, but we were running out of people."
I was immediately enthralled and further explored the DR resources (of which there was a plethora on their website – all free, thanks to donors) and dived in headlong. The book and the program seemed to crystalise and give concrete structure to much of what I wanted to do, but had been approaching haphazardly. I connected with DR UK, and they quickly set me up with DR: Equip, their online training and support portal, and signed me up for Kickstart, a coach-led meeting on Zoom with other parish priests from across the world who also wanted to explore starting parish renewal.
For most of December 2023 and early 2024 I was thinking and praying about whether this was right for St. John’s. And on the weekend of 30/31st of December 2023 I introduced the idea to the parish with a homily at all masses asking people to pray about it. Project Wellspring was to be launched across the diocese in mid-February and my hope was we could launch our parish renewal at the same time. I also bought quite a few copies of the DR book second hand and distributed them to whoever in the parish showed an interest.
I didn’t really know yet what this DR process was or even did, I was simply praying a lot and trusting in the Holy Spirit.
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I had started the Kickstart program on Zoom in January with four other priests (two South African, one Canadian, and one American alongside Tom our coach) meeting about every two weeks going through the steps on Vision, Leadership teams, Evangelisation, Structures, etc. For me there was initially a tension between taking my time (DR is big on developing a vision first and taking time over it) and wanting to see something concrete and visible in the parish done asap. Thus, as Alpha is heavily promoted within DR, I thought we would start there.
After my homily at the end of December we had an introductory meeting at the end of January with anyone who wanted to come – and had over 30 attendees. These I tried to pull together to run our first Alpha.We really didn’t know anything about Alpha, no one had even attended an Alpha Course, but Alpha UK were great and provided all we needed for free with online tools and so we began.
Our first Alpha had more than 70 attendees – almost all already active parishioners – with over 60 completing the course and was a wonderful experience. I consciously used this Alpha to begin putting in place structures I thought we might need and to identify people who may be able to help in different ways across the parish. I would spend each session with a different small group and just take the time to see and discern with the Spirit who might help with our parish renewal and how. My primary aim was to start to get a leadership team together bearing in mind the DR principles and structures.
The team was and is a revelation and revolution on how we move forward as a parish... previously, ideas may have been in my head for months, even years, before I got round to acting on them. Now, with the help of the team, things just snowballed.
I asked the first two members, Helen and Pat to pray about and consider joining the leadership team. In March they said yes with the third, Susan, joining in April. It was great to see their energy and enthusiasm, and it was then that things began to gain momentum. The team was and is a revelation and revolution on how we move forward as a parish. Very quickly we identified some of what we would like to do and even more quickly seemed to just do it. Previously ideas may have been in my head for months, even years, before I got round to acting on them. Now, with the help of the team, things just snowballed.
- We put together and advertised a job description for a Director of Evangelisation post, not something parishes in Scotland usually consider. (The Holy Spirit has not sent us the right person yet.)
- We formed a social development group which launched with a very successful parish picnic on the weekend of our parish feast day to which around 450 people came.
- We went as a leadership team to the Catholic Parish Summit in Harrogate in June and came back overflowing with ideas.
- We looked at, and started, some small home-based prayer groups, and a welcoming group.
There is a real enthusiasm for what can come next – our issue is often now we would like to do so much but must pace ourselves and listen to the Spirit, not burn people out. To take time and pause in prayer and focus on the Mary as well as the Martha if you will – especially as our society leans so much to being the Martha’s. Our leadership team usually meets weekly for a few hours, and we are trying to alternate these meetings between ongoing work and strategy (with some team receiving coaching from DR).
Not everything we have done has worked. It is a challenge to move the culture of our parish from Maintenance to Mission – it’s a marathon not a sprint. Speaking and preaching about it, keeping ideas visible, constantly encouraging and listening to people, and of course the Spirit. We are already talking of what we would like to have done by 2032 the 150th anniversary of our parish as a reasonable goal for this stage of parish renewal.
Looking back on this first year of parish renewal it has been a lot of work but also one of my most fulfilling years as a priest. DR talks a lot about forming missionary disciples and much of what we have done this year has been focusing on forming the disciple part of that with the parishioners we already have. In this second year we are hoping to transition towards the more missionary and the evangelisation part based on this foundation of discipleship. We still have a lot to do.
Working with a leadership team has been a revelation and is definitely worth it. I am very grateful to our leadership team and all our volunteers as well as Divine Renovation for their support and ministry.
I would wholeheartedly encourage anyone thinking of starting this journey to take the plunge and just go for it.
God Bless. Father Ivan
