| Evangelisation and the Episcopal Connection James Wilkinson, a parishioner at St Anne's in Chertsey, Surrey, shares how a prophetic word led to him approaching his local bishop and getting Episcopal backing for an evangelisation day for the whole diocese
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The Holy Spirit it seemed was on my side and a short time later, Bishop Kieron Conry dropped by our parish on a visit to be with the Salesians on John Bosco's feast day. He snatched a few moments from his round of school visiting to speak to a few parishioners. I took my chance and told him about the success we have been having with Alpha in our parish, and that we have received about 50 people into the Church since 1997 as a result of it. He was very interested and agreed to meet me to discuss evangelisation in the diocese. Bishop backs the day When we met in April last year, he agreed to the running of a Catholic Alpha day for the diocese, which he would personally attend. His first available date was 12th October 2002 and he suggested that I use a central venue like the Christian Education Centre at Crawley and named one of the town's priests as a contact. He also agreed to promote the day via an ad clerum and then we prayed together for the day. I was really elated. Over the intervening months I was prompted to expand the scope of the day from purely promoting Alpha to promoting evangelisation in general under the title "Effective Evangelisation Conference". We sent out posters and brochures to the 100 or so parishes of the diocese and waited to see what response we would get. When we at St Anne's first stepped out in faith and prayed for words of knowledge at the Alpha session devoted to healing, we were surprised how quickly they came and how the Spirit sent gifts of healing to accompany them. I wanted everybody who came to the conference to know that signs and wonders can be a feature of evangelisation in our day just as they were in the early Church. Thus I felt the key messages of the day were to be:
Importance or empowerment The day turned out to be more successful that I could have hoped. One hundred and ninety eight people from 55 parishes attended. Our speakers for the day were Mgr Keith Barltrop, the head of the bishops' new Evangelisation Agency, who spoke on his experience of the empowerment of the Spirit and Damian Stayne from Cor et Lumen Christi, who spoke on the relevance of the charisms to evangelisation. My brothers in the Chertsey Men's group kindly offered to deal with all the practical and administrative details of the day and I rustled together a music group from friends. A team from Catholic Evangelisation Services also came to publicise the CaFE materials, which offer parishes a way of building themselves up and inviting the Spirit to empower them to make a difference. A collection on the day more than covered for all the expenses. We started the day by examining the national and diocesan statistics which show an inexorable fall in the numbers attending Sunday Mass, infant baptisms, receptions and adult baptisms. We looked at Church teaching which underlines that she exists to evangelise and then went on to look at the role of the laity in this and the importance of proclaiming the kergyma - the powerful basic gospel message of "believe, repent and receive"- that has been preached since the apostles. We also looked at different methods of individual and group evangelisation,
particularly Alpha. When I mentioned the need for would-be evangelists
to seek the Spirit's empowerment and said the Life in the Spirit seminars
were a good way for this to happen there was huge applause. For me
this was a clear sign that I should take steps to run the seminars
in a number of centres in the diocese, which would allow as many people
as possible to attend. I am currently working on this, so please pray
for me and what the Spirit seems to be doing in our diocese.
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Our
own parish had been having amazing results with the Alpha course but
I wasn't having much success getting other parishes nearbye interested.
Then one day when I was being prayed over at a charismatic meeting,
I was given a prophetic word by a woman I didn't know who said, "Whatever
you are doing in the Church you need to stop going outwards and go
upwards instead." She didn't know what the prophecy meant but
I did. I realised I needed to talk to my Bishop about Catholic Alpha. 
