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WOW - CaFE Power!
Mike and maria Pia Oliver share how the CaFE (Catholic Faith exploration) series produced by catholic evangelisation Services is touching a chord with parishoners and leading them into prayer and deepening their faith
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We both found the Lord in 1988 in a wonderful prayer group in Cowley, Oxford and we stayed with that group for the following 11 years. Towards the end of that period we felt the Lord telling us that our mission was really with our parish, St Edmund's in Abingdon; we didn't act on this because we had received so many blessings through the Cowley group and made so many good friends. However, in 1999 the Lord spoke clearly: the numbers in the group had been dwindling and finally the Parish Priest told us he didn't want us to use the meeting room any more. This spelt the end of the Cowley prayer group and so we tried to set up a prayer group in our parish. For many months just the two of us - plus the Lord, of course - met in our home to pray for the parish. Eventually our number increased to 3; after nearly four years of persevering our group had grown to four or five, but there was never any real interest from anyone else in the parish. We also tried to promote Alpha in our parish, but again there was a complete lack of interest. Then came CaFE and everything changed! Our little group became a CaFE group and we approached our parish priest, giving him a copy of the Knowing God Better sample video. Suddenly all the doors opened and the things started to happen; our parish priest became really enthusiastic about CaFE and even the Parish Pastoral Council were in favour. The key ingredients were prayer and expectant faith. We ran Knowing God Better last autumn, just four of us, and were amazed how well it went. Our experience has convinced us that CaFE is definitely anointed by the Holy Spirit. Our previous efforts in the parish had been a struggle, but all at once things just started to fall into place with very little effort. The parish centre happened to be free on the evenings we needed it, helpers always came forward to clear up at the end of the meeting, and amazingly a video projector materialised (just) in time for each meeting. We had around 35 - 40 people at each evening, which is about as much as our church hall can take. We even had to set up an overflow room, with a video feed to a television. We completed "Exploring the Catholic Church" just before Easter and this went equally well, again with similar numbers coming, mostly those who were at the first module, with a few new faces. It was interesting to see how the level of prayer in the meetings deepened as the course progressed. We had to organise 12 facilitators/helpers for the six tables. We prayed about this and the Lord pointed out those we should ask. To our surprise they all enthusiastically accepted the challenge with (almost) no arm-twisting! Interestingly, the fact that CaFE is not overtly Charismatic has one of the factors in its acceptance! Just about everyone who has come to the meetings really enjoyed the evenings and we have received a great deal of very encouraging feedback. The teaching was much appreciated and the social aspect was a major factor in the success of the evenings. The times of prayer were well received and we detected a real hunger in many people to go deeper into prayer. One of our priests told us that many parishioners have told him how they have appreciated CaFE and felt supported by it. Even those, such as the housebound, who have been unable to come have felt supported just knowing that it is there. Our priests were impressed that CaFE has been entirely laity led. We shall be running "Catholics Making a Difference" in the autumn. A number of people have commented that it is a long time to wait so during the intervening months we have been holding a monthly meeting for a time of prayer and fellowship. The decline in prayer groups over recent years has been the subject of a lot of discussion. Our experience leads us to believe that this is all part of God's plan. It seems to us that the purpose of the move of the Spirit over the past 35 years or so has been to equip people with the gifts they will need for the next move of the Spirit, which could be the renewal of parishes. Are we starting to see this come about through CaFE? |
Wow!
If we had to give one word to describe how the Holy Spirit has been
working in our parish, that would be it.
