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Harvesters A Catholic Men's Network
Iain Archibald, who is from a Reformed Church background and works to bring the gospel to members of the business community in Edinburgh, explains about the work of Harvesters, a Catholic men’s network he helped to initiate.
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Men can be reticent about their faith in mixed company Sisters, daughters, wives and mothers reading this, please do not be dismayed that some men really relish getting away with other men and growing spiritually with them. First, men can be reticent to talk about their spiritual life in mixed company. Second, they often feel confused about the significance of being male in our ‘unisex’ society today. Third, away from home and parish, they relax, open up and explore their spiritual side. Fourth, they can come back from a Men’s Weekend better brothers, sons, husbands and fathers. One speaker at a Weekend posed this question: “What do women want?” He suggested this answer: “That men would find themselves properly and be confident in who God has made them to be as men.” The following year a wife wrote us this comment: “I just wanted to say thank you myself, because I can see how much the Men’s Weekend helped my husband. I do feel that there is something special about being in the company of other Christian men with a strong faith which helped.”
So what more precisely is Harvesters? It is a Catholic Men’s network that revolves around annual Weekends, until now one in the South and one in the North – in Woldingham, Surrey; and at Stonyhurst, Lancashire, but also more recently Mount St Mary’s, Derbyshire. Between times, some of the men get together locally in small groups, e.g. over a pizza, or in larger groups, e.g. over a breakfast or indeed for a whole day. We all have access to an excellent website – www.harvesters.org.uk. Our motto is: “Encouraging and Equipping Men.” About 300 men per year participate in our two Weekends, but we have well over 1200 on our mailing list (you can sign up for the e-newsletter on our website). Here is how we started. In the 90s. Charles Whitehead, our chairman, on a visit to Canada had been very impressed by the unusually high proportion of men at the Church event he was attending in Newfoundland. When he asked the local bishop why this was, he was told that their secret had been over the years to run weekends specifically for men to envision and activate them in their Christian calling. We were also aware of Promise Keepers, a men’s movement among Protestant men in the USA at the time, and several of us had been involved in men’s groups in the covenant communities movement. Could we do something similar for Catholic men in England and Wales we wondered? That led to our first residential Men’s Weekend at Woldingham, Surrey. It was an outstanding success and two years later we added a northern venue: Stonyhurst College in Lancashire. Potent mix of the spiritual with sport and fellowship The “ingredients” of our Weekends include talks,
praise and worship, Mass, small groups, seminars, R + R (swimming, sports,
walks), excellent meals, and pub time! Although our roots are in the
Charismatic Renewal we seek to be inclusive of people from all streams
of the Catholic Church and hope that everybody from whatever background
would feel comfortable with us. From the start too, there has always
been an ecumenical dimension. Lives are changed over the weekend It is no exaggeration to say that lives are changed over the weekend. One man wrote to tell us that since the weekend he had re-ordered the priorities of his life: “God is now number one, family, second, work third, and hobbies occasional – not obsessional.” Spin-offs have been small groups meeting in different parts of the country, a Men’s Breakfast in Edinburgh, and regional days. Every year since 2000 moreover, we have been sending a little team out to East Africa to run men’s weekends there, thanks to the generosity of the participants here. The men who have gone out on these mission trips come back twice as built up in their faith as when they left our shores! As we make plans for our second decade, there are three developments the steering group are looking at: organising our first Men’s Weekend in Scotland, between 8 and 10 June of this year at Scotus College in Bearsden; putting on regional events in different parts of England and Wales; and learning more what it means to be harvesters who go right out into the harvest around us where we live, work and socialise – as Jesus spoke of in Luke 10:2.
Do tell men about our Weekends. You could even surprise a friend by booking him a place – it might be the best present he has ever received! And please pray for us all in the Harvesters Network as we encourage and equip one another to become more and more: men for God, and men for others.
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“I
should be dead by now,” said the man sitting opposite me at the
lunch table. This was in 1998 at my first Harvesters Men’s Weekend.
I had asked him to tell me about his life. Such was the degree of openness
and trust among us by the Sunday that this man felt able to tell me
about the homosexual lifestyle he was once in. What is Harvesters is
about? In a nutshell: men meeting with men over a weekend; men inspiring
men; men being refreshed and renewed by the Lord; men challenging one
another to move onwards on their spiritual journeys; men changing; men
equipping one another; men gaining the confidence to speak about their
faith; men returning to their homes, parishes, communities and workplaces
reinvigorated and willing to serve and to engage with all manner of
issues as Christians; men willing to talk to others about Our Lord.
