|
Life in the Spirit Seminars
|
|
Rebecca Smith, from the prayer group at Barrhead, Scotland I have run the seminars every year at St John’s Barrhead since we started. Although I have used videos I prefer a live speaker and while the content of This Promise is for You was good, I would rather see this in the comfort of my own home. I normally try and run the seminars in the weeks running up to Pentecost, one night a week with tea and cakes after every session, as this is a time of fellowship and a good tea is important. On the night of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit we have a celebration tea which involves a nice table cloth, flowers on the table etc, when we serve especially nice food. Sorry if the emphasis seems to be on food but if people enjoy themselves they are more likely to come back. After everyone has been prayed with for Baptism in the Holy Spirit, we give everyone, if possible, a small gift – either a flower or a candle etc. to mark the occasion. I normally only ask speakers whom I have already heard speak and are baptised in the Holy Spirit themselves. I normally do the last talk myself to tie things up. I usually ask people from another prayer group to come and help with the praying over after the 5th seminar and have a priest there as well, so he can offer confession if people want it, before people are prayed over. On the 8th week we have a thanksgiving Mass for all those who have done the seminars. I always ask my parish priest for permission to do the seminars and advertise it in the parish newsletter every week for the 7 weeks while they are on, announcing the theme of the seminar and the guest speaker. I also always show my parish priest the list of speakers I am planning to invite to make sure he doesn’t object to any. I put posters up inside church doors where people can read them as very few seem to read the church notice board. When I initially started the prayer group with the seminars, I advertised locally on notice boards and in local newspapers but now I just invite people personally and the prayer group members invite their friends. We also leave fliers on the seats at days of renewal. We don’t have a large prayer group and members have changed over the 3 years, but the people who come to the seminars get a lot out of them, even if they don’t join the group afterwards.
Steve Lavery, from Scotland
The organisation of the seminars varied with some groups running them over a weekend while others stayed with the tried and tested one evening a week over seven weeks. For those organising them over the weekend, most commented on the commitment asked of the prayer group members and some found that to give a whole weekend was difficult. Where this sacrifice was made, all the responses showed that the events were powerful. Those who ran the seminars over a number of weeks found that it gave the participants time to reflect and introduced them to daily Scripture reading and a prayer routine, allowed the small group to develop a relationship and built trust and saw fellowship grow. Most responses showed that through this programme more participants went on to join a prayer group. It was shown that with both methods key was good planning and that the team and the whole event should be soaked in prayer. In every response personal witness was seen as a key to success. Nothing seems to reach the heart of the participants quicker than a personal witness telling of what the Lord has done. This helps those present to begin to identify how the Spirit is working in their own lives. The Dumfries and Galloway DST saw a real growth in those people who had been called to witness and to serve. Not only were the participants benefiting but the team also grew through the challenge of putting on the seminars. There was a mixed response about using live speakers or video teaching material. The majority used their own members to teach or invited speakers from other areas and felt live speakers were best but for very small groups, particularly in rural areas where it was sometimes difficult to get speakers, video presentations sometimes enabled a small group to run the seminars, which wouldn’t be able to otherwise and “This Promise is for You” received high praise. For this reason it was felt that every DST should own at least one copy of these videos making them available to groups and that there could be a general pooling of resources of these materials.
Kate Shaun, aged 92, from Chepstow shares her experiences of running the LSS in her own home. I want to take you back to the early 1970s, before the days of videos or CDs, to show you how the Lord can bring about good things in spite of our shortcomings, provided we have faith that he will work through us if we are prepared to ‘have a go’ and not be afraid of making a fool of ourselves.I had a small prayer group in my own home and wanted to hold the seminars so I invited a man who had recently had a conversion experience to help me. In those days we had to do all the talks ourselves. We met together and agreed each to give talks on alternate weeks, getting together between meetings to discuss what we should talk about. At the first session I was surprised to find that fourteen people had turned up. The man who was helping me was a business man and knew a lot of people. The group even included a number of teenage school girls who were mini bussed in each time. Now, I should warn you, that if we try to do something good, the devil will try to mess things up, and it happened in this case. Unfortunately there was a genuine misunderstanding and the man helping me was deeply offended and I wasn’t able to do anything about it. Occasionally, during the sessions, the antagonism would show, and there was nothing I could do but to defer to him with a smile and keep calm and hope no one noticed. In addition to that I am sure the talks were less than perfect. In spite of this, all fourteen people stayed on for the whole of the seven weeks. We had a house Mass on the seventh week, after which the priest prayed over the assembly for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Not having a music ministry I invited my eldest son, who was living in North Wales, to come and play guitar for the Mass. He was not interested in the Charismatic Renewal, it was just something “mum” was getting herself into, but he was accustomed to playing at Folk Masses, so he agreed to come. He was so impressed with the shining faces of the school girls that he went back to Wales and prayed earnestly that the Lord would bless him in the same way and he was baptised in the Holy Spirit too. A few weeks later he went to live in Canada and has been working for the Charismatic Renewal there ever since. Thankfully the Holy Spirit can draw good from the most unpromising situations. I have been hosting a small prayer group in my home in South Wales for about four or five years and I decided to run the seminars again here. I did not know how I was going to give the talks because I am past my ‘sell by date’ (I am 92 years old), but I was sure the Lord would look after that if I could just get the little prayer books. Fortunately I was able to get to the Carmarthen Conference and there I found the videos ‘This Promise Is for You’, which are just wonderful.I did the Seminars with the prayer group and they were overjoyed; it was such a lovely experience. Since then we have done them two more times in my home, as new people join us and once in the church hall. We all seem to get a lot out of the talks each time we listen to them. The Leader’s manual gives instructions on how to plan the meetings. The prayer group all have their own tasks to do. I get the tea, coffee and cakes or biscuits ready on the table and then sit down, someone else hands round the refreshments, another sees to the candles and holy water and yet another hands out the hymn books and handouts. I have an icon with flowers and candles next to the TV screen and CD player and we sit round in a semi circle. We have to squash up a bit to see the screen for the video. I have to write a timetable for the meeting so that it runs smoothly and I pick suitable songs for the session we are doing that evening. I find it best to have the refreshments at the beginning of the meeting which starts at 7:30pm; we then socialise until 7:50pm or 8:00pm at the latest. I find that some may come early to get more time to chat, which is nice but we make sure we finish promptly at 9.30 pm so it’s not too late for people to get home. I would encourage any house group to get the videos and have a go; it is well worth the effort.
Spiro Sueref from Cardiff, in Wales, shares his experience of running the LSS on his own for a small group.
I could really feel the presence of our Lord with us as we watched these videos and shared each week, just like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Although the Leaders’ manual talks about planning and holding larger events and setting up a team, I myself did these alone as at the time I didn’t have many in my prayer group. Since then, back in 2004, the prayer group has grown to around 10 to 20 people and now we are planning to run the series of seminars as a team. I always ask what people like the most about the seminars and I always get the same response. Most people enjoy the sharing and discussion groups. The fellowship and testimonies, the love and care, seem to open everyone up through our increasing faith in Jesus, to the love of God through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Martin McTiernan, from a prayer group in Mohill, Co Leitrim, Ireland shares their experience in running the Life in the Spirit seminars which are done in the context of the Mass and the huge crowds which have attended these.
Present in the congregation during these seminars were members of a rosary prayer group from a little village 30 miles away. They had no experience or knowledge of the Charismatic Renewal or of Baptism in the Holy Spirit. But seeing what happened, within a year they ran their own seminars in their village. When Fr Jack McArdle, one of the speakers arrived to do his talk, he mused that the Spirit must definitely be at work, when he saw the Garda, (police) directing traffic to the seminars in tiny rural village. Over the last three years we have been involved in at least nine or ten Life in the Spirit seminars run in churches in conjunction with the Holy Mass, where to some extent these experiences have been repeated. So rewarding has the experience been for ourselves and so confident are we that the Spirit is really at work that each new opportunity has been approached with relish. One of the key questions with this kind of seminar, is will the talks/testimonies take place during the Mass or immediately after it? Where the speaker on a particular night is a priest and perhaps the celebrant, there seems little doubt that the talk will be immediately after the Gospel. Where the speaker is a lay person this will be the decision of the parish priest where the seminars are taking place and needs to be clarified well in advance of the seminars. In most of the areas where our prayer group has been involved in helping out at seminars or where one of the members has been asked to do a talk/testimony, the talk has been done at homily time ( following introduction/short homily from the celebrant) and the testimony has been given at the end of Mass. In this context, of course it is not possible for there to be small sharing groups. In the view of the very large numbers that come to these seminars, also, you need to pay special attention to the 5th night when people are prayed with, and you may need to bring in extra people to act as ushers as well as pray-ers, as well as having suitable background music and extra copies of the commitment prayer. The disadvantage of this method is follow up, but we felt the Lord tell us through a prophetic word that our job was to sow seeds and he would take care of the growing. Full version of the above, with extra advice is available in the Irish edition of Goodnews, and photocopies of it can be sent to UK readers. Send an A5 SAE envelope to: Goodnews, Allen Hall, 28 Beaufort Street, London SW3 5AA.
Barbara Mason, an American, married to an Englishman living in Lancashire, and a former member of the English National Service Committee for CCR, has done Life in the Spirit Seminars in a day and over a weekend. She shares her thoughts.
Earlier this year in March I did a LSS at Ampleforth Abbey in Yorkshire for leaders of Teams of Our Lady, a Catholic movement for married couples. We started with Mass and then over the course of the day I did 4 talks. These were “God’s Love”, “Salvation” before lunch and then after lunch “New Life” (as testimony) and “Preparing to receive God’s Gifts”, which included teaching on the charisms, possible obstacles to receiving the charisms and the importance of repentance to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit. This was then followed by a time of being prayed over when people were asked to renew their baptismal vows and commit their lives to Christ. At the end of the day we finished with a few tie up remarks. This was a really powerful day and on the strength of this one of the couples present, Alan and Fran Burns who are part of the Ampleforth Day of renewal team, asked if I would be prepared to run a similar one day seminar for their parish of St Joseph’s in Stokesley. There was about a six month lead in period, during which time they got all the necessary permissions from the parish priest and worked through the director of adult formation in the parish. This time I decided to ask a priest friend of mine, Fr Angelus from the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in Bradford, to help me with these, and he did three of the talks. I was amazed to see that 40 people turned up for the day, which began with 9.30am Mass and finished promptly at 4.30pm. One of the keys to the turn out, as no-one there had ever heard about the seminars, was that Alan, who is a rather shy man, had spoken at all the Masses, and given a short personal testimony about how his life had been changed by attending the seminars 25 years ago. He encouraged people to go to confession beforehand or avail themselves of the sacrament sometime during the day. Also for this and the earlier event, a special programme for children was put on, so that parents could attend while their children did things like face painting and played on the bouncy castle and generally had fun. I have found it is very do-able in a day like this. As far as I’m concerned the seminars are not about joining a movement but about coming into the fullness of Pentecost, which is the heritage for all Catholics and part of our baptismal calling.
|
|
|||
 |
||||
|
|
|
I
emailed people round Scotland about the Life in the Spirit seminars
and what their experience was. It immediately became clear that the
seminars were still being used and that now, with confidence in their
own giftedness, people are adapting them to suit time, place and audience.
There were a number of common threads that ran through all the responses
but the one that stands out for me is that there is always a sure feeling
of anticipation that the Lord would bless every action. 
When
I first saw “This Promise is for you”, about the life changing
work of the Holy Spirit, I too was excited and was blessed by it. I
remember watching the video at home several times and thanking God for
this powerful resource and tool. I noticed myself changing and knew
I had to share this programme with others. So I arranged for a small
gathering at St Peter’s Church Cardiff and gave out the handouts
each week for six weeks. I noticed how people were transformed and that
we don’t have to be experts to share this information, we just
have to be willing and the grace of God will do the rest!
A
few years ago our prayer group in Mohill was asked to bring the Life
in the Spirit seminars to a neighbouring parish. Our core group had
come together to pray and plan the details and we were considering whether
a local hall or parish church would be the venue. The words of the Psalm
122 came to someone. “I rejoiced when I heard them say, “Let
us go to God’s house”. So we went to the church and crowds,
ranging from 600-900 people packed the church over the seven weeks of
the seminars. Each seminar was run along with the celebration of the
Holy Mass. Throughout it all there was an overwhelming sense of joy,
talks and testimonies guided the congregation as they met Jesus in a
fresh and intimate way. 
Over
the years I have done Life in the Spirit seminars (LSS) both over a
weekend and a day. These can be very effective, although it is important
that if you do them like this that there are people on the ground who
are renewed in the Spirit so that they can be there for follow up. The
fruit from these can be amazing. Some years ago I did a seminar for
a ladies’ group in Yorkshire. They were so touched that two of
them insisted that their husbands do the next available one, which they
did. Initially the men were rather sceptical but both experienced a
huge blessing of the Lord during the praying over. One rested in the
spirit and the other received the gift of tongues and prophecy. Since
then they have both gone to be very active in their parishes, organising
men’s weekends, revamping the confirmation programmes etc.