Eighteen months ago the CES management made a radical decision to stop filming for a year. This was mostly driven by economics and partly due to the team being exhausted. We also felt it was important not just to keep producing material, good as that was, but to find out from the parishes what the needs were. We felt I should go out to meet the people doing our courses and minister at a deeper level to them and find out how things had been working and whether more films were needed and if so, what topics. As a result we had to leave our expensive offices at London Colney, and sadly had to cut back on some staff, which was a painful decision. I was then released by the trustees and management team for twelve months to go out and preach, write* (* “Alive” a testimony book about how God had changed my life) and minister.

I felt I was stepping out into the unknown and I wondered if people would be interested in having me come to speak at parish retreat days etc. To be honest I was also feeling a bit under-equipped for what lay ahead, and I had a sense from the Lord that I needed to receive some renewal myself. I knew exactly where I wanted to go. About a year previously I had been to a leaders’ conference in Toronto where I had been blown away by one of the speakers there called Bill Johnson. I had never heard of him. He is a 5th generation Pentecostal pastor from Redding, California, who is the head pastor of a church called Bethel, which has been very influenced by the theology and practice of John Wimber and the idea of everyone in the congregation being used by God to minister in the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. I was captivated by his stories of miracles that God had done, not just through him, but by the ordinary people in his church and I wanted to see this for myself. People’s stories were remarkable. We heard stories of missionaries in Siberia who were seeing conversions running into tens of thousands, and of miraculous multiplication of food in the shanty towns of Latin America and of people being raised from the dead in Mozambique, as well as middle class American pastors often seeing cancers healed. Just hearing this did something for me as to be honest I was losing some of my faith in charismatic things. I devoured his books and this had a profound effect on me, particularly his book “When Heaven Invades Earth”(available from Good News Books). There was nothing in them that was new from a charismatic point of view but it was an encouraging reminder of what can happen if we believe and step out in faith, guided by the Holy Spirit.

Every year the Bethel Church organizes an invitation only leaders’ conference. This is for leaders in their network, but I knew I had to go and I rang up and asked if it would be possible for me, as a Catholic to attend. They couldn’t have been more welcoming and were delighted to accept me and my friend Tommy on the conference, which attracts about 1000 people from all over the Learning to step out in the anointing world. I had no money, but the Lord provided and we both went, about a year ago. The church life at Bethel was incredible, What I had always dreamed of seeing I saw there. They even had a kids’ school where children were trained to minister in the power of the Holy Spirit. Each child there has a file with prophetic words about them and they in turn minister to others. It was amazing to see. There were top leaders from all over the world being prayed over and receiving words of encouragement and knowledge from children.

There were also about 1000 gap year students living at the church following a school of supernatural ministry. They had given up a year of their lives to be trained to move in the power of the Holy Spirit and they literally shone with holiness and faith. They would go out on the streets regularly. Before they would go, they would get words of knowledge and then go and act on them, praying with people in McDonalds and the shopping malls and seeing amazing healings and conversions. One group of drug dealers, as a result of prayer opened their car boot and dumped all the drugs they had been carrying in it. The message at Bethel is we need to step outside our comfort zones and stop relying on our own strength and our own knowledge. They stressed the need for supernatural courage where you put yourself in a situation where God has to show up and minister to the people, because you are depending on him and his power. I came back challenged, refreshed and renewed.

The first talk I had been booked to give, when I got back, was in Grimsby to a parish group of 60 people in the church. In the past in this non-charismatic context it wouldn’t have occurred to me to offer prayer ministry, but after my time at Bethel I decided to step out and offer this. To my surprise big queues started forming. I was deeply moved by the things that people shared - deep issues of brokenness that they had never received prayer for before, because it had never been offered to them. They had never had someone lovingly praying into the situation with faith before. Yet they were longing for it. Their response has been duplicated where ever I have preached over this past year. It has been amazing and very humbling. Over the past 12 months I have done quite a lot with teachers, for example. I remember at one school receiving some prophetic words of knowledge. I almost bottled out, but God gave me the courage. I ended up praying for 15 members of staff who stayed behind. These included some heads of department. Some were weeping at the end. It was the same with a meeting of ten head teachers in Yorkshire, whom I had a day with. I preached the message of the Father’s love and grace and offered to pray for them. Most responded and were profoundly touched. All this has been in “normal” Catholic settings. Just the other week I was with some Catholic teachers at a school in Surrey. At the end the presence of the Holy Spirit was so strong that nobody moved.

The key to all this of course is not my incredible preaching but the intercession I have backing me up. I have about 60 wonderful people who pray for me every time I get up to speak and this has made all the difference. I really feel we need to equip the older generation of faithful Catholics to be prayer warriors praying for their grandchildren and I have a sense of urgency about this.

In 1998 I was in St Peter’s Square at Pentecost when Pope John Paul called all the movements together and spoke about the New Spring time which he believed was going to come and this vision still burns within me. Sometimes when I look around, particularly here in the UK, it can seem that there is more winter than spring time. I believe we have to pray this Springtime in by faith, by speech and by our prayers. This is the priority for the future – to empower and equip this generation for revival. We can’t be passive about this, or it could pass us by. I feel moreover that the Catholic Charismatic Renewal has a special bridging role in this for the Catholic Church.

A while back I had a vision of a torrential river flooding the streets of a town. There were fields on either side of the road. A few of these fields had sluice gates that opened out on to the fenland and these fields were getting the water from the river, but the rest of the fields were untouched. I believe that the CCR are the sluice gate operators for the Catholic Church to help bring the coming current of grace into the mainstream Catholic Church. And now is a time of preparation for this to happen.

From my experience over the past twelve months, I believe the culture is really open if we have the courage. The CaFE series which has been used in so many parishes has given us credibility and a platform. I realize the priests who have used the material trust us and this has given us an opening to be invited in. It has been wonderful to meet these people whose faith has come alive because of the CaFE DVDs. Many are urging us to do more, so we are now going into another season of film production filming the message that I believe the Lord has given to my colleague Jenny Baker and me. It is called LIFE TO THE FULL - bringing the Bible Alive! So please pray for us. The DVDs will be available in January at a cost of £79.95 details at www.faithcafe.org or tel 0845 0509428.