Denver Catholic

4 AUGUST 22-SEPTEMBER 11, 2015 | DENVER CATHOLIC In-Depth Cover The Amazing Parish conference has attracted hundreds of parishes from across North America in its first year, and trained them in how to make their parishes more dynamic. They are now planning on expanding. Pat Lencioni, co-founder of the conference, did a Q-and-A with Denver Catholic about its future. Q: Where is the conference expanding ? A: It's going regional. So our next one, for the first time, is going to go to a diocese. We're going to the Archdiocese of Detroit. Q: What do you see changing as this becomes a national (or perhaps even global) event? A: The one we had in Denver was a very widespread group, geographically. This one [in Detroit] is going to be far more concentrated in one area. That's good, because there will be more parishes there. We hope to have around 200 parishes. The challenge might be that when you have people come from all over, you know you're getting the ones who are just so excited and determined to make their parishes better. We know that while all parishes are good in its own way, some are more hungry to change than others. So what we're pray- ing for and what we think will probably happen, is that after the end of the con- ference, they'll all be excited and really glad they came. Q: What are the benefits to doing a regional conference? A: I think that most parishes are strug- gling with similar things. I don't know that it's regional so much—it might be a little bit—but I think the good news is that it will create a type of critical mass, almost a positive peer pressure. ... I think there's something good about that. Can you imagine if a whole diocese went through that, how it could change things? Because I do think there's some- thing great about people helping one another and encouraging one another and pushing each other. Q: Why do you think it's catching on? A: It has exceeded our expectations wildly. We know why that is, and that's because we committed it to prayer and it's the Holy Spirit. It's easy to say that, but it's another thing to know that it's true. We know it's true by faith, but we also know that things are also happen- ing at these conferences that we never could have planned for. First of all, we were planning to do the first conference without the level of expertise you would expect for something like this, but we just said, 'OK, God, we're just going to try this." Then people came out of the woodwork to help. The FOCUS (the Fellowship of Catholic University Stu- dents) team came and they're the ones who o£ered to help us do liturgy, and adoration and confession and all these di£erent things, so we added that to it. And then people like Matt Manion at the Catholic Leadership Institute, he said they wanted to partner with us, too. He said he was going to get some of the priests who had gone through his pro- grams to go. There was this level of cooperation where had that not occurred, we would never have seen this work. I don't know that that's always typical among vari- ous apostolates, but there's this deep sense that people have no desire to do anything but help. We hoped that people would like it. We didn't realize that there would be spiritual transformation and that they would leave there with this renewed sense of vigor and passion for doing their jobs. Q: What would you like to see happen? A: In American society and the Western world, we tend to think everything is up to us. But we've found that when you don't think you're in charge, and you do whatever you have to do and then you let go, God makes things bigger than you could. So I just want this to go where he wants it to go. I want us to have really high standards of excellence, but not over prescribe the outcome. What we'd like to see is the Holy Spirit spark in every parish a new sense of excellence around how they create a healthy, dynamic parish and a focus on going out and making disciples of all people. Over these next few years, though, we would love to see the web- site be a great resource for people, we'd like to see the conference and the videos we're putting out be a resource. We're not exactly sure how that's going to play out, and we think that's probably the way to do it. Amazing Parish exceeds expectations, expands BY MELISSA KEATING 303-715-3123 melissa.keating@archden.org www.twitter.com/mkeats42 Q&A with PAT LENCIONI Attendees at the Amazing Parish conference listen to speakers, partake in panel discussions, and are able to go to Adoration and Confession. The conference has trained hundreds of parishes in its first year, and hopes to expand into the thousands. PHOTOS PROVIDED

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