The five or six people your parish priest is prayerfully looking for

Fr Dominic O’Connor had driven two hours to get here, out from Boston, on the eastern edge of the diocese, and on the last morning of the Clergy Conference he was in no hurry to leave. He stood with a cooling coffee among priests he sees too rarely, their laughter carrying up the hotel stairs. He has made this trip most years for the better part of a decade.

He comes for the company, the chance to “chat, relax, and share experiences” with fellow clergy, and time with Bishop Patrick McKinney. But he also comes to take stock. A talk on the Mass and on preaching had left him with something to mull over. “It gives you some ideas to think about,” he says.

Ask him what he feels in a room full of fellow priests, and he doesn’t reach for anything grand. “We’re all in it together,” he says. “We’re not alone and everybody has similar problems.”

There is relief in how he says it, and something braver underneath. At a gathering built on honest talk, what counts is naming the hard things together: “the support of everybody else in sharing those [challenges],” he says, “is so important.”

This year the conference ran from 1 to 3 June, in Nottingham. For a parish priest, three days away is a real sacrifice. “The challenge is always the time they’ve got to give up in the parish versus what they are hoping to get here,” admits Deacon Warren Peachey, who is our Diocesan Coordinator for Ongoing Formation for Clergy. The pull, he says, is friendship first: “an opportunity for friendship and fraternity, just to come together.”

What they carry home is each other. They “learn from listening and talking,” Deacon Warren says, then “take back to the parishes that kind of knowledge.”

When Bishop Patrick stood to speak on the Wednesday morning, he opened with gratitude. “I am both proud of you and thankful to have you,” he told them. Then he turned to what he was asking of them: not to shoulder their parishes alone, but to gather “a small handful, five, six, a really small number of parishioners who know and love their parish.”

This shared way of working is what the Church calls co-responsibility, and he set it at the heart of the Diocesan Mission Plan: a whole parish taking up the work together, not the priest carrying it by himself. He asked each parish to begin now, with a small group, and to let it grow by Advent, the season before Christmas, into a mission leadership team that includes a young adult wherever possible.

Across three days the talks circled the same questions: how to form disciples, how to lead change, how to pray the Mass more deeply. Fr Dominic teaches on Saturdays, visits the sick on Sundays, and is in the prison on Mondays. Asked what he’d take back to his parish and ministry, he didn’t name a strategy. Instead, he named the people he wants to encourage, and a resolve to take more care over how he prepares and celebrates Mass.

For Fr Dominic, as for every priest, the week returns to one place: the altar. This Sunday the whole diocese keeps Corpus Christi, the feast of Christ’s Body and Blood, the Mass where we meet Christ and are sent back out to love and serve him in one another.

If you love your parish, the person your priest is prayerfully looking for might be you. You don’t need a title or a theology degree: only a willingness to take a few steps alongside others to help your parish become more missionary. If something here has stayed with you, the next step is a small one: have a word with your parish priest. He’ll be glad you did. You can also find your nearest church at dioceseofnottingham.uk.

Read the Diocesan Mission Plan here: www.gomakedisciples.uk