Event management…

Allow me to apologies in advance for this one but a healthy dose of self-reflection and criticism is essential. I recall when I left school, confused to which career path I should take, I enrolled in a Bachelor of Commerce, tried to major in Accounting and Finance but after a few “fails” I found temporary refuge in Marketing and Economics.

I learned early that the core of Marketing philosophy is not product or service-based marketing but rather “relationship” based marketing. Businesses pay millions of dollars to come up with branding and promotional strategies to build a relationship with their clients. To build a long-lasting relationship with the clients is what matters because it encourages repetitive purchase and brand loyalty.

This resonates with me. For me personally relationships give me life. I love to sit, listen, conversate and help. It gives me deep joy. It was mainly why teaching, ministry and now Spiritual direction mean much to me.

It makes me feel so energized to realise that at the heart of Jesus’ mission was to enter into relationship with the most vulnerable, poor, blind, the captives and oppressed. With those who are far and those who are near, with friends and enemies as well as outcasts. Jesus was a healer par excellence. His way of dealing with those on the inside and those “outside the city gate” was to offer them healing stemming from a new relationship with God based on love.

Jesus is God’s agenda for the world. He is God’s message. As Schillebeeckx puts it Jesus is God translated for us. It is as if we couldn’t understand God before perhaps because we have forgotten the language or it no longer spoke to our hardened hearts and so God gave us a new language by entering into a new relationship with the world by giving us a piece of God’s self, Jesus, to enter into our world in flesh and unite with us in love. God’s philosophy for the kingdom is relationship based, but not for utilitarian purposes like those in marketing, rather for our good and happiness.

Yet what deeply has troubled me lately are some of the strategies and not all that we use in some and not all of the Churches to connect with those whom we minister to. In the face of declining Church numbers and rising secularism, many and especially the young have disconnected from Church and religion altogether, yet they still have a deeper hunger more than ever for spirituality, connection and relationships.

Our response has been by employing what I believe are poor strategies. In many cases the central philosophy behind most of our “new evangelization” strategies is an “event-based attitude”. Some of our priests and youth ministers as well as lay volunteer have had to become full time event managers.

In our desperation to keep people in Church engaged, occupied and interested and draw outsiders, we are running event after event. We want to build community and provide a sense of belonging through events. We run festivals, dance parties, trivia and many other events, all of which are so important, but we run them with an event-based attitude. The irony is that we are using an old marketing strategy that secular marketing no longer uses and forgotten our core philosophy, that which is based on growing relationships, something that the marketers have now taken up.

Sometimes, we spend countless hours planning and organising these events with the same core group of volunteers who are a small minority, who enthusiastically jump in and run around and work so hard to put them on and once they finish the event, we move to the next one. They have little energy for anything else and some end up burning out emotionally, physically and spiritually. They are brilliant and they do a brilliant job. I have been part of this approach for years. It’s just that it took me so long to realise that the core philosophy is flawed.

I am not discounting the countless efforts and missionary work of so many that is taking place. Let me say though clearly that we need events. They are essential. Plan them. Run them. Well and good. The youth love them. They are a window, an entry point to connect with people. I remember a person high up in the Church explaining to me the reason why big events are essential. He reminded me that festivals give an opportunity and space for the young to facilitate the encounter with Jesus in a faith community. Young people also get to celebrate their faith together. They connect. They feel a sense of the bigger family and they are not alone.

I agree we need to give people the opportunity to encounter Christ. To have a life changing moment where we own our faith and we are flooded by God’s love and a true moment of conversion that takes place between God and the person and we are called to give people the space and the opportunity.

Yet this strategy cannot be all of it. We do it often because we can measure the success by counting numbers, yet it remains only the tip of the iceberg and is one and sometimes shallow step in a long journey with God. We cannot simply say our job is to hook them to Jesus and that’s it. This will be like a school saying that our job is simply to get students to turn up and run few classes and engage in curriculum teaching and that’s it. But what about building relationships with students, caring for them pastorally, listening to them, forming them holistically and help them find their identity and calling and building their character. Whose task is that?

I know many people better than me have seen this gap and are working to do follow up strategies arising from those big events. They are great. Though the issue for me always remains about the core philosophy that finds its feet with resource allocation.

The Church has limited financial resources as well as very limited human resources in volunteers and clergy who are overloaded and are time poor. If they spend hours every week organizing the next event, raising funds to pay the next project or doing the next event, and there are more than a few in a calendar year, when in terms of hours and energy, will they have time to do more.

What is needed is that we go back the heart of Jesus’ ministry. His relationship-based philosophy. He did not run events nor asked his disciples to, he spent his energy on relationships and sent them out to enter into a relationship with their fellow brothers and sisters and offer them God’s love and the opportunity of new deeper relationship with God.

We need to spend time with people one-on-one. We need to form leaders and train them in the art of accompaniment as Pope Francis keeps telling us. I wonder if we spend as much time, money and resources on strategies to build relationships with people, know their names, their story, listen to them, support them, hear their concerns, listen to their joys and sorrows and above all love them and help them to feel God’s love, what would happen?

Only if our philosophy changes, then those events we run become an entree before the main meal. We need the entrees to prepare our tummy for the main meal, but entrees don’t fill us. Off course the main meal is a personal relationship that we build over time so people can feel a home and experience God’s love. Belonging is never event based. I feel I belong at home because of the relationship that has been nourished over time. They have deepened overtime.

The Church has a long and successful history of healing institutions through its missionary work in hospitals, schools, residential aged care facilities, orphanages and so much more. What is needed more than ever today is individual based healing, where healing takes place in the one-on-one relationships. People need to be heard and loved. They need to know that their story matters, that they are known by name.

My prayer is that I hope you heard my deep desire and concern and that you read what I have written in love and in context. We all know that real love takes time and is a journey. It is never a one-off event. It may begin with an event but never stops there. We are never fulfilled in a one-night stand. We might be amazed in the short term but that’s all.

May we together continue to answer the call of Christ and think of new ways, use our creative hearts, minds and our resources, follow the promptings of the Spirit and above all change our mindsets into a relationship based ministry that accompanies and nourishes peoples’ lives and offers them a new relationship with God based on our love for them so that through our love they discover God’s love, the one whom their hearts yearn for.