Renewal in Lancaster: Fr Philip Conner’s Alpha Story

We chat with Fr Philip about Alpha as a spark plug for renewal and building authentic community.

Hi Fr Philip, could you tell us a bit about your parish in Lancaster?

Sure, so I’m the Catholic priest at St Joseph’s in Lancaster. Lancashire was historically a very Catholic part of the world - it’s a very beautiful part of the world, looking over the Lake District and Morecambe Bay. 

Over the last fifty years, as with most of Western Europe actually, the tide seems to have gone out as far as the faith is concerned. When I arrived here six years ago I had a sense that, if things carry on the way they are, we might not have this church in ten years’ time. That was really my starting point. 

I’m not in the business of closing churches down. We’ve been given the gift of the good news!

When you arrived there six years ago, were you thinking of using Alpha?

I didn’t have any particular plan. As I began to ask these questions - ‘how are we going to renew the life of the Church? I came across groups within the Church where I could see that actually there was life! And Alpha was certainly one of the instruments.

‘Alpha’ is the first letter of the Greek alphabet, so it never claims to give the whole of the fullness of the truth, but it is a starting point, it is Alpha, at the beginning. I think that this is one of the things that we’re lacking in the life of the Catholic Church. We assume that people know who Christ is and we carry on and we have lots of programmes and lots of social events, assuming that everyone knows who Jesus Christ is. 

I became more and more convinced that actually, people didn’t know who Jesus Christ was. Not only in our parishes but in the wider world that our parishes are called to serve. 

For me, Alpha became that key ingredient, like a spark plug.

Did you have a moment when you realised that a lot was being assumed of people’s understanding of the Christian faith?

This crystallised it for me. I remember I was with a young person, we had done a presentation at a Sixth Form retreat, and she stuck up her hand. She looked absolutely shocked. 

She said ‘I’ve been to a Catholic Primary School, I’ve been to a Catholic High School, I’m in a Catholic Sixth form now and no one has ever told me that Jesus is God.’ 

My jaw just dropped. I thought, my goodness, we are missing the vital ingredient. But it’s not just that people don’t know about it - all of us need to hear it again and again and again. It’s proclaiming what we call ‘the Kerygma’, the basic gospel message. Every time I head it, it enlivens me, brings my faith alive, it makes me desire for more. 

Was it easy to start running Alpha in your parish?

I was quite terrified! 

When you start from nothing it’s quite hard, because the volunteers aren’t there, they don’t quite know what they’re doing - it’s a great risk actually! And we were inviting people to something that we didn’t really know that much about.

But we took the risk and we got twenty people to come to it and it was amazing! I was absolutely astonished right from the first session, but certainly by the second session, by the depth of conversation and sharing. This was between people who didn’t even know each other’s names. Most of the people who came to the first Alpha were people who attended our church and they had seen each other each week at Mass but they didn’t know each other’s names.

Nothing is forced at Alpha, everyone just shares at the level they feel comfortable with. Firstly, I was astonished at the depth of sharing that was going on. Secondly, I began to hear people learning how to speak about the things of God. Not being afraid to mention the name of Jesus, to speak about their struggles with forgiveness and to understand how Christ would actually help them with that. They were beginning to make these real connections between their faith and their life. Some wonderful experiences of community and friendship.

It led to some beautiful moments, with some people returning to confession for the first time for many many years. 

What effect do you think opening up that space of sharing and conversation had on your parish?

I think the effect is that people stop coming to Mass just as individuals. People began to care for each other. I think also that people began to know their gifts, which in time we’ve been able to incorporate into the life of the parish. If we don’t know each other, we don’t even know people’s backgrounds, professions and charisms, then these things just remain dormant.

Community was such a deep part of the Early Church - actually taking an interest in people’s lives. What’s happened since is that people have made their own little Whatsapp groups and they pray for each other. We began to develop intercessory prayer within the parish, we began to develop our outreach within the parish and it’s all come out of these friendships. 

Faith and friendship are very close to one another. When we can bring these two things together then very creative things happen. 

What has this whole experience with Alpha been like for you personally, as a priest?

When I began telling people we were running Alpha courses, a lot of other priests looked at me a bit sceptically. But you’re not going to get anything more Catholic than the proclamation of who Christ is!

I’ve been very blessed by it, it’s given me hope that the gospel is alive and active! It has placed right in the centre of parishes the confidence in the Holy Spirit, that we’re not just doing some human project, we’re not just some nice social outreach organisation - but actually, we are the ones who bear within our hands the good news. It’s really woken up a great fervour inside me. 

Alpha’s been a beautiful gift really.