God Is the Architect: The Third Essential Principle for Transformation

Fr. John Riccardo

March 17, 2021

“This really works! I’ve been ordained for 31 years, and these past few days spent with your team, seeing the rhythm of prayer and work, going back and forth between ‘the trailer’ and ‘the construction zone,’ are some of my most incredible days as a priest.”

 Those words were shared recently with us by a bishop. Upon leaving our office, he told us that he couldn’t wait to implement a similar pattern of praying and working with his own teams back home. We can find no greater testimony to the fruitfulness of what we call our Third Essential Principle for transformation in the Church than his words. Indeed, it does work.

 The bishop spent several days in our offices, wherein we had some intense conversations about what God might be asking us to do together, as well as some extended times of prayer before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, listening for His voice, mindful that He speaks to us all in unique ways, and then coming back together to discuss “what we heard.” This rhythm in our ministry is driven by the fact that we need to make sure we don’t simply pray before we work, but pray in order to know what work the Lord is calling us to do.

 We’ve shared that we believe and think there are three essential principles that bring about the transformation and renewal the Church needs right now. These three principles, we believe and think, create something new, an alloy, if you will, when they are exercised together. The past two weeks, we addressed briefly the first and second essential principle. Today, we only want to show how these three work intimately together.

 As we mentioned before, we believe there already is a plan, a blueprint if you will, for every diocese and every parish in the country. Ours is not the task of brainstorming around a table to talk about what we would like to see happen, but to get on our faces before the Lord and ask Him to show us what the plan is.

However, in order to do that, we need to be clear about who it is we’re talking to, who we’re asking to show us the plan. We need to have clarity on who God is, why He made the world, why everything is so messed up, what He’s done about it, and how we should respond to what He’s done. In other words, we need to re-acquire a biblical worldview—the first essential principle. Anticipating the third principle, we could say we need to know who the “Architect” is. Crucial as that is, however, it’s not enough.

 The operative question at this point is, “How do you discern the plan?” Since the plan doesn’t fall from the sky or get written on the wall (except for King Belshazzar), we have to make sure we bring the right people with us into “the trailer.” That is, we need to make sure our key leaders trust each other, are vulnerable with each other, can engage in passionate and healthy conflict with each other, are committed to wanting only what God wants and can and will hold each other accountable. This is not the norm in the Church, both at the diocesan and parish level. In other words, we need to be more than a staff—the second essential principle. We need to become a healthy team and, more than a team, we need to be a family (for teams aren’t biblical concepts). 

 When we have clarity on who God is, and have the right people going into the trailer with us to ask Him to reveal the next step, we then need to approach Him with utmost confidence that He still speaks to us today and that He wants the renewal and transformation of the Church more than we do. And, we have to be willing to leave the familiar behind, as Abraham did, not knowing necessarily where we are going, but confident in the One who is leading, understanding that in His kindness and mercy towards us He rarely if ever shows us the whole plan in advance. If He did, we would probably be so petrified we wouldn’t move. His word is indeed a lamp for our feet (cf. Ps 109:105). Those lamps show the next step, not the whole path. 

 We mentioned last week that the best book we know for becoming more than a staff is Pat Lencioni’s The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else. But honestly, and we’ve heard Pat say this, the real advantage is prayer. 

 The time for five-year plans is over—who would have imagined this past year!? The time to lean into God like never before with reckless trust is now.