For those interested, I made a few notes on ministry in a Catholic context, and how the Catholic communities function:
- Lay movements in the RC Church are being led by lay people; the parish priests only function in a supporting (non-hierarchical) role.
- Spirit-filled Catholics are not much different from Spirit-filled Baptists; their lives get more centered on Christ, and they function in (some of) the charismatic gifts.
- The big lack or need in the RC Church is practical daily life discipleship and training for ministry, which is an area where Protestants can help if they are willing to serve.
- Most Protestants in Catholic nations are anti-Catholic, which is understandable from a historic reformation point-of-view, but limits them in their missional effectiveness. Probably the best approach is to accept the Catholic cultural context as a given (with its good and bad things, without the need to embrace it for your own spirituality), and simply help people rediscover Christ, experience Him and center their lives on Him. This will in the long run also effect the theology and practice of the church.
- There are hundreds of communities in the charismatic renewal movement, and most of these communities are in fact extensive international networks or movements.
- The communities have a specific charisma, or ministry to the wider Body of Christ. For the Community of Jesus this is ecumenism, intentional cross-fertilisation with non-Catholic groups, from Pentecostal to Russian Orthodox.
- They focus more on quality (fruit) than quantity (the typical church growth paradigm), and they cannot meet the increasing demand to start new communities, which even more stresses the need for more training.
- The RC Church also has ambient/contextual movements and in fact offers quite a lot of space for more organic or convergent initiatives.
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