Bishop Justin and Jenny completed the month-long Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in May.

Many people on the walk, he said, wanted to talk to him about his role as a Bishop, and his experience of God.

He was surprised that monasteries and churches appeared not to engage with pilgrims, and a final Mass he attended notably failed to invite pilgrims to reflect on their journey. ‘People are hungry to talk about faith’, he said ‘but not interested in the institution of the church’. 

Bishop Justin continued: ‘People want to engage with issues of faith, but they do not want to belong to an institution. People want deeply to belong, and they want to be gathered around the table, to be called in from the highways and byways’.

‘We need to change our culture’, he said. ‘How we do things is just as important as what we do; if we get the right culture, then the other stuff will flow’.

Bishop Justin made three points:

•  We are family, not ‘islands’.

•  We cannot disciple people unless we are disciples ourselves.

•  We are a church of the lost, last least and a church that prioritises the proclamation of the Gospel, good news to the poor.

On the second day, Bishop Justin spoke of sharing our faith with confidence, and asked us to take part in two exercises, to talk to a 12 year old about the Good News and to consider a series of local mission scenarios and how we would plan and resource them. 

He reminded us of Mary Tonna, a respected lay person from Naenae, who recently died, and ‘prepared the soil’ through decades of faithfulness for the current renewal of St David’s. ‘All of us are sent’ the bishop said, ‘and all of us send people’.