7. Interview with Father Michael O'Connell

Interview with Father Michael O'Connell, Rector
7/12/01 - 1pm
Hal, Greg, AmyG
Hal led, Amy scribed

Hal did intro - Fr. Michael chatted with Greg about Australia

FF: Your own entry into the stream of ministry here at the BSM - how your role shaped itself?

I came in Aug 91. Came with the expectation that I would play a significant role in fundraising to save this church - it had serious structurally failure $6+ million. I hadn't ever raised that much money… but I was attracted to the challenge and to saving the building - it has value for the church as a greater community and in terms of architecture. Even before I got here I knew we needed to raise a lot of money and grow the parish population. In the mid 80s the parish was less than 700 households - probably older people 50-60 yrs old. In the 50s it was thriving but it went through the usual urban stuff. Started to grow back in the mid 80s and was moving along when I arrived. We had to intentionally grow the parish and raise significant funds.

Within a month of coming here I met Sharon Sayles Belton who was chair of the city council then. She said, "If you and your other senior pastors in this city don't establish a moral presence in this city we might as well turn out the lights and go home. We need you to get involved in the city, establish a moral presence." She said it in such a way that I couldn't forget it, even though I was swamped at the time and didn't really understand what she meant.

A friend from Loyola came to visit also within that month and told me about the Jeremiah project in New Orleans - community organizing. Referring to Jeremiah 29:7: seek the well-being of the city which you have been sent to in exile. Well being = shalom = the deep good of the people not just the city. I talked with a rabbi I had just met and he helped me with a deeper exegesis. In Jeremiah everybody has arrived in the first exile and they are belly-aching about having to leave Jerusalem, and Jeremiah says quit whining, and take what you've got and make a difference - and they did make a significant difference. I listened to that and that became a very important piece.

Then in 1992 the mayor said, "In 1982 26% of kids were born to low income single parent family - destined to repeat the life they were born into. In 1990 it was 47%" - this was the spine of poverty and injustice going on here in the city. It was an incredibly devastating reality - I connected with Sharon's comment and the Jeremiah passage and my call here to raise big money and grow the parish. We took an already existing intentional social outreach ministry (St Vincent DePaul - shoes, bus tokens, etc) and exponentially increased that. We showcased that in the midst of our parish mission. (He gave us copies of the BSM mission statement on the back of the Basilica magazine) We started with Jeremiah 29:7 and then formed a mission statement. Helping the poor is the standard of who we are and our integrity is built on that and started to build our ministry.

I developed by sheer luck a fundraising mechanism - a huge crane in the front yard with a boom for repairing the roof. I used to take people up in it to look at the BSM and talk about the needs of the parish, and I'd say look there's Dunwoody this world class tech school - look Minneapolis Community College - look there's St Thomas building their satellite campus, and over there Metro State. It occurred to me that I was looking at the largest adult ed consortium in the country - all within a few city blocks. I thought about how to break that cycle of poverty - access to education. If mom graduates from college then her kids will think they can. So there's 144,000 good jobs downtown, critical mass of employment, of education… maybe we can do something about that. At the time I get the president of NSP (electrical/power company, now Excel Energy) up in my bucket, and he's holding on to the cross on top of the basilica dome and I say take a look at this parking ramp owned by NSP. We need that to make a housing development that's a safe place for moms to raise kids. He says, "But I'm Presbyterian." I say, "That doesn't matter, we need that space to make this city better for these people." So NSP gave us a ½ million dollar piece of property - and we've done it. Together with 7 downtown congregations, business people, presidents of the colleges, local government, neighborhood association, we built a housing development - that became the Jeremiah program and we built that and now we're going to expand it. You'll see it; it's just across the street. Westminster Presbyterian and the BSM put 900,000 on the table and invited other congregations to join with us to build 55 habitat homes over 3 years on the near north side.

I became a pastor at Ascension a couple years ago - a distressed parish on the near north side that we can help because we're blessed. We are losing two priests - one retires and one dies - for every one that graduates from seminary, so we need to be attentive to how we can keep those neighborhood churches going.

FF: How does YA ministry fit?

I'm getting to that. I'm painting you a picture here of how it all fits together - I'm Irish - it's the way I communicate.

The outreach thing is a very attractive part of this congregation - knowing that we are involved meaningfully in the city. There are some young adults to whom this is the most attractive part. To others they know it happens and feel proud about it.

There's a curious paradox here - you hear about young adults not being turned on by "old church" but here you have a church that couldn't be older - its as old as you can get in terms of design - and it totally appeals to young adults. When you go inside you feel it. They love it. If you read the mission statement you see we are rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ. After that first line is quality of liturgy - and the quality of liturgy is wonderful. We preserve classic music - pre-vatican 2, now 30 years of quality contemporary compositions. Also a quality contemporary service at 615 on Sunday eve - we started with 100 people now 1000. We engage the whole spectrum of our population in our liturgy - we have 8th graders proclaiming the word - if you had told me we'd have that a few years ago I'd have said no way - but our Christian Ed person is really great and she persuaded me. So if that's their gift we let them do it, and they do a fabulous job. Our color diversity is not quite where I'd like it to be. Worship is the place we need to make our big investment - and doing great worship in that space - you can't be beat.

Every month we have our new parishioner dinners (and now a brunch) and 80% of those who attend are in their 20s or 30s. We ask what's your name, where do you live (500 zipcodes - we have huge visibility and great access). The reason people came to the basilica is, "I saw the church and it was beautiful and I loved that and I came to the liturgy and I loved that and I thought it would fee kind of empty but I was struck by how hospitable it was." That's the key - it's about welcome. Keep those doors as wide open as you can keep them. Keep reminding people that we have a key need in our nature to feel welcome and to feel like we mean something. So we work extremely hard at that. My biggest job is to be the vision and mission keeper - holding that over everything we say and do - to make sure we're keeping it. 7 out of 10 say I felt welcome I was welcomed. M-T-W-Th-Sat we do outreach to the poor and the undercroft (which we remodeled) has a huge room that is meant for them. They used to have to squeeze in a tiny room here in the rectory, but now we have this great space. We use it for wedding receptions, but it is for the poor. We put in huge bathrooms with showers so we could be a part of Families Moving Forward - the ministry for families trying to get out of homelessness - it's hospitality.

How about the Block Party - our ice cream social for 30,000 people. : What is this thing? Evangelization big time. We needed to grow the parish and said why not young adults. A friend of mine at St. Patrick's in Chicago started a block party in 1982 to save their parish. In 1992 a staff member showed me the front page of the Chicago paper with a story about their block party. So I sent her down to research it and now we have it. It's like preparing for DDay, but you follow the rules. You pick the band, you pick the radio station and you stick with them. People will offer you other wider audiences but you have to say no. Someone offered us a radio station that would reach 50,000 more people, but I said, "I don't want the name of BSM coming out of that DJ's mouth." When we did it in the first time in 1995 we freaked out the whole Twin Cities. One TV station took a vote on whether or not people liked it. The day before we did it, the Archbishop of the Diocese, who had known me since I was a boy, called me and said, "Tell me this is going to be ok."

If you want to come great, if you want to drink, wear a wrist band. People joke about Catholics that we drink and smoke - and we do. I'm a recovering alcoholic myself, so I get it. We aren't about a big drunken fest - But we are creating a space for their culture in our space. We went from 250 people at the 6:15 service in 1995 to 1000 now because of it. We have great education. We have Avenues to get connected with social, spiritual enrichment here at the BSM.

But the thing that's at the heart of it is hospitality. And when they come here (young adults) they are the majority. These are college educated people in their 20s and 30s and they are in the majority. They come back from college and they don't connect with their suburban church anymore. Families who divorce in the suburbs end up worshipping here because they have some identity here. They fit here. Its not that you can't pull off effective young adult ministry in Eagan, it's because your main demographics work against you. The young adults aren't out there; they aren't a presence in suburban churches. They come here because they can be in the majority. They are a part of every committee. Young adults put out the BSM magazine 4 times a year as volunteers. Other than postage the Basilica Magazine is a free ministry for us. There's so much talent here. They are in the midst of a scary time in life and they come here and have strength in being part of this larger identity. This is possible in every denomination if they have a place like this building and want to go after it with intentionality, it is possible.

FF: How about wedding, pre-marital stuff?

We do preparation with 120 couples for marriages here. 35-40 of those we prepare are getting married elsewhere. Then we do annulments getting people ready for second marriages. Our marriage director and her husband lead post marriage enrichment stuff too. We also have Catholics Coming Home in advent and lent - meant for disaffected folks - a way to come back through a healing deal. We had to change our rules about who can be married here. It used to be if you were on the rolls you could get married here. Now you have to be a registered and active member for 6 months and you will still be planning a year or more out if you want a good date. That reduced our number of weddings. We have a fabulous premarriage program here. Do Prepare/Enrich and also a temperament workshop as a pre-marriage retreat.

FF: Reflect on what you've told us - is anything missing?

I left out 2 pieces of the array - the ecumenical group at work down here - I serve as the dean of that group. That includes the temple. The attractiveness to young adults is that we are grounded in that. We also celebrate the arts - the sacred arts are the center of our lives.

60+ employees and no parish school. Since I took on a second parish we had to flatten out our management. Now we have 8 senior managers who've taken on huge responsibility and five teams that meet in staggered schedule - I go to the meetings but I don't lead them, I'm the vision keeper and the mission keeper. We've tried very hard in the last three years to reform our management - to hold up the phrase healthy relationships as the standard for working with each other - palpable respect in the work and staffing culture here. How do you achieve this? We have huge retention here which makes it much easier. We held up three words - consultation, communication, consensus. Those are the guiding words we use as a staff, it takes longer, but it's worth it. We did our budget that way this year - rather than doing the wizard of Oz (where we have this much need and this much money and someone goes behind the curtain and comes out with a solution), we had all these groups meeting around it and together we took it down until it fit and we could move forward. There are still issues involved but we have a good formula and we work at it.