About Us

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The Story of Come Follow Me

In the Beginning…Spiritual Renewal…Leadership Training…Lay Apostles!

            The community of Come Follow Me leadership began in the 1990s through various renewal ministries sponsored by Spiritual Renewal Services in the Diocese of Manchester.  Two foundational ministries for this community were the Men of St. Joseph (which was founded in NH and has now spread to 18 countries), and the Diocesan Evangelization Resource Team (DERT!) which hosted the Paulists, Disciples in Mission, which impacted 28 NH parishes and an estimated 28,000+ parishioners, including 6000 who joined small faith sharing, discipleship groups.  From 2000-2002, the Come Follow Me discipleship and leadership training was established, and 230 lay leaders were trained during those three years.

            In 2003 Come Follow Me became a monthly leadership reunion to keep “lay apostles” connected.  For many years, this was hosted at Joseph House, and it was originally sponsored by Vita Nova, the ministry which has focused on hosting NH retreats for many years. 

Pope Francis and The Joy of the Gospel

            In 2013 at the end of a year of faith, The Joy of the Gospel came out, and we adopted this as the foundation for a new focus as a group apostolate.  We dedicated ourselves to living out this calling and spreading it to the church of NH.  We hosted our first conference at the Cathedral with Bishop Libasci’s support and guidance, and for two years our follow-up conferences were held at Immaculate Conception parish in Nashua.

Our group migrated to central NH in the Lakes Region, and we adopted our vision around three key themes focused on going out to our state:

            1) Living and spreading the Joy of the Gospel—becoming “missionary disciples”

            2) Building unity with other Christians

            3) Reaching our cities together

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Parish Revitalization Movement:  DR2016

            In 2015 Fr. James Mallon’s best-selling book, Divine Renovation, provided a practical plan for parishes to implement The Joy of the Gospel through a collaborative team of parish leaders adopting a “Game Plan.”  Following a book giveaway effort, 60 parish leaders from NH and Boston attended DR2016 in Halifax and then returned and established parish teams.  Four co-sponsoring parishes with the collaboration of Bishop Libasci established Parish Revitalization Reunions.  In 2018 Fr. James came to NH, and 400 parish leaders from eight dioceses of New England experienced 4 key themes for parish transformation, which have become the 4 pillars of Come Follow Me.  (These 4 themes originated from the Alpha International movement from Holy Trinity Brompton in London where Fr. James is a prominent leader.)

            1) collaborative leadership

            2) transformative prayer experiences

            3) formation of missionary disciples

            4) effective evangelization

The Dream of Come Follow Me:  Launch 100 Mentors

            The main focus of Come Follow Me is to “form leaders to make missionary disciples” so the church is mobilized to bring The Joy of the Gospel into the world.  Our plan is simply to focus on becoming “fishers of men” and then teaching others to do this, and then teach others to teach others!  In other words, we want to launch 100 mentors to form leaders to make missionary disciples to multiply communities of leaders 30x, 60x, or 100x (Mark 4) to multiply the work.

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Come Follow Me is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, Tax ID: 82-4020257