Listed below are the names of the newly elected officers and members of the International Secretariat. If you've been part of Tres Dias for a number of years, you know something about that group. For others, a short explanation of how Tres Dias is governed may be useful.

     The full, official name of the group is the "International Secretariat of Tres Dias," often referred to as "the Secretariat" or simply "TDI." This 27-member board of directors meets only three times a year, but carries out its work, both at those meetings and during the year, through five standing committees.

    If you hear about new communities being chartered, the announcement came from this body. When your community votes on the annual assessment or a Tres Dias bylaws change, the proposal to do so came from TDI.

    The second "branch of government" is the "Assembly of Tres Dias Secretariats." This governing body comprises all local secretariats, each having a certain number of votes, based on number of active members. We might think of an assembly as a "coming together" of representatives (delegates). This is certainly true for the Annual Assembly. Actually, however, most of the voting (on proposals from the International Secretariat. election of TDI officers, etc.) takes place at local secretariats' monthly meetings.

     The Annual Assembly opens with a parade of banners from communities around the world. There is a keynote speaker, workshops, special reports, and plenty of worship and praise....and the installation of newly elected TDI officers and members. The installation will happen September 15 at the Annual Assembly in Seoul.

In the Spring 2011 issue of this newsletter, I shared my ideas about the weekend being "simply an encounter with Christ." I want to enhance that article with new insight about helping candidates sustain their commitment to Christ after the weekend. The original article took its essence from an email sent to a dear brother who was starting a new community in a foreign country, and who expressed concern that his team was too small.

Dear Brother,

As I write this, I am in San Antonio, TX , meeting with about a dozen leaders   of the Fourth-Day Movements ... Lutheran, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Episcopal, and Tres Dias.

    From our discussions here, I have come to understand, more than ever, why we need to concentrate more on the candidate. We need to make sure that each candidate knows God's love, understands who he or she is as a Christian, is able to love the self, and is filled with love for others. Wherever these pescadores find themselves after the weekend, they should "ferment Christianity," to use Eduardo Bonin's phrase.

     It is important that the rollistas live the life they are witnessing. It is important that the candidates feel, "Wow! If that person can be a Christian, so can I." If we put distractions in the weekend that pull candidates away from that central theme, we are weakening the effectiveness of Tres Dias in changing a person's attitude about self and what it means to live as a Christian.

    The weekend must be a true encounter with Christ. We must not put so much stuff in the weekend that the encounter is watered down ...so that the candidates remember the stuff and not the encounter.

We do not need a big team of palanca people who wear chicken hats and deliver stuff to the tables. We need team members who are good one-on-one witnesses, showing what it means to

• live in relationship with Jesus-Father-Holy Spirit (PIETY);
• grow in an understanding of who they are, of who God is, and of the love He has for them (STUDY);
• thrive as a Christian in the environment where they are planted (ACTION).

      Being Christian is more important than doing Christian, because being in Christ comes first. Only by being Christian can we ferment God's love.

      Do you know that in the 1950s, two Spanish airmen from Majorca, Spain, were here in San Antonio. They heard that a priest from Majorca was in Waco, TX. They went to Waco , where the three shared stories about their Cursillo experiences. They decided that they should help people in the USA know how a weekend encounter with Christ could change lives! 

     The three of them did! Three people chose candidates, put on the weekend, and started reunion groups and Ultreas (Secuelas)! Three people started a movement that has helped thousands on the way to a new understanding of God's love and how to live as Christians. 

     That is how Cursillo started in the USA. The Holy Spirit birthed Tres Dias out of that!

     Don't worry about a small team. Be concerned that you have a team of good witnesses, witnesses willing to live where they are planted, witnesses who do not claim to be Super-Christians, but who show that they are real, normal people leading normal lives, with Piety, Study and Action as their guides.

    Jesus started with 12. He did not create an organization with committees, capital campaigns, and rule books about the "right way" to worship. We did that in our denominations. Put all those things aside. The weekends must concentrate on the candidate and his or her encounter with Christ.

    During the weekend the candidate will have two significant experiences: the personal encounter with Christ and the support and love of the other people at his or her table. Out of those experiences, reinforced with the "Reunion Groups" and "Living the Fourth Day" rollos, the candidate will have a passion for sustaining a commitment to Christ in a reunion group.

   That will produce a lifetime of service to our Lord and not just the memory of some mountain-top experiences on a weekend.

Your brother in Christ and your servant, John

 In early 2011, representatives from the major fourth-day movement organizations, including Tres Dias, Catholic and Presbyterian Cursillo, Emmaus, and others, drafted a questionnaire for the first comprehensive, nationwide study of practices and attitudes at the local community level. Members of Tres Dias communities were especially responsive, and 984 pescadores filled in answers to the 33-question survey instrument.

     If ever anyone wanted evidence that a three-day weekend-- specifically, Tres Dias, but also Cursillo, Emmaus, or others--prepares people to be ambassadors for Christ, these survey results are incontrovertible, firsthand, eye-witness proof. Asked "How much better prepared are you today to share God's grace," three out of four checked "Willing to talk about His grace to anyone who asks." 

   An open-ended follow-up question invited participants to explain how they were using their new relationship with Christ. Almost 800 pescadores volunteered comments, and their statements are galvanizing and invigorating.

     Many spoke enthusiastically, "I want to tell everyone I meet how much God loves them," while others were more reflective:

"The weekend taught me that a relationship with God is both public and personal. Before, my relationship was public--I was a member of a church--but the weekend affirmed the very personal relationship God wants with me."

Still others talked about the newfound joy in serving the Lord, by working with youth groups, volunteering in an old folks home, teaching bible study, leading an Alpha group, etc.

"I now share God's grace and will in our lives with my patients," one doctor wrote. "And I've started to work with incarcerated youth weekends at detention centers."

     Not everything is ideal, however. While most participants (60 percent) are active in sponsoring candidates and almost all have served on team, they are far less involved in those post-weekend activities considered essential for community vitality. One third of the respondents reported that they never attend secuelas, and many more (in all, 436 of the 982 participants ) expressed some dissatisfaction with secuelas.

     Why the discontent? Problems with the location (too far to travel) was the most common answer, followed with schedule conflicts (always on Saturday evening, and I work then," for example). Some expressed the need for child care. Others, however, cited problems with the program dynamics: "I didn't feel welcome," "they're cliquish," "they're formulaic--always the same," "the small group questions are awkward."

      If more than 400 participants in a national survey are willing to say, candidly, why they are unhappy with secuelas, that should be the cue for local community leaders to do their own studies and respond to the dissatisfaction.

      Reunion groups had even lower participation: only about half of the respondents were members of a group.

 For those respondents who are in groups, however, membership is making a big difference in their lives. These responses were typical:

Think, for a moment, about how you felt immediately after your candidate weekend. Perhaps it was that awesome, "almost can't believe it" feeling of having been surrounded by God's love as never before. Maybe you remembered the rollos and marveled at how powerful a true story of faith, honestly told, can be. Likely, you had a lot of questions about what happened on the weekend, why it happened, and what is supposed to happen next, but didn't know quite what to ask, or how.

     It was this sympathy with a pescador's transition to the fourth day that promoted Fairfield County Tres Dias pescador Gordon Quimby to write his article, title shown in the box, for publication in the community newsletter. 

      Click the link below and the article will open in a PDF format. Consider printing copies for recent pescadores you have sponsored, or for including in fourth-day packages.

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