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Redemption Flows Through Bishop Brewer’s Cursillo Experience
Student, Celebrant, Champion
Redemption Flows Through Bishop Brewer’s Cursillo Experience
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BY MARTI PIEPER
Gregory O. Brewer with Bishop William H. Folwell circa 1976
For then-seminary student Gregory O. Brewer, Cursillo began as a learning experience, just short of a duty. But God redeemed it into so much more. “I was a senior at Virginia Theological Seminary in 1976, and I was 24 years of age at the time,” The Rt. Rev. Gregory O. Brewer said. “And I heard about Cursillo because a team from Cursillo came to the seminary and made a presentation. “I liked what I heard,” he said. “I liked the emphasis on Christian community and about being with a group of people that pray together, and the testimonies that I’d heard from them about how God had changed their lives held real interest. And my thought was, ‘I should do this because I’m interested in the renewal of the church. This is something that I should understand and experience.’”
“I actually went with no expectation of any personal change happening to me whatsoever,” he confessed. “I just thought I needed to go because Cursillo was obviously a burgeoning movement, and it was something about which I ought to be informed. So I applied, and I was accepted.” That Cursillo happened to be the first one ever held in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, Brewer said. It was an all-male event, with men “of every age, probably 18 or so up until post-retirement.” “What I did not expect and thoroughly enjoyed was a wonderful sense of celebration that pervaded the whole weekend,” Brewer said. “Everything was fiesta, laughter, lots of food.” But although he enjoyed the celebratory atmosphere, what caught him off guard was what he calls the “extraordinary level of prayer support and volunteers that it took to put on a Cursillo.” Brewer said every Cursillo candidate had a volunteer who watched out for his needs. Not only that, but “huge groups of people” kept showing up every now and again to pray or sing. “We were serenaded at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning,” he said. “This is way out in the country at their retreat center. And there were several hundred people who were there by 7 o’clock. That just astonished me, and it really moved me. “I was deeply touched by the love and the sacrifice of the people who served and did all sorts of things,” Brewer said. “That really changed me. And that weekend became a wonderful experience of the tender, sacrificial love of God really demonstrated through all of the people who came to love and to serve me.” And that demonstration of redeemed weakness touched his heart, he said. “I really was deeply affected by Cursillo — to my complete surprise because I didn’t anticipate anything happening to me at all. And I loved it.”
Student, Celebrant, Champion
Spring Cursillo Weekends
have been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coed Cursillo Weekend, scheduled for Oct. 1-3, 2021, has not been canceled at this time.
The Cursillo Commission is working on the changes that would be necessary to have a successful coed weekend.
For more information about Cursillo,
join the Central Florida Cursillo Group on Facebook; visit the Cursillo website, CFEpiscopalCursillo.org; or contact Phil Phillips, strumminguy55@yahoo.com; Kim McMaster, kmcmaster1@cfl.rr.com; or Karen Stout, 4karenjs@gmail.com.
Only a few months after his Cursillo experience, Brewer found himself serving at All Saints in Winter Park. “Cursillo was happening here in the diocese,” he said. “Bill Folwell, the bishop at the time, was a real champion, of course, encouraging his clergy and lay leaders to go. “And like the Diocese of Virginia, the Cursillos that happened then involved several hundred people in various roles and were just as fun, very tender, deeply moving celebrations, just like I experienced up in Virginia,” Brewer said. “And I wound up actually participating in quite a few Cursillo weekends over the course of that next year, because I was the fourth clergyperson on the staff at the time. So I could be free to miss from time to time and give talks on Sunday morning in a way that some of the clergy who were rectors could not. “And so I wound up being very involved, both on the speaking side as well as on the prayer side,” he said. “And as a result, got to meet the clergy and lay leaders of the diocese, even though it was my first year in Central Florida, through my involvement with Cursillo.” Brewer added that he was “very active in Cursillo” for all of his 16 years in Central Florida. But when he left the diocese and went to serve in Pennsylvania, he said “there was not the same involvement with Cursillo, either in the Pittsburgh Diocese or the Philadelphia Diocese.” And when he later served in New York, the diocese there had even less diocesan involvement with Cursillo. But since his election as bishop and return to the Diocese of Central Florida, Brewer said, “I’ve tried to champion Cursillo wherever I’ve been. Cursillo here is very active, and I’m really doing what I can to support them. And I’ve really helped them try to think about particularly how they can reach out to more young adult parishioners.”
Gregory O. Brewer (far right) with fellow seminarians at Virginia Theological Seminary circa 1974 ‘Genuinely Loving Christian Community’
Cursillo promotes itself as “a short course in Christianity,” Brewer said. This means “all the talks are geared toward passing on information about what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus. And in some ways, Cursillo is designed not just to teach Christian community, but to be a demonstration of Christian community and the high level of sacrifice and servanthood involved.” “And so if you want to participate in an immersive experience of genuine loving Christian community, and hear through a variety of talks what it really means to be a follower of Jesus, Cursillo’s for you,” he added. “And you can fully expect God to use that in your life.” “Cursillo goes back to the early days of the renewal movement in Spain in the 1940s,” he added. “And over time, it has continued to evolve, and in some ways, renew itself. And I would say that my hope would be that that process of renewal would continue, and that God would use Cursillo to reach out to the Episcopalians in Central Florida – because I think it has quite a lot to offer.”
