Nearly 40 years after its founding, ACTS retreats continue to flourish in the Archdiocese of St. Louis and beyond
Mike Futhey, who recently attended an ACTS retreat with the men of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, said he felt welcomed by parishioners both at the retreat and at the return Mass at his parish. Futhey, who had joined the Oakville parish with his wife about 11 months earlier, said the welcome moved him to tears.
The retreat was “a good way to meet some of the other men in the parish. And I was hoping to strengthen my faith,” he said. “It really touched me.”
Futhey attended at the invitation of his brother-in-law, Ed Murphy, a Queen of All Saints parishioner who helped lead the retreat in early November. On the final day, Futhey found himself talking with a fellow parishioner and retreatant about the St. Vincent de Paul Society — a possible step toward becoming more involved in his parish. Before attending ACTS, Futhey described himself mostly as a “Saturday night Catholic,” meaning his primary involvement was attending Mass.
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque is one of 36 parishes in the Archdiocese of St. Louis with an ACTS community. The movement began in San Antonio in 1987 and came to St. Louis in 2002. Nearly 40 years later, its growth can be seen in area parishes such as St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.
Rich Keuss, who helped bring ACTS to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque nearly 10 years ago, said the retreat’s impact goes beyond the weekend experience by drawing participants into parish life and strengthening their connections with one another.
“No matter where you’re at in your faith life, is that when you come back … you get the sense that we’re called to do something bigger than just our own faith life,” he said. “We’re now called, if you’ve gone on this retreat, to give back to your parish, to extend the invitation to other men who have not gone on the retreat, and to be more involved with other associations within the parish, whether it be Holy Name Society or Knights of Columbus. The sense of community is the component that strengthens any parish.”
Building community through ACTS
ACTS (Adoration, Community, Theology and Service) has reached more than 1 million people worldwide since its first retreat in 1987, according to ACTS Missions, the organization that coordinates the apostolate. ACTS is present in 700 parishes in six countries and 22 U.S. states.
St. Louis native Deacon Ed Courtney, who died in July at the age of 85, helped establish the first ACTS retreat with fellow parishioners in San Antonio. They were inspired by the early Christian community described in Acts 2:42-47. Deacon Courtney later participated in the first international ACTS retreat in Honduras, where he assisted with nearly 100 baptisms.
An ACTS retreat is a three-day, three-night Catholic lay retreat presented by fellow parishioners. Each is run by a team of about 36 people who have attended earlier retreats. Retreats are offered separately for men and women. The four themes — Adoration, Community, Theology and Service — draw on the description of the early Church in the Acts of the Apostles, calling on participants to pray and worship, live in community beginning with their parish, study Scripture and Church teaching and serve others.
The mission of ACTS is to enable parish communities to use the retreats as an evangelization tool that inspires intentional, Christ-centered discipleship. Organizers say the retreat is meant to send participants back to their parishes with a desire to become more involved in parish life. ACTS Missions also describes the retreat as part of the Church’s new evangelization, in which lay people take an active role in sharing the faith.
A beginning in St. Louis
Father Rich Bockskopf and Father Tom Santen brought ACTS to St. Louis in 2002 after learning about the program from a friend involved in Texas. The two priests and longtime friends had previously worked together on retreats for high school and college-age participants.
Father Bockskopf, who at the time became pastor of the newly formed Holy Spirit Parish in Maryland Heights, said he saw ACTS as a way of bringing Catholics together as several parishes in north St. Louis County faced a merger following an airport expansion.
“I was looking for some way to get people who knew each other mostly through competition in sports to get to know each other as brothers and sisters in the Lord,” he said. “ACTS has been a very powerful thing in terms of bringing the parishes together.”
St. Joseph in Manchester, where Father Santen was pastor at the time, held the first retreat in 2002. Several months later in December of that year, two more retreats took place among members of St. Blaise in Maryland Heights and St. Lawrence the Martyr in Bridgeton — a women’s retreat at Pallottine Retreat and Conference Center and a men’s retreat at La Salle Retreat Center. By 2004, those parishes would join with St. Mary’s in Bridgeton to form Holy Spirit.
Father Bockskopf said the retreats helped build a sense of belonging across generations. “It’s parish based, led by lay people, and it gives the opportunity for different generations of the parish to come together and experience the same thing,” he said. The retreats became part of the effort to unite parishioners as the communities formed a new parish.
By the time Father Bockskopf received a new assignment in 2016, Holy Spirit had hosted 40 ACTS retreats; the retreat apostolate is still active there today.
ACTS also has inspired parishioners to serve others. He recalled a parishioner who approached him during a retreat with an idea to start Garden of Feedin’, a ministry in which parishioners grow produce and donate it to people in need. Father Bockskopf noted that the garden has seen both physical and spiritual fruits: “He’s gotten some people who weren’t going to church back in church because they were working on the garden,” he said.
Closer to the faith
John Courtney had known about ACTS for years, hearing about it from his brother, Deacon Ed Courtney. In 2025, John decided he needed to find out what ACTS was about. There weren’t any ACTS retreats where he lives in the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau, so he reached out to his niece, Marillyn Baner, executive director of the Pallottine Retreat and Conference Center in Florissant, to join a retreat hosted by the men of St. Justin Martyr Parish.
Over roughly two and a half days, John watched about 30 men go from strangers to what he described as “brothers in Christ.” After the retreat, John wrote to his brother about how the experience affected him. He later shared the letter with the retreat director, who asked permission to pass it along to the men who had organized the retreat.
John now hopes to help bring ACTS to Springfield. The retreat experience also gave him a chance to share his appreciation with his brother, whose faith and resilience stood out to him during Ed’s final months.
ACTS “brought me closer to my faith than I’d ever been,” John said. “I was just a so-so Catholic up until that time, and now I take take my faith a lot more seriously.”
Deacon Ed Courtney’s legacy
Deacon Ed Courtney, co-founder of the ACTS retreat movement, died on July 3 at age 85. A celebration of life was held Oct. 18 at Pallottine Retreat and Conference Center in Florissant. ACTS stands for Adoration, Community, Theology and Service. Deacon Courtney grew up in St. Louis and attended Christian Brothers College High School before he eventually moved to San Antonio, Texas. In 1987, Deacon Courtney and fellow parishioners in San Antonio helped establish the first ACTS retreat. The program was inspired by the early Christian community described in Acts 2:42-47.
The retreat ministry developed as a lay apostolate, with Catholics responding to their baptismal call to evangelize and serve others. Its parish-based, self-regenerating model encourages retreatants to return to their communities and share their faith with others.
Nearly four decades later, more than 1 million people have participated in ACTS across 22 states and in Mexico, Canada, Honduras, South Africa and England. Retreatants have shared testimonies of personal encounters with Christ, renewed faith, strengthened families and a greater commitment to parish and community life.
The ministry Deacon Courtney helped establish was introduced in the Archdiocese of St. Louis in 2002. The first retreats were held at St. Joseph in Manchester and several parishes that eventually became Holy Spirit in Maryland Heights. ACTS has since expanded to 36 parishes in the archdiocese.
